The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and the European Union all blamed the Russiaguilty of having carried out a campaign hacking against satellite systems which feed the communications of Kiev. An attack they defined as “deliberate and malicious” launched just before the invasion of Ukraine began. A stratagem to weaken the military organization of Kiev, but which seems to have also damaged various resources extraneous to the clash by cross roads.
Russia’s hacking attack on Ukrainian satellites
According to the declarations presented by the various governments, Russia would have struck the terminals of the Viasat KA-SAT satellites close to the assault on Ukraine on February 24, destroying tens of thousands of modems in order to weaken the opponent’s defenses. We are not talking about simple bugs, but about a mountain of devices whose physical components have been annihilated to the point of requiring in-depth maintenance, if not the definitive replacement of the parts.
The impact that the Moscow maneuver had on the Ukrainian army has not been made public, however KA-SAT offers its services to the Defense of Kiev and it is easy to believe that the suspension of communications may have somehow affected the coordination skills of military and police officers. It certainly affected the communications of civilians and companies.
White House Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly spoke of repercussions that have even extended to other European nations. Among the most alarming reports, that of the United Kingdom: the British Government has indicated that some have also ended up in the crossfire wind farms of “Central Europe”however, the authorities have not made it clear which countries were affected or the extent of the damage suffered.
The information was collected and shared by the Intelligence of the so-called 5 Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States), with the competent bodies declaring in no uncertain terms that Russia’s attack on Viasat satellites represents the most visible of the war hacks of the war in Ukraine. The most visible, but not the only one.