The services of the main Ukrainian mobile operator, Kyivstar, were crippled this Tuesday by a “powerful” hacker attack, the group said in a statement, at a time when Ukraine regularly claims to be the target of attacks by Russian hackers.
“This morning we were the target of a powerful hacker attack. The attack caused a technical glitch that temporarily unavailable our mobile communications and internet access services,” Kyivstar said on Facebook.
So far, neither the company nor Ukrainian authorities have provided any information about the origins of the attack and in particular the possibility that it is linked to Russia.
“It is a challenge for us,” Kyivstar admitted, adding that it was working with law enforcement authorities and national special services.
“The most important thing is that subscribers’ personal data is not compromised,” Kyivstar said.
The Kievstar network, which has more than 24 million subscribers, has been out of service since early morning. According to Ukrainian media, around 12:00 local time (10:00 in Lisbon), the Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure estimated that the repairs would take another “four to five hours”.
The outage is affecting a range of other services and businesses in the country, which has been facing a Russian invasion for almost two years.
The main Ukrainian bank, Privatbank, reported that some of its ATMs were affected, according to public television portal Hromadske.
In Soumy (northeast), the air raid sirens no longer worked, the military government of the city announced via Telegram.
In Lviv, a large western city, according to the local municipality, the power outage affected the functioning of the public lighting system.
One of the largest Ukrainian banks, Monobank, said it was the target of a “DDoS attack [ataque de negação de serviço] huge,” co-founder Oleg Gorokhovsky said on Telegram.
Source: DN
