St. Petersburg Internet Provider Hit by Days of Disruption After Claimed Cyberattack

SkyNet, a major internet provider in St. Petersburg, Russia, has reported days of service disruption following a cyberattack claimed by a Ukrainian hacking group. In a statement on Friday, the company said a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which floods a network with traffic to overwhelm it, had been hitting its network since October 6. Online gaming, voice calls and video conferencing were affected, with customers facing slow connections, high latency and interruptions. SkyNet did not say when normal service would return, and customers were still reporting problems on Tuesday.

The group BO Team, also known as Black Owl, claimed attacks on SkyNet's infrastructure on September 14 and October 5, saying it disabled more than 15,000 network devices. It also published screenshots that it said show access to SkyNet's internal systems. SkyNet has not confirmed the claims about disabled equipment or unauthorised access. The group described the operation as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers.

SkyNet had a major outage in mid-September, which it blamed on a technical failure. It is unclear whether that was linked to the claimed September 14 attack. BO Team emerged in early 2024 and has claimed attacks on several other Russian telecommunications providers. It has previously worked with Ukrainian military intelligence on operations against Russian organisations.