SpaceX's Starlink internet communications systems in Ukraine are experiencing increasing cyberattack from Russia, the company's founder Elon Musk said this week.
SpaceX, with the help of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has sent at least 5,000 Starlink terminals to the country, whose cities have been besieged by Russian forces since February.
But Musk says it's been a difficult environment. "Starlink has resisted Russian cyberwar jamming & hacking attempts so far, but they're ramping up their efforts," he wrote on Twitter Tuesday (May 10).
According to a Reuters report, which Musk also shared, a coalition of countries have said that Russia backed a cyberattack against satellite internet systems that ultimately pulled tens of thousands of modems offline shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine Feb. 24.
Related: Russia's invasion of Ukraine as seen in satellite photos
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the attack against Viasat's KA-SAT network was "deliberate and malicious," Reuters stated, and the Council of the European Union said the hack caused "indiscriminate communication outages" in Ukraine and several member states. The attacks were confirmed by the United States, Canada and Estonia, Reuters added.
"After those modems were knocked offline, it wasn't like you unplug them and plug them back in and reboot and they come back," the U.S. National Security Agency's Director of Cybersecurity Rob Joyce told Reuters. "They were down and down hard; they had to go back to the factory to be swapped out."
Reuters added that while the full impact of KA-SAT's outage has not been disclosed, the entity does provide connectivity to Ukrainian military and police units. This may imply an operational impact for first responders.
As for Starlink, USAID said in April that SpaceX's terminals will provide Ukraine with "unlimited, unthrottled data connectivity," even if fiber optic or cellular communication infrastructure connections are severed.
Space reporter Joey Roulette of Reuters tweeted that most of the 5,000 terminals and associated Internet service — 3,667, to be exact — were donated directly by SpaceX at a cost of "roughly $10 million." USAID purchased the remaining 1,333 terminals.
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