Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

Cyberattack on Ukraine Leaves Thousands Without Internet in Europe

The outages also knocked offline some 5,800 wind turbines in Germany and Central Europe with a combined output of 11 gigawatts.
March 5, 2022
cyber fraud

Russia launched a military attack against Ukraine on the night of Wednesday, February 23 to Thursday, February 24, 2022. A few hours earlier, Ukrainian banks or ministries had been victims of a cyberattack.

“Nearly 9,000 NordNet customers are currently experiencing difficulties connecting to the internet via satellite due to an incident at our supplier Viasat,” communicates the operator NordNet on the incident.

This “cyber-event”, as described by the American company Viasat, which specialises in satellite telecommunications, would have caused a European network failure on the KA-SAT satellite, a service present throughout the continent and particularly in Eastern Europe. The loss of network affects subscribers to operators NordNet (a subsidiary of Orange) and Bigblu (owned by Eutelsat).

“For several days, shortly after the start of operations, we have had a satellite network that covers Europe and Ukraine in particular, which was the victim of a cyberattack, with tens of thousands of terminals that were rendered inoperative immediately after the attack,” he said, adding that he was talking about a civilian network – Viasat.

The outages also knocked offline some 5,800 wind turbines in Germany and Central Europe with a combined output of 11 gigawatts.

What is a cyberattack?

  • The objectives of a cyberattack can be multiple: financial, political, military…
  • It can be directed against an individual or public infrastructure.
  • It can have many consequences: identity theft, extortion, infiltration of the computer system, overall degradation of the information system, theft of intellectual property, or violation of authorized access rights and identities.

Companies leaving Russia

Apple, Google, Oracle and Dell Technologies are among the companies that have severed or reduced ties with Russia due to the military operation in Ukraine led by Vladimir Putin.

According to company president Brad Smith, Microsoft is halting several areas of its business in Russia, including new sales, to comply with government restrictions.

In a corporate blog post, the executive said the Microsoft team “condemns” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and that the company is working with the governments of the United States, European Union and the United Kingdom to comply with the sanctions imposed on Moscow.