For several months, Russian hackers were inside the Ukrainian telecom giant Kyivstar’s system. This is stated by the Ukrainian cyber security chief Illia Vitiuk for the Reuters news agency.
Starting on December 12, hackers knocked out the systems of Ukraine’s largest telecom company, affecting around 24 million users for several days.
The cyber attack, which has been going on since May last year, should be seen as a “big warning” to the West, Illia Vitiuk, who heads the cyber security department of Ukraine’s security service SBU, told Reuters.
The private company has invested a lot of money in cybersecurity, he assures.
– This attack is a big message, a big warning, not only to Ukraine, but to the entire Western world to understand that no one is actually unreachable, says Vitiuk.
Among other things, the hackers had the opportunity to get hold of the users’ personal data, could use the mobile phones to see where they were and read their private messages, according to the SBU.
Kyivstar is working closely with the security service to investigate what happened, a spokesperson for the company said, adding that “no information about leaks of personal and subscriber data has been disclosed.”