Ukrainian Intelligence Russian Hackers Infiltrated Kyivstar Months Before Hack
The Russian hacker infiltrated and disrupted Ukraine’s largest telecom operator Kyivstar months before the December hack, according to Ukraine’s top cyber official report.
The attack on Kyivstar was one of the highest-impact disruptive cyberattacks on Ukrainian networks since Russia’s invasion. The attack left millions of Kyivstar subscribers without a mobile signal and internet for days beginning on December 12.
Did Kyivstar Crumbling From Inside?
In a recent interview, Illia Vitiuk, the head of the cybersecurity department at Ukraine’s security service (SBU), said that the hackers attempted infiltration much earlier in 2023 and managed to get into the system at least as early as May.
The hackers brushed almost everything, including thousands of virtual servers and personal computers, Vitiuk said. Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov claimed earlier that the attackers managed to destroy some functions of the operator’s core network.
The SBU said that with the level of access the hackers gained, they might have stolen the personal data of subscribers.
However, It is still not clear how the hackers penetrated Kyivstar’s network and what type of malware they used. If it was an inside job, Vitiuk asserted, the insider who helped the hackers did not have a high level of clearance.
26.2 Million Dollar Loss After Hack
Kyivstar a subsidiary of the Netherlands-based VEON in Ukraine. Ranked first and one of Ukraine’s largest and most wealthy private corporation, with employee over 3,500 people and more than $815 million in revenue in 2022.
In an interview, Komarov said that Kyivstar suffered billions in losses in Ukraine’s national currency (1 billion hryvnia is about $26.2 million) due to the cyberattack and espionage.
However, the giant decided not to bill its subscribers for January to apologize for the inconvenience. Kyivstar has virtually 24 million subscribers in Ukraine.
Notably, the attack cut off Ukrainians from the cellular network and mobile internet which further disrupted air raid sirens, some banks, ATMs and point-of-sale terminals.
However, the communication systems of the Ukrainian armed forces did not see any damage due to its autonomous reliance from telecom operators and operated with different algorithms and protocols.
