Kyivstar has restored voice services by almost 99%, the company's president Oleksandr Komarov has told the national news telethon.
"We have fully restored fixed internet services for households. This is about 1 million households across Ukraine. Voice services have also been restored by almost 99%. We are finishing the last geography right now - the right bank of the Dnipro River, Kyiv," said Komarov.
At the same time, the company's specialists have not yet managed to restore mobile internet service, which was planned to be restored overnight. Komarov hopes that this afternoon the company will start restoring the service in western Ukraine, region by region.
Hacker attack on Kyivstar
- On the morning of 12 December, Kyivstar's network experienced malfunctions. The company advised its subscribers to use national roaming services. The same advice was given by Diia, but the roaming service turned out to be unavailable.
- The reason for the network's failure was a hacker attack. Kyivstar claimed that its users' personal data had not been compromised.
- The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) opened a criminal investigation into the cyber attack under eight articles of the Criminal Code. One of the versions is that Russian special services may have been behind the hacker attack. Later, one of the Russian pseudo-hacker groups, Solntsepek, claimed responsibility for the attack.
- Vodafone and lifecell warned subscribers of some difficulties due to the heavy load on their channels.
- Later, the media reported that it might take a week for Kyivstar to resume operations. The hackers not only "killed" the main control centre of the operator's entire network, but also wiped out the configurations at transit base stations.
- On the evening of 12 December, the company announced that Kyivstar specialists had partially restored the operation of communication services. They plan to complete the work by 13 December.
- On 13 December, the SBU announced that it was helping Kyivstar to restore the network. According to preliminary estimates, it is planned to restore fixed-line internet for households as early as today, as well as launch mobile and internet services.
- At the same time, the Interior Ministry warned of a fraudulent scheme involving fake Kyivstar bots: fraudsters are distributing phishing links under the pretext of compensation and information about the timing of the resumption of the operator's services.
- On the evening of 13 December, Kyivstar subscribers began to report that voice communications had been restored. The operator said it hoped to restore other services within a day.
- Later, the company said that hackers had breached Kyivstar's cyber defences through a compromised account of one of its employees.