Millions of Ukrainians continue to reportedly suffer on Wednesday, with widespread internet and communications services outages, rendering some of even the most necessities unavailable, as per an Ars Technica report. This comes two days after an alleged Russian cyberattack, coined as the "Kyivstar hack," hit the nation.
The alleged Russian hack targeted Ukraine's biggest telecommunications provider, Kyivstar, that prompted the company to terminate its Internet and mobile services on Tuesday.
Kyivstar is stated by NBC as a provider that claims to service over 1.1 million home Internet customers and 24.3 million mobile subscribers.
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Although Kyivstar reportedly declared on Wednesday that it had started to restore services, Ars Technica states that since Kyivstar's digital infrastructure suffered significant damage, it will take some time to restore all services while adhering to the required security precautions.
Kentik, a firm that monitors internet connection worldwide, echoes this notion by claiming that Kyivstar only handled a small portion of its typical traffic.
Now, the "Kyivstar hack" is being coined as "one of the biggest cyberattacks on the civilian telecommunications industry in history" by NBC news, and the biggest so far during the war as per Reuters, after its significant repercussions persist amidst the Russia-Ukraine War.
NBC states that the "Kyivstar hack" prevented millions of Ukrainians from communicating and caused the closure of other vital services.
The report states that the cyberattack has now required the manual disconnection of the internet-connected smart streetlights in Liviv, as the City Council stated on its website. The biggest bank in Ukraine, PrivatBank, also reported that certain ATMs and point-of-sale terminals were not operating due to broken internet connections.
Ruslan Kravchenko, the chief of Kyiv's Regional Military Administration, stated on Telegram that the outage caused interference with air alert systems in many cities, necessitating the usage of backup alarms by the authorities.
According to the report, the mayor of Kyiv stated on his Telegram channel that Russia launched a missile assault early on Wednesday morning, injuring 53 persons and sending 20 to the hospital.
Possible Groups Behind The Cyberattack
The attack that targeted Kyivstar on Tuesday was said by Ars Technica to be the work of two distinct hacking organizations with connections to the Russian government. A group going by the name Killnet reportedly claimed on Telegram that attacks on banks and Ukrainian mobile providers had occurred, but they gave no more details or supporting documentation.
Ars Technica reports that based on the same website, another gang going by the name Solntsepek claimed complete responsibility for the hack on Kyivstar, claiming to have damaged all cloud storage and backup systems, 10,000 PCs, and over 4,000 servers. Screenshots showing someone in charge of the Kyivstar systems were reportedly attached to the post.
NBC adds to what group the cyberattack should be attributed to by stating that although they did not provide confirmation, the Security Service and State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine reported that a hacker group known as Sandworm, had taken credit for the Kyivstar hack on Telegram.
The Sandworm is reportedly believed to be affiliated with a long-suspected unit within the Russian military intelligence, the GRU, a group that cybersecurity experts and Western governments have attributed earlier damaging assaults on Ukrainian infrastructure.
Sandworm is also the culprit behind Russia's most damaging cyberattacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in the last ten years, according to cybersecurity experts and Western governments. These attacks have included repeated intrusions into power plants and election-related systems.
