Russia Cyberattack Is to Blame for the Outage of Ukraine's Leading Mobile Internet Provider

According to the CEO of Kyivstar, the biggest telecom provider in Ukraine, a Russian hack brought down the company's operations, cutting off internet connection for millions of people nationwide.

The company's services "collapsed," according to NetBlocks, a company that keeps track of worldwide internet disruptions. 

Kyivstar posted on its Facebook page that both phone and Internet access are down.

The leading mobile internet provider in Ukraine is unavailable

According to reports, the outage is among the worst assaults against a civilian communications infrastructure ever. 

Viasat, a well-known American satellite internet provider in Ukraine, was attacked at the beginning of Russia's invasion of that country by hackers that experts identified as being in Russia.

A request for comment was not immediately answered by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Oleksandr Komarov, the CEO of Kyivstar, stated on television that the interruption was caused by Russia.

He said that "the war with the Russian Federation has many dimensions, and one of them is in cyberspace." 

"Unluckily, the operator was the victim of a very strong cyberattack this morning, which has prevented access to the internet and telecommunication services.”

According to Komarov, the attack was partially successful in its aim to damage the virtual infrastructure of the company. 

He also stated that Kyivstar closed the whole business to limit the attack.

"It's unclear how soon services will be restored. In order to go back to communicating as soon as possible, we are trying to undo the effects of this assault," he added.

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