Around the start of the invasion, hackers made tens of thousands of dishes on the ground stop working. They did not need to touch the satellite itself: they attacked the network and the modems.
In practiceThe Ukrainian military used Viasat's KA-SAT network for communications. Because of the attack, thousands of connections also failed in the rest of Europe — among other things, remote management of ± 5,800 wind turbines in Germany was interrupted.
On the morning of 24 February 2022, around the start of the invasion, attackers penetrated the management network of the KA-SAT network and spread a program (later named "AcidRain") that wiped the software of satellite modems. In May 2022 the EU, the United Kingdom and the United States attributed the attack to Russia.
- Target: the ground and user segment, not the satellite (see 1.2).
- Side effect: major damage outside the conflict area, to citizens and companies in other countries.
- Lesson: commercial networks with military users are considered a legitimate — and vulnerable — target.