आईसीटी समाचार
Thousands of internet users throughout Europe have been knocked offline as a result of a possible cyberattack at the start of Russia's operation in Ukraine, according to sources. Following a "cyber incident" on February 24 at Viasat, a US satellite operator with whom Orange is a customer, roughly 9,000 users of a satellite internet service supplied by its subsidiary Nordnet in France are without internet, according to Orange.
The outage on Viasat affected almost one-third of bigblu's 40,000 users throughout Europe, including Germany, France, Hungary, Greece, Italy, and Poland, according to Eutelsat, the parent company of bigblu satellite internet service. Viasat, based in the United States, said on Wednesday that a "cyber incident" had resulted in a "partial network outage" for customers using its KA-SAT satellite "in Ukraine and elsewhere" in Europe.
Viasat provided no other information, merely stating that "police and state partners" had been alerted and were working with the inquiry. General Michel Friedling, the commander of France's Space Command, confirmed that a cyberattack had occurred. "For several days, shortly after operations began, we had a satellite network that covered Europe and Ukraine in particular, which was the victim of a cyberattack, with tens of thousands of terminals that were rendered inoperable immediately after the attack," he said, clarifying that he was referring to a civilian network — Viasat.
The outages also brought down 5,800 wind turbines with a total output of 11 gigawatts across Germany and Central Europe. Military and cyber experts worry that the Russian-Ukrainian war would erupt in cyberattacks, resulting in a "cyber Armageddon" with serious implications for civilians in Ukraine and Russia, as well as the rest of the world, due to a spillover effect. However, a worst-case situation appears to have been avoided thus far, since the assaults seen appear to be limited in breadth and damage. Cybersecurity firms have detected assaults in Ukraine that use a new data-destroying virus, the full extent of which is unknown.
