(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/Grassetto)
Around 900,000 of Deutsche Telekom’s broadband customers lost internet access yesterday afternoon, and the company has not ruled out the possibility that an external attack may have caused the outage.
Deutsche Telekom reports that the number of affected customers has fallen significantly as investigations continue into the root cause. The operator says its core network remained operational, prompting experts to suspect that a subset of customers’ routers were compromised.
“Based on the error pattern, we cannot exclude the possibility that routers were targeted by external parties, preventing them from registering on the network,” the company said. It added that the higher incidence in metropolitan areas reflects population distribution and is therefore a statistical effect rather than a targeted geographic attack.
Deutsche Telekom says it worked through the night with router manufacturers to identify the issue and deliver a solution for affected users. With a large number of customers now back online, those efforts appear to be having an effect.
The company continues to recommend that customers experiencing problems disconnect their router from the network and then reconnect it, even though that step did not resolve every case immediately.
Customers still affected who also have a mobile contract with Deutsche Telekom have been provided with a Day-Flat pass to access the company’s mobile broadband network temporarily. Customers without a mobile package were advised to visit a Deutsche Telekom store for assistance.
Update: A software update has been provided to all affected customers to address the router problem. The rollout has already begun and shows positive results. Customers should unplug their router for 30 seconds and then reconnect it; the new software will be installed automatically from the servers. Alternatively, the update can be downloaded and installed manually from the operator’s service page.
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