‘Cypriot guy’ denies links to malware attack on Ukraine

A 24-year-old videogame designer who runs his small business out of a home next to an old church in a quiet suburb of Nicosia now finds himself entangled in a global crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Polis Trachonitis’ firm, Hermetica Digital Ltd, has been implicated by U.S. researchers in a data-shredding cyberattack that hit hundreds of computers in Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia.

Discovered on Wednesday night just hours before Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, the cyberattack was widely seen as the opening salvo of Moscow’s invasion.

The malware had been signed using a digital certificate with Hermetica Digital’s name on it, according to the researchers, some of whom have started calling the malicious code “HermeticWiper” because of the connection.

Trachonitis told Reuters he had nothing to do with the attack.

He said he never sought a digital certificate and had no idea one had been issued to his firm.

He said his role in the videogame industry is just to write the text for games that others put together.

“I don’t even write the code – I write stories,” he said, adding that he was unaware of the connection between his firm and the Russian invasion until he was told by a Reuters reporter on Thursday.

“I’m just a Cypriot guy ... I have no link to Russia.”

The extent of the damage caused by the malware attack was not clear, but cybersecurity firm ESET said the malicious code had been found installed on “hundreds of machines”.

Western leaders have warned for months that Russia could conduct destructive cyberattacks against Ukraine ahead of an invasion.

Last week, Britain and the United States said Russian military hackers were behind a spate of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that briefly knocked Ukrainian banking and government websites offline.