Kyivstar - largest mobile provider in Ukraine is down following cyberattack

Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest telecom provider with over 25 million subscribers, has experienced a significant cyberattack disrupting its mobile and internet services.

The company's website is currently offline, and they have communicated the incident to their customers via social media, stating that the attack led to technical failures affecting their services. Internet monitoring services confirmed the outage, noting a sharp decline in Kyivstar's internet traffic.

Despite the disruption, Kyivstar assures that no personal data was compromised and promises compensation to affected subscribers. The attack's origin remains uncertain, but given the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, Russian hackers are considered plausible perpetrators.

Vodafone Ukraine has offered roaming services to those affected, as Ukrainian telecoms have a system of free internal roaming in place for such situations. Ukrainian Interior Minister reassured the public that emergency services are accessible, and police or fire departments can facilitate communication with relatives during the outage.

Kyivstar has informed law enforcement and state agencies about the incident, leading to the involvement of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) and the initiation of criminal proceedings under multiple articles of Ukraine's criminal code.

Update - Two hacker groups linked to the Russian government, Killnet and Solntsepek, claimed responsibility for the attack on Kyivstar. Killnet announced on Telegram their attacks on Ukrainian mobile operator and some banks, while Solntsepek claimed to have destroyed significant Kyivstar infrastructure. Solntsepek claims they had “destroyed 10,000 computers, more than 4,000 servers, and all cloud storage and backup systems.” The post was accompanied by screenshots purporting to show someone with control over the Kyivstar systems.