Cyber-attack hits UK internet phone providers

guest · Oct 26, 2021

Cyber-attack hits UK internet phone providers
October 26, 2021
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59053876

Industry body Comms Council UK said several of its members had been targeted by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in recent weeks.

"An overall threat has been made to the entire industry," a spokesman added.
Ofcom said it was aware of the situation.

DDoS attacks work by flooding a website or online service with internet traffic in an attempt to throw it offline, or otherwise make it inaccessible.
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VoIP providers offer internet-based calls to a range of customers, including businesses as well as public services, including the police and NHS.

In a statement, Comms Council UK said that the DDoS attacks on British VoIP firms have occurred during the past four weeks and "appear to be part of a co-ordinated extortion-focused international campaign by professional cyber-criminals".
The body said it was liaising with the UK government, Ofcom and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) over the matter.
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By exploiting weaknesses in VoIP, this wave of attacks is actually a clever twist on a the traditional DDoS approach.

Technology to protect businesses and websites against DDoS attacks has improved dramatically in recent years, said cyber-security expert Alan Woodward from the University of Surrey.

"DDoS is a bit of a surprise as an attack method," he added.
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guest · Oct 27, 2021

Digital Extortionists DDoS VoIP Providers
October 27, 2021
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/digital-extortionists-ddos-voip/

A trade body has warned of a major DDoS attack campaign designed to extort money from global Voice over IP (VoIP) providers.

Comms Council UK, which represents over 100 VoIP providers, said “several” of its members and international providers had been hit over the past four weeks as part of a coordinated extortion campaign by professional cyber-criminals.

“As our members supply telecoms services to critical infrastructure organizations including the police, NHS and other public services, attacks on our members are attacks on the foundations of UK infrastructure,” it claimed in a brief statement yesterday.
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There were no further technical details about the nature of the DDoS attacks, although a spokesperson told the BBC that the attacks were on an “unprecedented” scale and that the entire global industry was under threat.

“We are liaising closely with the UK government, National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), Ofcom and international agencies to share information and details about the nature of the attacks in the expectation of halting this criminal activity as quickly as possible,” the statement continued.
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guest · Nov 3, 2021

Bandwidth.com expects to lose up to $12M following DDoS extortion attempt
November 2, 2021
https://therecord.media/bandwidth-com-expects-to-lose-up-to-12m-following-ddos-extortion-attempt/

Bandwidth Inc. expects to lose between $9 million and $12 million because of service downtime caused by a series of DDoS attacks the company dealt with during late September and early October this year.

The attacks, which the company said it had fully mitigated since October 5, were part of a DDoS extortion campaign that targeted several VoIP providers across the globe.
The attackers tried to obtain money from Bandwith Inc. by attacking its Bandwidth.com portal, through which the company provided on-demand server infrastructure to smaller VoIP telephony providers.
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“Based on preliminary usage data and currently known information, the company estimates that the impact of the DDoS attack may reduce CPaaS revenue for the full year of 2021 by an amount between $9 million and $12 million, inclusive of the aforementioned $0.7 million revenue impact in the third quarter,” Bandwidth said.
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guest · Nov 10, 2021

Here’s what happened when a major cyber attack took Triangle tech firm Bandwidth offline
November 9, 2021
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article255673261.html

For the first time since a cyber attack hit Raleigh tech firm Bandwidth, the company’s CEO, David Morken, publicly addressed the fallout from the event, saying his company did not pay a ransom before beating back its hackers.

In late September, Bandwidth, which makes software for internet-based voice and text communication, suffered a DDoS attack, or distributed denial-of-service, that caused interruptions for some customers.
The outages stand to cost the company millions of dollars, it has said.
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The cyber attack “was an unprecedented size and in a very unique way,” Morken told investors on Monday, before adding he was “confident (in) the way that we have adjusted our defenses (and) that we can withstand this and other similar threats going forward.”

Bandwidth is one of the country’s largest providers of VoIP technology, which helps companies connect phones and messaging to customers over the internet.
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Despite the attack, the company told investors it closed several large deals during the quarter, including a Fortune 200 company. Morken said the attack, in some ways, has demonstrated its resiliency to potential customers.

“The reason is we have successfully fought back against the latest methods (of attack) in the VoIP space that before now were unheralded, unprecedented,” Morken said.
Morken called the efforts at combating the attack a “running gun battle” that lasted multiple days, with attacks coming in from “different nation-states.”

Bandwidth eventually had to bring in Cloudflare, a cyber security company, to help it resolve the situation, after its first line of defense could not stop the entirety of the attack in the first 48 hours.
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