Mahuta denounces Russian cyberattacks

WELLINGTON: Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has condemned Russia for cyberattacks on Ukraine, and the Five Eyes powers have warned the spiteful cyber activity could intensify.

‘‘President [Vladimir] Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and sponsorship of an ongoing campaign of disinformation and malicious cyber activity against Ukraine is unacceptable,’’ Ms Mahuta said yesterday.

The European Union and New Zealand’s Five Eyes partners have blamed Russia for deploying destructive malware on Ukrainian government and private sector networks.

The Western countries said Russia was behind distributed denialofservice (DDOS) attacks which disabled some Ukrainian banking systems.

Russia was also accused of an attack in late February on commercially operated satellite systems which disrupted communications and internet services across Europe.

New Zealand signalled intelligence agency the GCSB had become involved, joining Australian, British, Canadian and US cybersecurity authorities to issue new guidance.

The guidance is for managed service providers (MSPs), such as companies remotely managing customer technology infrastructure. ‘‘Whether the customer’s network environment is on premises or externally hosted, threat actors can use a vulnerable MSP as an initial access vector to multiple victim networks, with globally cascading effects,’’ the new joint advisory said.

‘‘This further rebuke of Russia’s despicable actions comes on the back of additional sanctions we’ve introduced that specifically target Russian disinformation and malicious cyber activity,’’ Ms Mahuta said.

The move came two days after she said a ‘‘troll farm’’ linked to Putin’s regime would be targeted in a move against Russian misinformation and cyberattacks.

She said existing sanctions had already targeted individuals linked to Mr Putin’s regime, including propaganda producers.