The Russian hackers behind a December breach of Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest telecommunications service provider, have wiped almost all systems on the telecom operator's network.
Following the incident, Kyivstar's mobile and data services went down, leaving most of its 25 million mobile and home internet subscribers without an internet connection.
Illia Vitiuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine's cybersecurity department, told Reuters in an interview that the threat actors breached Kyivstar's network in May 2023.
The cyberattack had a considerable impact on the country's civilian population, yet it notably did not significantly disrupt military communications.
Vitiuk said that this is because of Ukraine's Defense Forces employing different algorithms and communication protocols.
Following the incident, Kyivstar's CEO and the SSU suggested that Russian hackers may have been involved, given the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
One day later, the attack was claimed by Russian hackers from the Solntsepek group.
They said they wiped 10,000 computers and thousands of servers on Kyivstar's network.
An October report from Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team revealed that Russian Sandworm hackers breached the networks of 11 Ukrainian telecom service providers since May 2023.
This has led to service interruptions after the hackers deployed scripts during the final stages of the attacks to wipe Mikrotik equipment and backups to make recovery more challenging.
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This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Thu, 04 Jan 2024 19:40:16 +0000