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Kyivstar to spend $95 mln on customer loyalty measures after December cyberattack — VEON

"Largely because of the limited period during which the critical services were down, VEON expects no material financial impact on its consolidated results for the year ended 31 December 2023," the holding noted

THE HAGUE, January 18. /TASS/. The Ukrainian mobile operator Kyivstar will spend about $95 mln on customer loyalty measures after an external cyberattack, which caused a temporary disruption of the operator’s network and services in December, the international telecommunications holding Veon reported referring to preliminary estimates.

"The revenue impact of these offers [loyalty measures taken by Kyivstar in order to compensate for the inconvenience caused during the disruptions] is currently estimated to be approximately 3.6 billion Ukrainian hryvnias (approximately $95 million)," VEON said.

As the holding recalled, the incident caused by a widespread external cyberattack, resulted "in a temporary disruption of Kyivstar's network and services, interrupting the provision of voice and data connectivity on mobile and fixed networks, international roaming, and SMS services, amongst others, for Kyivstar customers in Ukraine and abroad."

"Largely because of the limited period during which the critical services were down, VEON expects no material financial impact on its consolidated results for the year ended 31 December 2023," the holding noted.

A large-scale failure in the work of Kyivstar occurred on the morning of December 12, 2023. The network outage led to numerous problems in the operation of mobile communications and the Internet. In particular, the national roaming system was turned off, disruptions began in the services of the largest banks in Ukraine such as Privatbank and Oschadbank, the DTEK energy holding also reported problems. In addition, the air raid warning system has stopped working in a number of regions.

Kyivstar then stated that the problem was caused by a hacker attack. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) opened cases under eight articles and informed about critical damage to the operator’s digital infrastructure. On December 20, 2023, the company announced the resumption of all services. The Kyivstar network covers all regions of Ukraine and includes about 24.4 million mobile subscribers and more than 1 million broadband Internet users. Kyivstar is part of VEON.

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US volunteer Russel Bentley missing in Donetsk killed — RT editor-in-chief

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Maria Zakharova pointed out that the European Union had lost independence

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