By Obinna Ezenwa
The national telecoms operator Ukrtelecom in Ukriane, has commenced restoration of internet services after driving back a major cyber-attack.
The company said it restricted customer access to protect military users and critical infrastructure.
Global internet monitor Netblocks said it was the most severe disruption to affect Ukrtelecom since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started last month.
Netblocks said it experienced a breakdown in connectivity to 13% of pre-war levels whereas Ukrainian users on different internet providers, who spoke to the media, reported no problems.
According Ukrtelecom, it is the country’s biggest provider of fixed internet in terms of geographical coverage, but second after Kyivstar in terms of number of clients.
It told newsmen it had been operating at about 80% of its full coverage because of damage caused by the Russian invasion.
Chief Executive of Ukrtelecom, Yuriy Kurmaz in a statement wrote that a powerful enemy cyber attack was carried out on Ukrtelecom’s IT infrastructure.
“In order to protect the critical network infrastructure and not interrupt services to the Armed Forces, other military bodies and users of critical infrastructure, we were forced to temporarily restrict internet access to most private users and business customers,” he added.
Mr Kurmaz noted that the attack had been successfully repulsed and the provision of services was being gradually resumed.
Yuriy Shchyhol head of Ukraine’s State Service for Special Communication and Information Protection said that its specialists had responded quickly to the situation, and had driven-back the attack.
Prior to the company revealing details of the incident, Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, told the media they had observed users, “falling offline progressively over the course of the day, which indicates that the issue lies not with cabling or interconnections, but rather with central infrastructure at the operator’s data centre. This can indicate a cyber-attack”.
“This also means that the incident has nation-scale impact, reaching beyond the most heated conflict zones which have so far taken the brunt of Ukraine’s network disruptions and outages.”
However, Mr Toker said connectivity had remained available through other mobile networks and providers.
