Power outage affects large parts of BT’s broadband network

IP6netInternet, Technology

Another major UK Internet outage occurred on Thursday morning, this time reportedly caused by a power failure at Telehouse North (TH10). The outage appeared to have started at around 7am, with at least one network at Telehouse North falling over due to a reported loss of power. The situation had mostly been resolved by around 11am, though some UK broadband users are still reporting spotty connections. Like Wednesday’s outage, it appears that BT has a significant amount of networking equipment at Telehouse North. The has affected an unknown number of BT and Plusnet broadband subscribers, plus other smaller ISPs and services such as Zen Internet that make significant use of BT’s backhaul network. Telehouse issued the following statement: We are aware that there has been … Read More

Zuckerberg’s social media accounts hacked!

IP6netSecurity

A hacking group has claimed responsibility for taking over social media accounts belonging to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. His Twitter and Pinterest pages appear to have been compromised for a short time on Sunday. Some reports suggested that the 2012 hack of LinkedIn may have been responsible for the breach. Last month it was reported that 117 million LinkedIn username and password combinations stolen four years ago were being sold on the dark web for 5 bitcoins – worth about $2,300 (£1,595). The passwords were encoded, but in a form that appears to have been relatively easy to unravel. The account, on which he has posted just 30 images, has more than 600,000 followers.

123-reg accidentally deletes client Websites in error

IP6netInternet, Technology

Web hosting firm 123-reg has accidentally deleted an unspecified number of its customers’ websites. The company, which hosts 1.7m sites in the UK, said an error made during maintenance “effectively deleted” what was on some of its servers. “We can conclude that the issues faced have resulted in some data loss for some customers,” the firm admitted. It started a “recovery process”, but advised customers with their own data backup to rebuild their own websites. The web host, which has 800,000 customers in the UK, would not say how many websites had been deleted. What went wrong? Websites are hosted on computers called servers that can dish up pages to thousands or millions of people at the same time. Some … Read More

Panama papers all 2.6TB of them

IP6netInternet, Security

The front-end computer systems of Mossack Fonseca are outdated and riddled with security flaws, analysis has revealed. The law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers hack has shown an “astonishing” disregard for security, according to one expert. Amongst other lapses, Mossack Fonseca has failed to update its Outlook Web Access login since 2009 and not updated its client login portal since 2013. Mossack Fonseca’s client portal is also vulnerable to the DROWN attack, a security exploit that targets servers supporting the obsolete and insecure SSL v2 protocol. The portal, which runs on the Drupal open source CMS, was last updated in August 2013, according to the site’s changelog. On its main website Mossack Fonseca claims its Client Information … Read More

Hacker’s typo trips the alarm on billion-dollar cyber bank heist

IP6netSecurity, Technology

Cyber bank robbers have drained $101 million from Bangladesh’s central bank – an enormous heist as it is, but one that could have netted the crooks $1 billion if they didn’t get caught when they misspelled the name of one of the places they were trying to transfer money to. After they slipped past the bank’s security systems, the crooks allegedly masqueraded as Bangladeshi officials to submit a series of requests for the New York Federal Reserve to transfer large sums of money from its account in the country. Bangladesh Bank told the Financial Times that it was defrauded for a total of $101 million in bogus transfers. The last payment request was for $20 million, with the hackers instructing … Read More

HSBC Under Attack

IP6netTechnology

HSBC is working with law enforcement to catch those behind a cyber attack that forced its personal banking websites in the UK to shutdown, its second major service outage this month, the bank said on Friday. Europe’s largest lender said it had “successfully defended” its systems against a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack but it was experiencing fresh threats, impeding full restoration of its services. “HSBC’s internet and mobile services have partially recovered, and we continue to work to restore a full service,” John Hackett, UK Chief Operating Officer, said in a statement. “We are closely monitoring the situation with the authorities,” he added. The outage began on Friday morning and online services were still down by 1630 GMT … Read More

What is FTTC and FTTP?

IP6netInternet

Fiber to the premises (FTTP) is a form of fiber-optic communication delivery, in which an optical fiber is run in an optical distribution network from the central office all the way to the premises occupied by the subscriber. Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) involves running fibre optic cables from the telephone exchange or distribution point to the street cabinets which then connect to a standard phone line to provide broadband. This is combined with a copper cable from the cabinet to the home or business which uses VDSL or similar technology that can deliver much faster speeds over shorter distances.