Satellite Firm Viasat Probes Suspected Cyberattack in Ukraine and Elsewhere

Satellite Firm Viasat Probes Suspected Cyberattack in Ukraine and Elsewhere
Small toy figures with laptops and smartphones are seen in front of displayed Viasat Internet logo shows in this illustration, on Dec. 5, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)
Reuters
2/28/2022
Updated:
2/28/2022

U.S.-listed satellite communications firm Viasat Inc. said on Monday it was investigating a suspected cyberattack that caused a partial outage in its residential broadband services in Ukraine and other European countries.

Viasat said a third-party cybersecurity firm was looking into the causes of an outage in recent days across its KA-SAT network, which provides high-speed satellite internet coverage in Europe and Mediterranean markets.

The outage could have been due to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, Sky News reported on Monday. Such attacks hit a number of Ukrainian banks and government websites shortly before Russia’s invasion last week.

“Our investigation into the outage continues, but so far we believe it was caused by a cyber event,” the company said in a statement, adding that there was “no indication” that customer data was involved.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government accuses Western nations of making up accusations of cyber warfare in order to blacken Russia’s name.