Angola's Largest Telco, Unitel, Hit by Cyberattack Hours Before Stock Market Debut

Cyberattack Disrupts Unitel Services

Unitel, Angola's primary telecommunications provider, reported a cyberattack in the early hours of Tuesday. This incident led to widespread outages, affecting voice services, mobile data, and internet access for millions of users across the country. The company initiated response and containment protocols, mobilizing technical and cybersecurity teams to mitigate the disruption and restore services.

Impact on Stock Market Debut

The cyberattack occurred less than 24 hours before Unitel was scheduled to make its debut on the Angolan stock exchange. Despite the significant service disruption, the company proceeded with its initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday, which became the largest in Angola's capital market history.

Nature of the Attack

Network measurement data indicates that Unitel's IP prefixes remained announced to the global internet, suggesting that external connectivity was not the primary issue. This points to an incident that disabled core internal systems rather than an external disruption like a volumetric DDoS attack. Traffic telemetry from Cloudflare Radar showed a sharp collapse in Unitel's traffic, persisting into the following day, with no other Angolan network operators experiencing similar degradation.

Broader Consequences

Beyond individual users, the outage also affected point-of-sale payment terminals operating on Unitel's network. This disruption impacted business communications and various digital services that rely on internet access, according to local business reports. Unitel, which serves over 21 million subscribers and holds a 76% market share, did not provide a timeline for full service restoration or details on the attack's nature.