Another attack took place on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine, when hackers took Viasat offline. The attack flooded modems with malicious traffic and disrupted internet services for several thousand people in Ukraine and tens of thousands of other customers across Europe, Viasat said in a statement. The attack also spilled over into Germany, disrupting wind turbine operations there.
Viasat said the hack is still under investigation by law enforcement, US and international government officials and Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm it hired to investigate, and that it does not attribute the attack to Russia or any other state-backed group.
But senior US officials said all the evidence suggested Russia was responsible, and SentinelOne security researchers said the malware used in the Viasat attack was similar to code linked to the GRU. The United States has not formally named Russia as the source of the attack but is expected to do so once several allies join the analysis.
At the end of March, a cyber attack again disrupted communications services in Ukraine. This time, the attack targeted Ukrtelecom, a telephone and internet provider, which took the company’s services offline for several hours. The attack was “a sustained and intensifying disruption to services on a national scale, the most serious on record since the invasion by Russia”. according to NetBlocksa group that detects internet outages.
Ukrainian officials believe Russia was most likely responsible for the attack, which has not yet been traced to any particular hacking group.
“Russia was interested in cutting off communications between armed forces, between our troops, and that was partially successful at the very beginning of the war,” said Victor Zhora, a top official at Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency, the State Agency for Special Communications and Information. Protection. Ukrainian officials said Russia was also behind attempts to spread disinformation about a surrender.
In the United States, officials fear similar cyberattacks could hit critical infrastructure companies. Some executives said they hoped the federal government would offer funding for cybersecurity.
