KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's state computer emergency response team CERT-UA said on Thursday around 2,000 computers had been affected in the recent cyber attack on an unnamed state-run company.
"As part of the detailed study of the cyber threat, the obtained malware samples were examined, the peculiarities of the functioning of the infrastructure of control servers were established, and more than 2,000 affected computers were identified," CERT-UA said on Telegram messaging app.
CERT-UA said the computers were infected by the DIRTYMOE (PURPLEFOX) malware. It noted that DIRTYMOE is a modular malware which creates technical capabilities for remote access to a computer and is mostly used for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks which work by flooding a server with internet traffic.
It did not name the company that suffered the attack. Three major Ukrainian state organisations, including state oil and gas firm Naftogaz, last month reported cyberattacks or problems with their information resources.
Later an attack was also reported by Ukraine's agriculture ministry.
Ukrainian resources are often the target of cyber attacks, which authorities blame on Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Russian authorities have not responded in the past to requests for comment about cyberattacks in Ukraine.
Last month, services of Ukraine's biggest mobile operator Kyivstar, were knocked out after hackers used an employee's compromised account to carry out the attack.