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"What has been established in these days, when no one slept and only worked? We studied and analysed our product for signs of hacking - it is not infected with a virus and everything is fine, it is safe," said Olesya, managing partner at Intellect Service.

"The update package, which was sent out long before the virus was spread, we checked it 100 times and everything is fine."

Little known outside Ukrainian accounting circles, M.E.Doc is an everyday part of life at around 80 percent of companies in Ukraine. The software allows its 400,000 clients to send and discuss financial documents between internal departments, as well as file them with the Ukrainian state tax service.

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Investigators have said M.E.Doc's expansive reach is what made it a prime target for the unknown hackers, who were looking for a way to infect as many victims as possible.

"These malware families were spread using Ukrainian accounting software called M.E.Doc," researchers at Slovakian security software firm ESET said in a blog post on Friday.

"M.E.Doc has an internal messaging and document exchange system so attackers could send spearphishing messages to victims."

Ukrainian police said on Monday the Linniks could now face criminal charges if it is confirmed they knew about the infection but took no action.

"We have issues with the company's leadership, because they knew there was a virus in their software but didn't do anything ... if this is confirmed, we will bring charges," Serhiy Demedyuk, the head of Ukraine's cyber police, told Reuters in a text message.

Speaking before Demedyuk's comments at the company's modest offices on an industrial estate in Kiev, Sergei, Intellect Service's general director, raised his voice in frustration.

"We built this business over 20 years. What is the point of us killing our own business?"

Olesya said the company was cooperating with investigators and the police were yet to reach any conclusions.

"The cyber police are currently bogged down in the investigation, we gave them the logs of all our servers and there are no traces that our servers spread this virus," she said.

"M.E.Doc is a transportation product, it delivers documents. But is an email program guilty in the distribution of a virus? Hardly."

(Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Anna Willard)

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Family Firm in Ukraine Says It Was Not Responsible for Cyber Attack - New York Times

MOSCOW (AP) Ukraine accused the Russian security services Saturday of planning and launching a cyberattack that locked up computers around the world earlier this week.

The Ukrainian security agency, known as the SBU, alleged in a statement that similarities between the malicious software and previous attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure revealed the work of Russian intelligence services.

The SBU added that the attackers appeared uninterested in making a profit from the ransomware program and were more focused on sowing chaos in Ukraine.

There was no immediate official response from Russias government, but Russian lawmaker Igor Morozov told the RIA Novosti news agency that the Ukrainian charges were fiction and that the attacks were likely the work of the United States.

Ukraine was the country most affected by the attack using a strain of malware known by names including NotPetya. Beginning Tuesday, computers across Ukraine at government agencies, energy companies and banks were disabled as their data was encrypted amid demands for ransom payments.

Two cybersecurity outfits have publicly tied the NotPetya malware to hacking groups that many other experts in turn believe are linked to Russian intelligence operations.

Russian anti-virus companyKaspersky Labhas identified similarities between NotPetya and BlackEnergy, a sophisticated malware assumed to have been used in a series of cyberattacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in recent years.

There are several parts of the code and strings that are shared, Vyacheslav Zakorzhevsky, the head of Kasperskys anti-virus research department, told The Associated Press on Saturday. These families are connected.

ESET, a Slovakian cybersecurity firm, said the cyberattacks did not come out of nowhere.

This was not an isolated incident. This is the latest in a series of similar attacks in Ukraine, ESET said in a Fridayreport, suggesting the reason other countries were hit was because the hackers had underestimated the power of their malware and it had spun out of control.

Attributing cyberattacks is a particularly difficult process, but Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of sponsoring electronic intrusions, including the hack of Ukraines voting system ahead of a 2014 national election and assaults that knocked parts of its power grid offline in 2015 and 2016. Relations between the two countries collapsed when Russia annexed Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and began backing separatists fighting Ukrainian forces in the countrys east.

Major companies beyond Ukraine that reported being hit by NotPetya included Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, Russian state-owned oil behemoth Rosneft and FedEx subsidiary TNT.

Several of those affected are still struggling to get back online. A.P. Moller-Maersks chief operating officer, Vincent Clerc,has toldThe Wall Street Journal that he expects his firm to return to some kind of normalcy by Monday.

On the streets of Kiev, Ukraines capital, there were signs that Ukraine had yet to fully recover from the attack as well.

Alexander Havrilenko, 43, said his wife hadnt been paid as expected because her office at Ukraines state-owned Oschadbank was still closed.

She was told to come in Wednesday maybe, he said.

As for who was responsible, Havrilenko didnt hesitate to echo the Ukrainian governments line.

Its Russia, he said.

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Ukraine: Russian security services were behind cyberattack - NBC4i.com

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Reeling From Banking Crisis, Ukraine May Ban Auditor PwC Wall Street Journal (subscription) The government of Ukraine said it may ban PricewaterhouseCoopers from conducting bank audits in the country, the latest in a string of controversies involving the Big Four accounting giant. While under PwC's supervision, PrivatBank, Ukraine's top ...

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Reeling From Banking Crisis, Ukraine May Ban Auditor PwC - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

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Russia was behind global cyber attack, Ukraine says - The Independent

Ukraine appeared again in Americans view this week with two developments, as the origin of yet another cyberattack and the report of the registration of Paul Manafort, former chairman of President Donald Trumps campaign, with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as a representative of a Ukrainian political party supported by Russia.

It is not necessarily that Ukraine is responsible for these two developments. At the same time, it is as if there were mosquitoes in the house and occasional alligators in the backyard and there is a fetid swamp nearby. It is reasonable to conclude that the skeeters and the gators came from the swamp.

Ukraine is chaotic and lawless. It is a place where cyberattacks can originate and internationally minded political parasites can profit.

The latest cyberattack originated in Ukraine, struck thousands of computers across the world, included attempts at cyber-ransom and apparently was and is beyond the capability of any Ukrainian authority to control. That the world is vulnerable to such cyber-mischief is its own fault, and perhaps inevitable, but it doesnt help one bit that Ukraine, for a variety of reasons, is a corrupt, basically outlaw, society.

That Manafort and Rick Gates, another former official of the Trump campaign, were not only tangled up in Ukrainian affairs but also that their firm carried away some $17 million in the 2012-2014 period is something else again. For an American to represent a foreign country in the United States, as Manafort and Gates did, is perfectly legal. Manafort and Gates did register as foreign agents about five years late.For them to have been involved in an American presidential candidates campaign will be looked at closely by special counsel Robert S. Mueller and others examining Russian interference in Americas 2016 political campaign.

What needs to be done about Ukraine is a separate but important question.

Trump should propose that, under the United Nations, an international conference be convoked that would include Russia and the EU as well as Ukrainians to consider the issues that surround Ukraines future, free of commercial interests. That might be a way to get rid of the political mosquitoes and alligators in this problematic, sometimes dangerous world property.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Trump should

stop bullying

President an honorific were choking on presently Donald Trump sank to another low in decorumThursdaymorning when he lashed out in vulgar, angry terms at two television personalities.All we can ask is: Who in the White House will stop this world leader from destroying his credibility and embarrassing the nation with his pathetic rants?

The subjects of Trumps attack were Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough of MSNBCs Morning Joe, whom he referred to as low I.Q. Crazy Mika and Psycho Joe. His abuse got worse from there.

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Editorial: Ukraine's mess requires world attention - The Columbus Dispatch