Kyivstar, Ukraine’s biggest telecoms provider, reports a “powerful” assault that has affected phone and internet services for millions of customers throughout the nation.
Kyivstar confirmed the event on Facebook on Tuesday, writing that the malware created a “technical failure” that left consumers without cell connections or internet access. According to the company’s website, which was also down at the time of writing, Kyivstar serves more than 24 million mobile phone customers and more than 1.1 million home internet users.
Officials in the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy reported that the Kyivstar outage has also disrupted their air raid alarm system. “The notification system will be temporarily unavailable,” according to a Telegram message from Sumy’s regional military administration.
In a video message, Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov blamed Russia for the disruption. “The war with the Russian Federation has many dimensions, and one of them is in cyberspace,” Komarov stated. “Unfortunately, this morning the operator became the target of a super-powerful cyberattack, because of which communications services and internet access are unavailable.”
When asked whether Ukraine’s State Special Communications Service, or SSSCIP, suspected Russia was behind the assault, a representative for the SSSCIP told Eltrys that “it is too early to draw conclusions.”
“The investigation of the incident, which caused a technical failure in the operator’s work, as a result of which communication and internet access services are temporarily unavailable, is ongoing by specialists of the relevant services,” a representative for SSSCIP, who declined to be named, said. “Among others, specialists of the Government Computer Emergency Response Team CERT-UA are involved in this work.”
Oleksandr noted in his video message that “it is still not completely clear” when the telecommunications giant would resume regular operations. The parent company of Kyivstar, Netherlands-based VEON, stated in a statement that its technical experts are “working on eliminating the consequences of the hacker attack and restoring communication as soon as possible.”
Kyivstar apologized for the “temporary inconvenience” and pledged to pay anyone impacted by the outage, but said that subscribers’ personal data had not been hacked. “Our adversaries are, indeed, treacherous. “However, we are prepared to face any challenges, overcome them, and continue to work for Ukrainians,” the business concluded.
One of Ukraine’s major financial institutions, Monobank, claimed that it had also come under attack at the same time as Kyivstar. The bank’s co-founder, Oleh Gorokhovsky, claimed in a Telegram message that the organization had been hit by a “massive DDoS” assault, which involves floods of junk internet data intended to bring down web sites and services, but that “everything is under control.”
