December 12, 2023
A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek—previously linked to Russia’s notorious Sandworm hackers – is responsible for sabotaging Kyivstar, a major Ukrainian mobile and internet provider, cutting off communications for millions and even temporarily sabotaging the air raid warning system in the capital of Kyiv.
March 17, 2023
The largest provider of mobile, television, internet and telephone services to the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands is slowly recovering from a cyberattack that brought down many of its services. The outages started on Thursday evening, and by Friday Docomo Pacific CEO Roderick Boss confirmed that the company’s servers were attacked “Early this morning, a cyber security incident occurred and some of our servers were attacked … affected servers shut down to isolate the intrusion,” Boss explained in a statement.
“DOCOMO PACIFIC’s customer data, mobile network services, and fiber services remain unaffected, protected, and secure at this time. We are working to restore service as soon as possible.
January 2, 2024
Ukraine’s security officers said they took down two online surveillance cameras that were allegedly hacked by Russia to spy on air defense forces and critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
The cameras were installed on residential buildings in Kyiv and were initially used by residents to monitor the surrounding area and parking lot. After hacking them, the Russian intelligence services supposedly gained remote access to the cameras, changed their viewing angles, and connected them to YouTube to stream sensitive footage.
According to Ukraine’s security service, SBU, this footage likely helped Russians direct drones and missiles toward Kyiv during a large-scale missile strike against Ukraine on Tuesday. During the attack, Russia fired almost 100 drones and missiles, primarily targeting Kyiv and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. At least 5 people were killed, and 129 were injured.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the SBU said it has blocked about 10,000 digital security cameras that Moscow might have used to prepare for missile strikes on Ukraine.
March 27, 2023
CommScope suffered a ransomware incident that resulted in “several days of widespread disruption, including plant production,” according to employees. Employee PII data was breached on the dark web by the ransomware gang Vice Society.
September 27, 2023
On 27 September 2023 the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) reported that hackers have stolen a database identifying its users.
It is not yet clear whether the attack was financially motivated or if the hackers had intended to acquire the list of users for espionage purposes.
Following the incident, ETSI, which is based in the Sophia Antipolis technology park in the French Riviera, said it brought in France’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI “to investigate and repair the information systems.” The nonprofit said the “vulnerability on which the attack was based has been fixed,” although it did not identify the vulnerability.
October 27, 2023
Ukrainian hackers have temporarily disabled internet services in parts of the country’s territories that have been occupied by Russia. The group of cyber activists known as the IT Army said on Telegram that their distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack took down three Russian internet providers — Miranda-media, Krimtelekom, and MirTelekom — operating in the territories.
Early on Friday, Russian internet operators confirmed that they had experienced an “unprecedented level of DDoS attacks from Ukrainian hacker groups,” temporarily disrupting their operations. The attack affected services such as cellular networks, phone calls, and internet connections.
September 30, 2023
Lyca Mobile, a British telecom company, faced a network disruption due to a cyber attack over the weekend of September 30 – October 1.
“The issues affected all Lyca Mobile markets apart from the United States, Australia, Ukraine and Tunisia,” the company said. The attack prevented customers and retailers from accessing top-ups. National and international calling was impacted and it raised concerns about potential customer data compromise.
November 7, 2023
An outage at No.2 Australian telco Optus left nearly half the population without internet or phone on Wednesday, throwing payment, transport and health systems into chaos and raising questions about the fragility of the country’s core infrastructure. The outage was first reported about 4 a.m. local time (1700 GMT on Tuesday) and it was not until almost 5.30 p.m. that Optus said services had been restored.
Some 10 million Australians, 40% of the population, are Optus customers and could not use smartphones, broadband internet or landlines for much of the day. Hospitals couldn’t take phone calls, small businesses were unable to process electronic payments and train networks and ride share services were down simultaneously in some cities. The incident sparked criticism about the robustness of Australia’s telecommunications network and in particular about Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications
May 1, 2023
The state-sponsored Russian hacking group tracked as ‘Sandworm’ has compromised eleven telecommunication service providers in Ukraine between May and September 2023.
That is based on a new report by Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) citing ‘public resources’ and information retrieved from some breached providers. The agency states that the Russian hackers “interfered” with the communication systems of 11 telcos in the country, leading to service interruptions and potential data breaches.
July 25, 2023
Kenya endured a huge cyber attack that has affected services on a key government online platform. The BBC reported the attack against the region’s eCitizen portal. The portal is used by the public to access over 5,000 government services. Impacted were passport applications and renewal, e-visas for non-citizens visiting Kenya, as well as driving licenses, ID cards and health records from being issued.
Anonymous Sudan claim responsibility for an extensive cyberattack in Kenya which saw multiple government services impacted and raised digital concerns.
Mobile-money banking services M-Pesa were also affected by the attack. People were unable to make payments at shops. Public transport vehicles, hotels and other platforms also experienced difficulties. Millions of people across Kenya use Mobile-money to receive and spend money and the platform is seen as widely convenient for those who do not have access to essential banking services.