December’s cyberattack on Ukrainian telecommunications operator Kyivstar by Russian-backed threat actors dealt a catastrophic blow to the wealthy, privately-owned company, according to Illia Vitiuk, head of the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) cybersecurity department. In a new interview, he issued a warning to organizations across the West — they could be next.
The breach by Russian-backed threat actors, who Vitiuk said investigators suspect are linked to the group Sandworm, managed to black out communications for more than 24 million Kyivstar users across Ukraine for about four days, starting Dec. 12. Vitiuk said the threat actors likely had access to Kyivstar systems since May 2023 and were able to wipe “almost everything” out, and “completely destroyed the core of a telecoms operator,” in a new interview.
