mobile network partially paralyzed after hacking, main operator denounces Russian act of “war”

An attack targeted the mobile operator Kyivstar, which has 24 million subscribers, on Tuesday morning. Companies and communities have reported malfunctions in their services.

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A resident of Bakhmout checks her phone in a humanitarian aid center, January 6, 2023. (DIMITAR DILKOFF / AFP)

Have Russian hackers struck again? The first Ukrainian mobile operator denounced, Tuesday December 12, an act of “war” of Russia after a powerful cyberattack which paralyzed its network in the early morning and “partially destroyed” its IT infrastructure. “This is a war, which takes place not only on the battlefield, but also in virtual space”said the CEO of the Kyivstar Group.

The operator, which has more than 24 million subscribers, announced that it had “been the target of a powerful hacker attack”. “The most important thing is that subscribers’ personal data is not compromised”, assured the group. At midday, the government estimated that repairs would take another “four to five hours”according to Ukrainian media.

Ukraine’s largest bank, Privatbank, reported some of its ATMs and terminals were affected. In Sumy, in the northeast of the country, air warning sirens stopped working. In Lviv, a large western city, the outage affected the operation of the public lighting system.


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