Russia is known to be behind the cyberattack on jamming the satellite internet network. Tens of thousands of modems went offline in the US, Canada, Estonia, Britain, and the EU, as the Russia-Ukraine war goes on. The attack from Russia against Viasat’s KA-SAT network took place in February as Russian armor pushed into Ukraine. However, Starlink satellites are not known to have been hacked, it appears that Russia has failed in jamming those.
According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the cyberattack was intended “to disrupt Ukrainian command and control during the invasion, and those actions had spillover impacts into other European countries”. The council of the EU said that the attack caused “indiscriminate communication outages” in several EU member states and Ukraine. Also, British Secretary Liz Truss said that the hack was “deliberate and malicious”. This cyber attack on Viasat is the most publicly visible one carried out since Russia’s invasion. It is because of the immediate knock-on consequences the attack has impacted various users across Europe and also crippled modems that had to be replaced. The US National Security Agency’s Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce said, “After those modems were knocked offline it wasn’t like you unplug them and plug them back in and reboot and they come back,”
Starlink resistance
He further stated, “They were down and down hard; they had to go back to the factory to be swapped out.” For now, the exact consequences of the attack on the Ukrainian battlefield are not known yet. However, the government contracts are being reviewed. It shows that KA-SAT has provided internet connectivity.
Starlink has resisted Russian cyberwar jamming & hacking attempts so far, but they’re ramping up their efforts https://t.co/w62yCsDA5w
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2022
Elon Musk shared Russia’s cyberattack and pointed out that Starlink is resisting the attack. This is true considering no Starlink is known to have been hacked. In the past, it was known that Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellites were being delivered to Ukraine. Around 590 Starlink internet stations were sent to hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The demand is increasing as many as 150 people using the same Starlink terminal.
Dmytro Zinchuk, who works for the internet provider Freenet which operates in Ukraine, told NBC News last month that his company had integrated five Starlink terminals donated by the government to get customers back online. Starlink has been used as a method of communication within Ukraine where domestic internet infrastructure may not be available due to the ongoing conflict. This week, Musk claimed that he has been threatened by a Russian official due to his role in supplying Ukraine with Starlink communication infrastructure.