Ukraine Faces Internet Outages Amid Conflict With Russia: Details

Amid the intensifying Russia-Ukraine crisis, the locals in Ukraine have lost access to the internet.

Representative image/Getty

New Delhi: Amid the intensifying Russia-Ukraine crisis, the locals in Ukraine have lost access to the internet as Russia-sponsored hackers are now targeting the internet infrastructure in areas like Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine. According to the civil society groups, there is a huge possibility of direct attacks on the internet infrastructure of Ukraine by Russia.

According to a digital advocacy group named NetBlocks, there has been a significant internet disruption in Kharkiv which is located in northeast Ukraine, about 25 miles from the Russian border. According to Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech, partial internet disruption started just before midnight on February 23 and continued into the morning of February 24, said a report published in The Verge.

The internet outage is impacting the Triolan internet service provider that caters to a number of cities and other areas across the country, including Kharkiv.

"#Ukraine: Partial outage of Ukrainian ISP Triolan started around 2.50 am UTC," tweeted the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech in the US late on Thursday.

#Ukraine: Partial outage of Ukrainian ISP Triolan started around 2.50am UTC

Visible in near-realtime athttps://t.co/OqEfHQ66R9 pic.twitter.com/8SBiumlOmi

— Internet Outage Alerts (@gatech_ioda) February 24, 2022

“If Russia is intent on switching off Ukraine as a nation, it would have to go for the providers and it would have to go for a means of disconnecting those other international connections; this would have to be done either kinetically by attacking telecoms infrastructure or through sabotage or internal connections, or indeed cyberattacks if it has that capability,” NetBlocks director Alp Toker was quoted as saying by Vice News.

Previously, Russia has been linked to DDoS attacks against Ukrainian government sites but a complete blackout would mean disabling telecommunications infrastructure at the network level and silencing Ukrainians in the process. Earlier, as Russia began military operations against Ukraine, key Ukrainian government websites were down as multiple cyberattacks hit the country.

The websites of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers, and those of the ministries of foreign affairs, infrastructure, education and others, were also affected.