Maria B 💙💛

Since last night, @KyivIndependent has been under a hacker attack, most likely a Russian one. Last night, hackers gained access to our website’s CMS (admin panel) and to one of the services we use to send our newsletters. They used this access to send an email to addresses in our subscriber database and to publish similar posts on our website. The messages were in Russian, and their content resembled the message hackers placed in the Ukrainian state air raid alert app when they breached it three days ago. We can’t confirm that the attacks came from the same source, but they share some common features. We removed the posts from the website immediately, sent our subscribers an email explaining what had happened, and identified and closed the vulnerability they used. This afternoon, a second wave happened. This time, the hackers sent emails in both Russian and English. Our team is now fully focused on dealing with this as quickly as possible and closing every possible vulnerability. Importantly, payment and bank information of people who support us is NOT at risk — we don’t store it, they are stored by secure third-party systems. So far, there is no reason to believe the hackers gained access to anything other than the admin panel and the email-sending service, but we are continuing to check. This is the first breach of its kind in the almost five years the Kyiv Independent has been operating. Thank you to everyone who wrote to us to let us know about the emails, and I’m sorry this happened. We are receiving a lot of support from our readers and a lot of offers of help. Thank you for that as well.