BT has offered a £15,000 reward to anybody with information on late Septembers break in at the operators Stepney Green telephone exchange in East London (original news). Thieves stole 9 network cards worth thousands of pounds and subsequently caused service failures for several broadband ISPs.

The break-in was similar to an incident that took place at BT's Mayfair exchange (here) earlier in the same month. The Register has a quote from one of the investigating police officers:


There is a natural fear that if those responsible are not caught then the wrong message could be sent, which might result in BT being deemed a soft target for future attacks.