Russian military reportedly hacked into European satellites at start of Ukraine war

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

The Washington Post reported that American government officials said that the Russian military was behind a cyberattack on a European satellite internet service.

The KA-SAT satellite broadband network is owned by Viasat. On the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the KA-SAT network was hit by outages that affected Europe. Viasat blamed the outages on a cyber event, but did not give any further details.

Significant communications disruptions are believed to have been caused at the beginning of the war by the outage.

The results of an investigation with Ukrainian intelligence services have not been officially announced. US intelligence analysts have concluded that Russian military hackers were behind the attack, according to anonymous officials.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had not responded to the request for confirmation by the time of publication.

Viasat officials told Air Force Magazine that the attack was conducted through a compromise of the system that manages customer satellite terminals, and only affected customers of the KA-SAT network, a smaller broadband provider that Viasat bought last year from French satellite operator Eutelsat.

At the beginning of the conflict, commentators feared that Russia could launch cyberattacks. The slow release of additional information gives credence to the idea that many attacks may have occurred in the shadows.

In the aftermath of the hack, the FBI and the CIA issued a joint advisory to satellite communications providers, warning that the agencies were aware of possible threats to US and international networks, and advising companies to report any indications of malicious activity immediately.

As the war in Ukraine continues, the Biden administration has issued warnings about the possibility of Russian cyberattacks on US infrastructure.

On Monday, President Biden advised US businesses to take additional precautions against hacking, saying that Russia was preparing to target the US with cyberattacks. On Thursday, the Department of Justice publicly released details of a highly sophisticated hacking campaign involving supply-chain software compromises and spear-phishing campaigns against thousands of employees of companies and US government agencies.