Ukraine’s largest mobile network operator Kyivstar plans to restore its network by Wednesday, the 13th of December, following what is believed to be the most serious cyberattack since Russia launched its war in February 2022, disrupting services and damaging Kyivstar’s IT infrastructure, putting at risk millions of people since warnings of possible Russian air strikes could not be received, reports Reuters.
Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov linked the cyberattack to the ongoing war with Russia. Speaking on state television, he said the attack had caused significant damage to the company’s infrastructure, resulting in the company physically shutting down services to prevent enemy access.
Komarov did not mention which Russian hacking group was suspected.
He claimed the attack was aimed at destruction and damage,
but admitted that this was not the first attempt to hack telecoms operator’s network. Komarov confirmed that users’ personal data had not been compromised.
Kyivstar has 24.3 million mobile subscribers and more than 1.1 million home internet subscribers. By 20:00 local time on Tuesday, fixed lines had been partially restored.
The Russian hacktivist group Killnet had claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on Kyivstar on its Telegram channel but provided no evidence.
According to Reuters, the Ukrainian intelligence agency SBU is investigating the possibility that the cyberattack could have been carried out by Russian security services. Sources close to the Ukrainian cyber security agency told Reuters that the attack is believed to be state-sponsored and
there is evidence of Russian-controlled traffic targeting the networks.
Separately, Monobank, Ukraine’s largest payment system, suffered a denial of service (DDoS) attack, but the company’s co-founder reported that everything was under control after the attack was repelled.
In addition, PrivatBank and Oschadbank confirmed that some ATMs and card terminals were affected by the Kyivstar outage.
Kyivstar, owned by Veon, following the cyber-attack is cooperating with law enforcement authorities. Veon is also reportedly investigating and could not assess the financial impact at this stage.
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