SkyNet customers in St. Petersburg have faced several days of connectivity problems after the internet provider said a distributed denial-of-service attack had disrupted its network since October 6.
In a Friday statement cited by The Record, SkyNet warned that subscribers could encounter slow connections, elevated latency and interruptions affecting online gaming, voice calls and video conferencing. The company said it was mitigating the attack but did not provide a timetable for restoring normal service.
Problems continued after that statement. On the following Tuesday, Russian outage-monitoring service Detector404 was still recording customer complaints involving fiber-optic internet outages, failed Wi-Fi connections and high latency.
BO Team claims more than 15,000 devices were disabled
The Ukrainian hacking group BO Team, also known as Black Owl, claimed responsibility for attacks against SkyNet’s infrastructure on September 14 and October 5. It asserted that the operations disabled more than 15,000 network devices and said over the weekend that a rapid recovery would not be possible.
The group also released screenshots that it presented as evidence of access to SkyNet’s internal systems. SkyNet has not confirmed either the claimed unauthorized access or the figure for disabled equipment.
BO Team described the operation as retaliation for Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centers, invoking Moscow’s use of the phrase “digital detox” in relation to those attacks. The group’s statements establish its claim of responsibility, but not the scale or method of the intrusion.
SkyNet’s account and BO Team’s timeline refer to different events: the provider said disruption had continued since October 6, while the group claimed attacks on October 5 and September 14.
Earlier outage has no established connection
SkyNet also suffered a substantial outage in mid-September. The provider attributed that incident to a technical failure, and some customers reported problems lasting for several days.
BO Team’s claimed September 14 operation creates a possible overlap in timing, but no connection between the two accounts has been established.
SkyNet has operated since 2003 and supplies residential and business internet access, digital television, telephone connectivity and data center services in St. Petersburg.
Kaspersky has previously described BO Team as an increasingly independent pro-Ukrainian threat group with its own resources and methods. Beyond openly disruptive attacks, researchers have associated it with espionage and covert network intrusions. Those earlier findings provide context about the group but do not demonstrate how the current SkyNet disruption was carried out.
For affected subscribers, the immediate consequences remain degraded or unavailable connectivity across internet, voice and video services. SkyNet’s mitigation work was continuing, with no announced restoration date.
