According to a blog post by Microsoft on Friday, a recently identified hacker group has used a novel kind of ransomware to assault logistics and transportation firms in Poland and Ukraine.

In less than an hour on Tuesday, the attackers targeted a variety of computers, according to Microsoft, which added that it had not yet been able to connect the attacks to any known group.

Researchers discovered that the cyberattacks, however, closely resembled past assaults by a cyber team connected to the Russian government that had affected Ukrainian government services.Russian cyberattacks against Ukraine have been widespread since the conflict's outbreak in late February, according to senior government officials and western security researchers.

A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Ukrainian or Polish cybersecurity organisations, nor did it receive one from the Russian Embassy in Washington.

According to Microsoft, victims of the 'Prestige' ransomware also fell victim to another cyberattack that used the 'FoxLoad' or 'HermeticWiper' virus to shred data.

At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that attack affected hundreds of computers in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. The 'Prestige' ransomware, according to Microsoft, encrypts the data of its victims before demanding money for a decryption tool in order to unlock the data.

Before unleashing the ransomware, the researchers found that the hackers frequently had administrator access to the victims' systems, which may mean that they already had the victims' login credentials and were just waiting for the right moment to attack.