Brought to the attention of Comms Business by MD Mike Gardener of X2 Communications Mike said “Last week we had some clients that had their connectivity intermittently dropping in and out and since then the problems have got worse. This week I started getting calls from clients saying their internet was down completely but this was across a lot of different networks such as MDNX, 186K and even clients with ADSL lines with BT. No one was acknowledging the problem so we ended up logging every fault with the relevant carrier.”
“We got an email through Vodafone from Zyxel saying that there was a SIM flood attack going on in the UK which were targeting port 80 on IP addresses and Zyxel routers were susceptible to that. We have found other routers with a management port 80 were vulnerable too.”
“Zyxel is our router of choice for customers so we have advised them to change their management port to a different number and the problem has stopped. We advise anyone that rings us up with an issue to get in contact with whoever manages their router and get the management port changed. It’s quite simple to do.”
This incident, which is still affecting many businesses all over the UK, highlights the importance of network security and relying on an ADSL router only can be fatal. Mike said “IF you are connected to the internet then you are connected to the whole wide world. People think because they are in a little village somewhere that they are safe but because they are connected to the internet they are still susceptible. We advise our clients that it is no good just having a ADSL router to keep them secure but they need a firewall too. Unfortunately a lot of people don’t take this seriously until they are attacked.”