Viasat KA-SAT cyberattack disables satellite broadband and wind-turbine telemetry

On 24 February 2022, an attacker exploited a misconfigured VPN to enter management systems supporting Viasat’s KA-SAT broadband service and issued destructive commands to subscriber modems, following a traffic-flooding phase. Thousands of customers in Ukraine and tens of thousands elsewhere in Europe lost satellite internet connectivity. Approximately 5,800 German Enercon wind turbines lost remote monitoring and control, although electricity generation continued. Viasat explicitly found no compromise of its software-update supply chain.