Critical Infrastructure Security , DDoS Protection , Incident & Breach Response

2 UK Telecom Firms Under DDoS Attacks

Ongoing Attacks Disrupt Voip Unlimited and Voipfone Services
2 UK Telecom Firms Under DDoS Attacks

Voip Unlimited and Voipfone, two Voice over Internet Protocol-based telecom companies in the U.K., report on their websites that they are victims of ongoing distributed denial-of-service attacks that have disrupted services.

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Voip Unlimited

Voip Unlimited first identified the DDoS attack on its core network on Tuesday and said a "further large-scale wave of attacks" occurred on Thursday. The attacks disrupted services such as calls, registrations and customer portal access and resulted in higher-than-usual latency, according to the company.

The attack vectors, it says, are "constantly changing", and its network team is applying mitigation as necessary. Voip Unlimited did not identify the attack vectors or detail mitigation steps.

While the attack affected users with third-party connectivity, customers using Voip Unlimited ethernet and broadband were unaffected, the status report shows.

Mark Pillow, managing director of the company, which is based on the southern coast of England, attributed the attack to Russian threat actor REvil, citing communication from Comms Council UK, according to news platform The Register.

He told the publication that other U.K. session initiation protocol providers were affected too, but did not provide further details.

The company did not respond to Information Security Media Group's request for details on the extent of the damage and other additional information.

Voipfone

London-based Voipfone also continues to be the victim of an ongoing DDoS attack according to the updates on its website at the time of going to press.

Its voice, inbound and outbound calls, fax, website and SMS services have been compromised by the attack, although its broadband services appear to be operational, according to the information on its status page.

The company's update on Sept. 3 at 08:46 BST says that "a level of service has now been restored… [although] services could still be at risk of further attacks." At 12:09 BST the same day, however, the company said it "appear[s] to be under attack once again, and services are being disruptive. Our team continue to work in addressing this issue." By 13:12 BST the message was again: "A level of service has now been restored, however services could still be at risk of further attacks."

The company did not immediately respond to ISMG's request for details on the extent of damage, attack vectors and vulnerabilities, and mitigation steps undertaken. It also did not specify when the services are expected to be fully restored

Comms Council UK Chairman Eli Katz did not immediately respond to ISMG's question about whether any other telecom firms were facing DDoS attacks.

Among previous DDoS attacks to have hit telecommunications networks was an apparent DDoS attack in February that caused extensive disruption to Iran's telecommunication networks, knocking out about 25% of the country's internet service and causing an initial outage of cellular and fixed-line services.


About the Author

Rashmi Ramesh

Rashmi Ramesh

Assistant Editor, Global News Desk, ISMG

Ramesh has seven years of experience writing and editing stories on finance, enterprise and consumer technology, and diversity and inclusion. She has previously worked at formerly News Corp-owned TechCircle, business daily The Economic Times and The New Indian Express.




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