DDoS Attack Hits VoIP and Internet Provider VoIP Unlimited Again UPDATE2

Wireless UK broadband ISP and Voice-over-IP (VoIP) provider VoIP Unlimited has suffered connectivity problems again after being hit by a second “large scale” Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assault, which began yesterday and follows a similar attack that occurred last month (here).

The problems appear to have started at around 5pm yesterday, which initially caused intermittent connectivity and loss of voice services on their VoIP Exchange, before later disrupting some broadband and lease line customers. According to The Register, the REvil ransomware gang is once again behind the latest assault. Access to VoIP Unlimited’s customer support portal has also been disrupted by the attack.

The provider’s most recent Service Status update, which was posted at 2:56pm today, said: “The DDoS attacks against our customers are still ongoing. Our teams are working hard to ensure customers are impacted as little as possible. Please expect slower than usual speeds and intermittent connectivity to destinations outside of our network.”

DDoS attacks typically work by overloading a target server or end-user with masses of data requests from multiple internet-connected devices (often malware hijacked computers / botnets etc.), which can cause the intended target to crash or suffer significant performance problems until the bad traffic stops or can be effectively mitigated.

Sadly, DDoS attacks occur against UK ISPs all the time and are practically par-for-the-course in this business, but most can be mitigated and few are ever significant enough to disrupt connectivity for lots of end-users. In this case the attack appears to be quite significant and VoIP Unlimited, as well as their customers, are having a hard time. But some services do appear to be coping better than they did last time.

UPDATE 9th Oct 2021

The issue now appears to have been largely resolved, although there are still some related problems with “degraded performance” on the provider’s broadband and Ethernet services.

UPDATE 12th Oct 2021

The DDoS attack is still ongoing, albeit mostly impacting the provider’s web server, broadband and Ethernet services.