Russian hackers executed a destructive cyberattack on Kyivstar, destroying thousands of virtual servers and PCs, causing a nationwide outage of mobile communications and internet for approximately 24 million subscribers for several days.
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Attack destroyed thousands of virtual servers and PCs
Attack objectives were to inflict psychological blow to the public and obtain intelligence information
24 million subscribers lost mobile communications and internet for several days
Attack had little impact on Ukrainian Armed Forces operations
Attack was carried out by Sandworm hackers, a unit of Russian military intelligence
Hackers may have stolen personal information, located phones, intercepted SMS messages, and stolen Telegram accounts
Kyivstar denies that customer data was compromised
The SBU said that a GRU-backed group called SandWorm was responsible for a large-scale hacking attack against the Kyivstar telecommunications provider in December 2023
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Extraction metadata
Extracted: 2026-02-16T21:57:11.578Z
Source story: 26313