British intelligence: cyberattack on Kyivstar is probably the largest operation by Russian hackers since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia

British intelligence: cyberattack on Kyivstar is probably the largest operation by Russian hackers since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia

Kyiv  •  UNN

December 16 2023, 01:35 PM • 102280 views

A British intelligence report claims that the December 12 cyberattack on Kyivstar, which disrupted services and emergency systems, is one of the most destructive cyberattacks since the Russian invasion.

The recent cyberattack on Kyivstar was probably one of the largest disruptive cyberattacks on Ukrainian networks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia. This is stated in an intelligence report released by the British Ministry of Defense, UNN reports .

Details

The department believes that on December 12, the largest mobile operator in Ukraine, Kyivstar, was subjected to a cyberattack by Russia. It is noted that it took at least two days to eliminate the hacker attack.

Among other things, users were left without mobile communication and the ability to use the Internet. The cyberattack also disrupted air raid sirens, some banks, ATMs, and vending machines.

Given that Ukrainian government resources and emergency services were affected, this incident is likely one of the largest destructive cyberattacks on Ukrainian networks since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion

- British analysts emphasize.

Addendum 

Kyivstar statedthat a technical failure in the network caused problems with access to mobile communications and the Internet. Later, Kyivstar explained the large-scale outage as a powerful hacker attack.

Kyivstar restores access to mobile Internet on the entire government-controlled territory of UkraineDecember 15 2023, 08:35 PM • 51520 views

To recap

Due to a large-scale failure at Kyivstar, air raid warning systems did not work in some regions of Ukraine.

In addition, there were problems with street lighting in some cities. In particular, in Lviv and Dnipro , utility workers were forced to manually turn on the lights.