Home » UK ISP News Archive » Article Tag: Crime (285 Posts)

Articles for Category Tag - Crime

Police Arrest Two Men Over Illegal UK Phone Mast and Smishing

12th June, 2024 (7 Comments)

In somewhat of a first for the United Kingdom, Police in the City of London area last week reported that they had arrested two men in connection with the investigation of an “illegitimate telephone mast” and antenna, which is believed to have been setup for the purpose of acting as an “SMS blaster”.

O2 UK Begins Rolling Out New, Free Caller Identification Feature

10th June, 2024 (11 Comments)

Mobile operator O2 (Virgin Media) has today officially confirmed that they’ve started rolling out Hiya’s new Brand ID technology to customers for free, which is a caller identification solution that can reduce the number of calls customers receive from unknown numbers (e.g. scammers) by providing details of the organisation making the call.

Copper Cable Thieves Strike Openreach’s Network in County Tyrone

29th May, 2024 (4 Comments)

Some 700 homes and businesses in the County Tyrone (Northern Ireland) town of Dungannon have suffered significant broadband and phone connectivity problems, which occurred after criminals damaged Openreach’s local network during the theft of a “large quantity” of their copper telecoms cable.

Connectivity Problems in Telford After Openreach Network Attacked

16th May, 2024 (8 Comments)

An unspecified number of Openreach’s broadband ISP and phone customers, including some Ethernet links, appear to have been disrupted in the Shropshire (England) town of Telford after the operator’s network was “badly damaged” in an attack. The operator informs that this “attack” is not being linked to cable theft.

New SSID Confusion Attack Exploits General WiFi Vulnerability

14th May, 2024 (11 Comments)

Network security researchers have published details of a new vulnerability that arises from a “design flaw” in the IEEE 802.11 WiFi standard (CVE-2023-52424), which is said to impact “all operating systems and WiFi clients” and allows an attacker to trick Wi-Fi clients into connecting to an untrusted network.

Copper Cable Thieves Strike Openreach’s Network in New Forest UPDATE

3rd May, 2024 (7 Comments)

Homes and businesses in the New Forest (Hampshire, England) village of Everton were left cut-off from part of Openreach’s UK broadband and phone services this week, which occurred after criminals caused significant damage to the network while attempting to steal the operator’s copper telecoms cable.

Full Fibre Broadband Network in Wolverhampton Attacked by Vandals

1st May, 2024 (17 Comments)

Broadband ISP Exascale, which is building a gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to several thousand premises – mostly around Telford and Wrekin, has revealed that several core Dark Fibre cables – between Telford and Wolverhampton – were cut this week in what appears to have been a targeted attack by vandals.

Openreach Tackle UK Copper Cable Theft with DNA Tracing Tech UPDATE

25th April, 2024 (16 Comments)

Network operator Openreach (BT) has told ISPreview that they’ve seen a 30% fall in the theft of their copper phone and broadband cables (Metal Theft) over the last year, which is being partly attributed to the deployment of a new “invisible” forensic liquid marker that can be sprayed directly onto cables and equipment.

Full Fibre Providers Move to Tackle Rising UK Thefts of Fibre Equipment

21st March, 2024 (21 Comments)

The SHIFT (Safety & Health In Fibre Telecoms) group, which aims to improve health and safety practices and standards across the UK’s fibre broadband industry, has today told ISPreview that its members (network operators etc.) are uniting to tackle the “numerous thefts of fibre splicing and test equipment amongst its members in recent weeks“.

Government Boosts Resilience of UK 999 Calls After BT Fault

21st March, 2024 (0 Comments)

The UK Government has today proposed a series of recommendations to help “bolster the resilience” of the 999 emergency call handling system, which is operated by BT, following a technical fault (“complex software issue”) last summer (here) that resulted in 11,470 unique emergency calls being “unsuccessfully connected“.

Broadband Operators Call on UK Gov to Help STOP Physical Network Attacks

7th March, 2024 (4 Comments)

A group of full fibre broadband operators, which are being led by alternative network providers Ogi and Vorboss, have today called on the UK Government and Ofcom to urgently help tackle a recent rise in attacks – often committed by criminal gangs and vandals – against vital national telecoms infrastructure and the engineers who build it.

Virgin Media O2 UK Adopt Hiya AI to Tackle SPAM and Fraud Calls

12th February, 2024 (12 Comments)

Broadband ISP and mobile operator Virgin Media and O2 have today announced that they’ve become the second major UK telecoms provider, after BT (EE), to adopt Hiya’s AI-based technologies, which can analyse call behaviour in real-time and determine whether to flag an incoming call as ‘suspected spam’ or block fraud.

Ofcom and UK Phone Providers to Further Tackle Spoofed Calls UPDATE

1st February, 2024 (11 Comments)

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, has today moved to strengthen their existing rules against the use of “fake phone numbers” and “spoofed calls“, which involves a proposal for phone providers (fixed line and mobile) to introduce stricter measures against “Presentation Numbers” that are used to identify who is making a call.

Pine Media Engineer Shows Damaged Fibre Chamber - Permission via Slack (Will Dear)

Pine Media Suffer Targeted Attack on Sheffield Full Fibre Network

23rd January, 2024 (17 Comments)

Network builder and UK ISP Pine Media, which has been steadily deploying their own gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband infrastructure across parts of South Yorkshire, Kent and rural Derbyshire, has informed ISPreview that part of their network in Sheffield was recently hit by what appears to be a targeted attack.

Lyca Mobile UK Appoints New Senior Leaders to Aid Growth

17th January, 2024 (21 Comments)

Mobile operator Lyca Mobile, which is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) on EE’s platform in the UK, has today bolstered its senior leadership team by appointing Lawrence Corbett as Group Chief Operating Officer, and James McQuillan as the new UK and Ireland (IRE) Country Manager.

Ogi-2024-engineers-repairing-network-damage-in-Wales

Targeted Attack Hits Ogi’s Full Fibre Broadband Network in Wales

15th January, 2024 (20 Comments)

Broadband ISP Ogi, which is deploying a multi-Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of South Wales, has informed ISPreview that the police have been called in after their new network suffered “extensive” damage in a “targeted attack” that left some customers disconnected.

A Look at UK Domain and IP Address Seizures in the Criminal Justice Bill

12th January, 2024 (16 Comments)

The new UK Criminal Justice Bill (CJB), which was first tabled in parliament toward the end of last year, includes a number of interesting new powers that can force Regional Internet Registries, Local Internet Registries or Internet Service Providers (ISP) to suspend internet domain names and IP addresses used for criminal purposes.