Putin vs. Musk: Russian Leader Targets Billionaire's Starlink Satellites With Malware, Ukraine Claims
Aug. 14 2023, Published 5:30 p.m. ET
Vladimir Putin is reportedly working to target Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites with malware in an effort to interrupt Ukraine’s access to the internet amid the ongoing war, RadarOnline.com has learned.
In the latest development to come as the Russian leader’s war against Ukraine approaches the 18-month mark, Ukraine's counter-intelligence agency claimed that Russian hackers are targeting Musk’s Starlink technology.
According to Daily Star, Putin is paranoid that the Ukrainian military is using the billionaire’s Starlink system to communicate across the battlefield.
The outlet also reported that Russia recently recovered a downed Starlink satellite to “gather data” and “load the satellite” with “custom malware.”
“The functional purpose is to gather data from the Starlink satellite system,” Ukraine's State Security Service wrote in a report published on Monday.
Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity Department of Ukraine's Security Service announced that the department is “not too bothered” by Putin’s efforts to take down Musk’s Starlink satellite system because of the sheer number of satellites currently in Ukraine.
The department also acknowledged that Ukraine has “alternatives” to use besides Musk’s Starlink system.
“We saw that there were attempts to penetrate these systems,” Ukraine’s department head, Illia Vitiuk, told NPR this week. “Our enemy is extremely focused on getting insight into these systems.”
“They planned these operations for a long period of time, and there were some hacker groups that moved closer to the front lines,” Vitiuk continued. "This was very interesting malware [because] it gave them the possibility to get the configurations of Starlink, so in the end, they could understand the location.”
“But the thing is, we have thousands of Starlinks here in Ukraine, and there are alternatives – you cannot hit it with a missile or artillery shell, every Starlink,” he concluded.
As RadarOnline.com reported, Musk provided Ukraine with his Starlink satellite system when the war started in February 2022 to help the invaded nation retain internet access amid the conflict.
Russia ultimately branded the 52-year-old billionaire SpaceX founder a “war criminal” for the Starlink donations to Ukraine.
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"Well, objectively speaking, because those technologies and those satellites that he supplies, and those terminals, it's all now being used to create attack drones of various power degrees," Putin crony Vladimir Solovyov fumed in February.
"And we have to deal with them seriously, with this space group, and with everyone like that militarist Elon Musk," Solovyov added at the time.
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Musk also upset Russia last year when he challenged Putin to a fight on Twitter. The Tesla founder suggested that the winner of the challenge would get Ukraine.
"I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat,” Musk wrote. “Stakes are Ukraine."
"Do you agree to this fight?”
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