Valentin Petrov: The attack of the Russian hackers on Ukrainian companies is a wake-up call for the countries of Europe

The Head of Service on Issues of Information Security of the Staff of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Valentin Petrov expressed confidence that preparation and development of software for hacker attacks on Ukrainian companies was planned in Russia and lasted no less than half a year. He announced this in his interview with German TV channel ZDF.

 "This was a process that lasted no less than half a year and as a result of which not only Ukrainian energy companies were affected - it was just the tip of the iceberg - a number of other large enterprises, as well as one of the national TV channels were also affected", - he noted.

According to Valentin Petrov, Ukrainian specialists found out that the traces of hacker attacks conducted against Ukrainian energy companies, led to Russian servers, "and all the signs are that Russian programmers participated in the development of various systems for this".

"During the analysis of the virus, domestic criminologists discovered a high probability of that the virus was created and had all the settings to work with the Cyrillic alphabet", - he informed. The Head of Service on Issues of Information Security also explained that the prototype of the virus that used against energy companies in Ukraine was actively spread by the Russian man on one of the computer forums in 2007.

"He distributed at the specialized forum the program, which later became the virus to affect Ukrainian companies. This means that Russian citizen is behind the creation and origin of this virus", - Valentin Petrov said.

Moreover, in the opinion of the Head of Service on Issues of Information Security of the NSDC Staff, the evidence of that the virus was developed and launched from the territory of the Russian Federation is the fact that the time settings on the computer, where this virus was created, coincide with Moscow and Saint-Petersburg time zone.

"Russia, - Valentin Petrov emphasized, - today seeks to restore its geopolitical greatness, and therefore it is forced to resort to various asymmetric methods, in particular, to propaganda and cyber-threats. Those events that took place in Ukraine were directed primarily not against Ukraine, it is a demonstration of Russia's potential capabilities to the West".