10/07/2021
As you are most likely aware, at approximately 11:14am EDT, 10/6/2021 , our Telecom network was hit by a direct DDoS attack that affected our calling services and created issues for some partners and their customers, including: our portal being down or reacting slowly, poor voice quality, dropped calls and/or the inability to make or receive calls.
First and foremost, I want to apologize for the issues this has caused you and your customers and your workflow. You depend on SKYTOUCH Solutions to provide consistent and reliable service and we take that responsibility very seriously. Yesterday you did not experience that level of service and for that I am truly sorry. Please do know that every product or service we provide is Best-Of-Breed, and proven to work to give you the highest returns of success, and we still hold true to this. In times of deliberate attacks, especially for DDoS (denial of service) or Ransomware attacks, which some have experienced in the past, we just have to mitigate and remedy the situation, and work with high level engineers, until resolved.
In this case, this was a DDoS attack on one of our major providers. Our provider is CoreDial. They are as dynamic as Comcast is (to provide you with an understanding and example) and approximately 150,000 businesses were affected yesterday throughout the country.
Education is important:
What does DDoS stands for: Distributed Denial of Service, and it's a method where cybercriminals flood a network with so much malicious traffic that it cannot operate or communicate as it normally would. This causes the site's normal traffic, also known as legitimate packets, to come to a halt.
You may ask the question; are DDoS attacks illegal: According to the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an unauthorized DDoS attack can lead to up to 10 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Conspiring to do so can lead to 5 years and $250,000. However, these serious consequences are applicable to attacks launched without permission.
Unfortunately, and please understand. as we have seen over the past few weeks, our industry is under attack. The Telecom industry. Several critical service providers have been targeted by similar attacks recently. If you already have known, September 24th through 27th Bandwidth.com was taken down, and the entire 911 network throughout the country was at a halt and not able to function, as well as customers who rely on them for normal inbound and outbound calling. Last week, IPFone was also taken down (a major player in Miami Florida), and all their 40,000+ customers experienced downtime for several days.
I can assure you CoreDial is using every resource at their disposal to resolve these issues and ensure we are deploying industry leading safeguards and controls to protect you and your customers from attacks in the future. We will work around the clock to support you and minimize the effects of this attack.
Due to the nature of this issue, and as you can imagine, SKYTOUCH Solutions and the CoreDial team is limited in what we are able to say at this time. However, we will continue to provide regular updates with the information we are able to share, available via our Status Emails. Please advise your group that your telephone experience may be spotty until resolved.
Thank you for being a customer/partner, we hold you all at utmost importance, and we value all the years we have been servicing your technology.
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