Ukraine's biggest mobile operator suffers massive hacker attack -statement (updated)

VEON

12/12/2023 11:33

(Adds detail)
       KYIV, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine's biggest mobile
network operator, Kyivstar, said it was the victim of a powerful
hacker attack on Tuesday morning which has temporarily knocked
out its cellular and internet signal.
    The company, which is owned by Amsterdam-listed mobile
telecoms operator Veon  VON.AS , said it was working to repair
the outage and was cooperating with law enforcement bodies. 
    Separately, the co-founder of Monobank, a major Ukrainian
payment system, said in a social media post that his company was
currently suffering a distributed denial of service (DDoS)
attack, but that everything was "under control".
    Reuters correspondents in Kyiv suffered disruption to their
Kyivstar cellular signal throughout the day on Tuesday -- the
signal was still absent at 1315 local time (1115 GMT).
     "The most important thing is that the personal data of
users has not been compromised," Kyivstar said in its statement,
promising to compensate customers for loss of access to
services.
    Kyivstar did not immediately say who it believed to be
responsible. 
    However, Ukrainian state bodies and companies have often
accused Russia, which is at war with Ukraine, of orchestrating
cyber attacks against them in the past.

 (Reporting by Max Hunder; editing by Andrew Heavens)
 ((Max.Hunder@thomsonreuters.com;))