The EU has blamed Russia for a powerful cyber-attack that disrupted satellite broadband services in Ukraine and “helped facilitate President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the country.” Thousands of modems were blown offline during an attack on the KA-SAT network an hour before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24.
The incident caused communication interruptions and other disruptions to government websites and banks in Ukraine and affected several EU member states that use the KA-SAT network. The KA-SAT satellite and network are operated by US telecom giant Vyasat, which provides connectivity to military and commercial customers.
The Cabinet said in a statement issued today (May 10) that “this unacceptable cyber-attack is another example of Russia’s irresponsible behavior in cyberspace, which is an integral part of the illegal and unjust invasion of Ukraine.” It warns that cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure “could spread to other countries and have systemic effects that could harm the security of European citizens.”
“The European Union is working with its partners to examine the next steps in preventing, discouraging, preventing, and responding to such harmful behavior in cyberspace. Viasat said in a statement on March 30 that “rejecting the service attack made it more difficult for many modems to stay online” and that the attacker had misused the VPN device’s configuration to gain remote access to the KA-SAT network…
The next day, despite Viasat’s claims that “there was no evidence of any supply-chain interference”, cybersecurity firm SentinelOne identified the incident as a supply-chain attack, which was launched against Viper malware modems.