Hackers knock out Ukraine’s mobile operator in payment system attack

Kyiv — Ukraine’s biggest mobile network operator, Kyivstar, said it was the victim of a powerful hacker attack on Tuesday morning that has temporarily knocked out its cellular and internet signal.

The company, which is owned by Amsterdam-listed mobile telecom operator Veon, said it is working to repair the outage and is co-operating 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 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 11.15am GMT (1.15pm).

“The personal data of users has not been compromised,” Kyivstar said, 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 cyberattacks against them in the past.

Reuters