Russian internet provider SkyNet reports outages after cyberattack claimed by Ukrainian hackers

A major internet provider in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, has reported days of service disruptions following a cyberattack claimed by a Ukrainian hacking group.

SkyNet said in a statement on Friday that its network had been disrupted by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack since October 6, affecting services including online gaming, voice calls and video conferencing.

The company said customers could experience slow connections, high latency and interruptions to audio and video services as it worked to mitigate the attack. It did not say when normal operations would resume.

SkyNet customers were still reporting connectivity problems on Tuesday, according to Russian internet outage monitoring service Detector404. Complaints included fiber-optic internet outages, Wi-Fi connectivity failures and high connection latency.

The Ukrainian hacking group BO Team claimed responsibility for attacks on SkyNet's infrastructure on September 14 and October 5, saying it had disabled more than 15,000 network devices.

"A quick recovery will not be possible," the group added in a statement over the weekend.

The group also published screenshots purportedly showing access to SkyNet's internal systems. The company has not confirmed the hackers' claims about disabled equipment or unauthorized access to its systems.

BO Team described the operation as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers, referring to Moscow's use of the term "digital detox" in connection with the attacks.

SkyNet, which has operated since 2003, provides residential and business internet access, digital television, telephone services and data center services in St. Petersburg.

The company previously experienced a major outage in mid-September, which it attributed to a technical failure. Some customers reported connectivity problems for several days. It remains unclear whether that incident was connected to BO Team's claimed September 14 attack.

BO Team, also known as Black Owl, emerged in early 2024 and has since claimed attacks on several Russian telecommunications providers, including Vega-Internet, Kraft-S, SimStar and Orion Telecom.

The group has previously collaborated with Ukrainian military intelligence on operations targeting Russian organizations, including a drone supplier, a federal digital signature authority and a scientific research center.

Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky said in a report that BO Team had expanded its operations beyond disruptive attacks to include cyber espionage and more covert intrusions. According to Kaspersky, the group targeted 20 organizations in the first quarter of 2026, increasingly focusing on manufacturing, telecommunications and oil and gas companies.

Researchers said the group typically gained initial access through targeted phishing emails carrying malicious attachments and used backdoors and other malware to maintain access to compromised networks.

Kaspersky described BO Team as operating more independently than many other pro-Ukrainian hacking groups, with its own resources and methods.

"BO Team remains a serious and continuously evolving threat in the Russian cyber threat landscape," the researchers said.