U.K. telecom provider KCOM Group has blamed cyber-attackers for causing customers to be without internet over a period of four days recently.
Some customers report that they’re still having difficulties accessing the internet, which reportedly caused over a thousand customers to be disconnected from the internet.
The telecom provider said the root of the issue was down to cyber-attackers accessing customers’ broadband routers.
A spokesperson said:
“…we have now identified that the root cause of the problem was a cyber-attack that targets a vulnerability in certain broadband routers, causing them to crash and disconnect from the network.”
KCOM also confirmed that the only affected router is the “ZyXel AMG1302-T10B”.
The cyber-attackers
The perpetrators reportedly targeted customers’ broadband routers and were able to exploit an unsecure transmission control protocol (TCP) port on vulnerable devices. A TCP allows two hosts to establish a connection and share data with each other.
Ongoing issues
It’s not the first time customers at KCOM have reportedly had reliability issues with their internet. For a number of years, customers have reported that the local telecom providers continually fail to provide a reliable service with complaints of ongoing technical and customer service issues.
Could this indicate that there were previous breaches?
Following this attack, KCOM has declared that their core network wasn’t affected, but they’ve put extra measures in place to block potential future attacks. However, KCOM customers are far from pleased, and expressed their frustration through social media (Facebook) and through a petition on Change.org. The petition calls for the internet service providers to acknowledge the issues, and to propose and provide a ‘measurable’ solution.
The petition highlights the most recent interruption.
Customers emphasise the inconvenience and money that it’s cost them too.
Are other telecom providers victim of the same attack?
It’s reported that the cyber-attack isn’t just limited to KCOM customers, and some customers across other U.K. and European telecom providers may also have been impacted. However, KCOM failed to name any other providers.