Home » UK ISP News Archive » Article Tag: Security (604 Posts)

Articles for Category Tag - Security

Backdoor Access Found in CDATA’s Chinese FTTH Broadband Kit

11th July, 2020 (30 Comments)

Chinese firm CDATA, which makes networking kit for FTTH and Hybrid Fibre Coax based broadband ISPs (often sold re-branded as OptiLink, V-SOL CN, BLIY etc.), is facing a serious problem after security researchers found 7 vulnerabilities in OLT kit including backdoor accounts that grant access to a hidden Telnet admin.

BT and Vodafone Seek 5-7 Years to Pull Huawei or Risk Blackouts UPDATE

9th July, 2020 (16 Comments)

Senior broadband and mobile figures from UK telecoms giants BT and Vodafone have today warned cross-party MPs on the Science and Technology Committee that they’d need at least 5-7 years to fully remove Huawei’s kit from their networks, or “blackouts” could be a risk. The cost may also rise into the billions.

AVM Release Big Update for FRITZ!Box Routers and WiFi Repeaters

9th July, 2020 (3 Comments)

Consumers in the UK who own one of AVM’s popular FRITZ!Box broadband routers or a FRITZ!Repeater (WiFi) may like to know that they’ve released a major new firmware update – FRITZ!OS 7.20. The new software adds lots of improvements, such as support for WPA3 encryption, better WiFi, DNS over TLS and faster performance.

Lords Tell UK Gov to Stop Pandemic of Internet Misinformation

29th June, 2020 (9 Comments)

A new cross-party report from the House of Lords Digital Technologies Committee has called on the UK Gov to ensure that their future Online Harms Bill can tackle the rising “pandemic of misinformation” on the internet, which they warn is a “threat” to democracy. More censorship and blocking by broadband ISPs is proposed.

Government Considers Zero Huawei Kit in UK Telecoms by 2023 UPDATE2

23rd May, 2020 (68 Comments)

At the start of 2020 the UK gave broadband ISPs and mobile operators a green light to use only non-core focused telecoms kit from Chinese giant Huawei (here), including a cap to reduce their market share. But new reports allege that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, could be about to do a dramatic U-turn and shock the industry.

Google Chrome Joins Firefox – Soft Defaults to DNS over HTTPS

20th May, 2020 (9 Comments)

The latest version (v83) of Google’s popular Chrome website browser has finally made its new ‘Secure DNS’ feature available to all, which by “default … will automatically upgrade you” to use their DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) service. But in order to placate concerns it only does this if your current broadband ISP supports it.

Ofcom Records Drop in UK Nuisance Calls, But Problems Remain

4th May, 2020 (6 Comments)

A few years ago Ofcom nudged UK broadband ISPs and mobile operators to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Nuisance Calls, which committed them to develop technical measures for “reducing the impact of unlawful nuisance calls on consumers.” The latest data shows an improvement, but not as much as we’d like.

Government Attempts to Expand UK Internet Snooping Bodies

23rd April, 2020 (8 Comments)

The Government appears to have decided that, while the country’s attention is distracted by the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) crisis, it might as well try to increase the number of bodies capable of obtaining communications data from UK phone, mobile and broadband ISPs under the Investigatory Powers Act (IPAct).

Error message concept. Alert, attention notification. Important reminder

Smishing – UK Mobile Firms Unite to Stop COVID-19 Text SCAMS

22nd April, 2020 (3 Comments)

A rise in COVID-19 (Coronavirus) related text message scams (e.g. Smishing), which often attempt to trick UK mobile users into parting with their money or other sensitive personal details, has prompted mobile operators to join with other industries in order to update a trial of the new SMS SenderID Protection Registry.

Cloudflare Ignite Consumer ISP Confusion with BGP Safety Test

20th April, 2020 (21 Comments)

Over the past few days we’ve had a small but growing stream of Tweets and Emails from people who have run Cloudflare’s new ‘Is BGP Safe Yet‘ tool and are worried that their UK broadband ISP is “unsafe” because it uses the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and not RPKI. Aside from poor timing with COVID-19, the result can be misleading.

Law Firm Claims Virgin Media Data Breach Victims Due £5k Each

17th April, 2020 (37 Comments)

Cable TV and broadband ISP Virgin Media UK appears to be facing the prospect of a “group litigation” (class action) lawsuit from Your Laywers, which claims that the operator’s failure to protect the personal details belonging to 900,000 of their customers could result in each being able to claim £5,000 (c.£4.5bn total).

Government Considers COVID-19 Tracking of UK Mobile Phones

30th March, 2020 (17 Comments)

The UK Government appears to be considering an idea that could see them attempt to monitor the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) by working with mobile network operators (e.g. Three UK, Vodafone, BT (EE) and O2) to track the location data of handsets (Smartphones etc.), but it’ll only be able to use “properly anonymised” data.

Security Vulnerabilities Strike 50 Models of Netgear Routers

7th March, 2020 (5 Comments)

Once again a mass of almost 50 different models of broadband wireless router(s), WiFi range extenders and gateways from Netgear, including some of their more recent kit (mostly affecting those within the D6000, R6000, R7000, R8000, PR2000, R9000 and XR500 families), have been hit by a string of new security vulnerabilities.

Data Breach at Virgin Media Exposes 900,000 UK Customers UPDATE

6th March, 2020 (21 Comments)

As if yesterday’s broadband outage wasn’t bad enough. UK ISP Virgin Media is now facing their second embarrassment of the week after last night revealing that the personal details belonging to 900,000 of their customers had been exposed by an “incorrectly configured” marketing database. Oh and somebody unknown accessed it.

Network Rail and C3UK Confirm WiFi Personal Data Breach

2nd March, 2020 (4 Comments)

The organisation responsible for maintaining 20,000 miles of railway (train tracks etc.), Network Rail, has confirmed that one of their free WiFi hotspot provider’s – C3UK – has suffered a personal data breach that leaked the email addresses and travel details of about 10,000 people online.

Ofcom Set to Become UK Regulator for Internet Censorship

12th February, 2020 (12 Comments)

The UK Government has today proposed for Ofcom to take on the role of internet content regulator via a new legal “duty of care“, which would hand them the power to force company websites and social media firms into removing “harmful” content (e.g. bullying, terrorism, child abuse, self-harm and suicide imagery).

Parents Find UK ISP Network Level Internet Filters Beneficial

4th February, 2020 (1 Comment)

Ofcom’s latest annual ‘Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes‘ report has found that 9 out of 10 parents who use the network-level internet content filters provided by big UK broadband ISPs find them beneficial, but many still don’t use them and a fair few children can circumvent these systems.