Vodafone, Lifecell report network issues after Kyivstar cyberattack
The cyberattack on Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest mobile operator, resulted in an increase in network load for Kyivstar's competitors Vodafone and Lifecell, Vodafone told NV on Dec. 13.
"The network load has increased by up to 30% in some regions. Not only because of new subscribers but also because a significant number of customers used the mobile network instead of Kyivstar's home Internet, which was also down yesterday,” Vodafone said.
Read also: Kyivstar outage, Zelenskyy in Washington, 90% Russian losses
“This could have affected the speed of services and the quality of online video locally. However, our engineers managed to ensure the availability of communications in these difficult conditions. All services continue to work.”
User activity showed a greater increase in traffic on the 3G network compared to the 4G (LTE) network, which may be due to customers using older SIM cards, or their phones having two SIM slots.
"To support Kyivstar customers who have been left without a connection, Vodafone has launched the Keep WiFi initiative," the operator said.
When one operator's network goes down, it affects the work of others and increases the load on the network and services of the operators, Lifecell said.
Read also: Kyivstar still experiencing network problems after hacker attack, says CEO
"The number of top-ups has increased several times and the number of new activations has increased tenfold compared to a typical day," the company’s press service reported.
"The Lifecell network is currently stable. As for cyberattacks, our experts have been detecting them every day since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, so we are continuously strengthening and improving the network security."
Kyivstar, SBU cyber experts, other government agencies, and IT companies are continuing to restore the network after the attack which left 24 million subscribers without mobile connection.
The Ministry of Digital Transformation subsequently stated that the malfunction had disrupted national roaming services but had not affected the national air raid alert system or the Kyiv Metro.
Initially attributing the disruption to a technical glitch, Kyivstar later confirmed the outage was the result of a hacker attack.
Read also: Overwhelming cyber-attack took out Ukraine’s largest mobile operator – Kyivstar Pres. explains how
The Solntsepek hacking group, which has claimed responsibility for hacking Kyivstar’s mobile network, is part of the Russian military intelligence agency the GRU, the SBU reported on Dec. 13.
Preliminary estimates suggest that landline internet may be restored today, the SBU said.
Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar is receiving help from international IT companies including Microsoft, Cisco, and Ericsson, to restore communications after a major hacking attack, according to the company’s CEO on Dec. 12.
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