Posted: 11th Oct, 2008 By: MarkJ
Virgin Media's ADSL (Virgin.net) broadband customers, specifically those that make use of the operators email platform, have suffered service turmoil for approximately four days after the provider was hit by a serious junk mail (spam) attack:
General Statement: "
Since late Tuesday evening, some customers on our Virgin Media DSL service may have been unable to access e-mail or webmail. This was due to a suspected spam attack suffered by our e-mail supplier which also affected a number of other ISPs. No customers on our cable service were affected.
All customers are able to access e-mail again now, though due to a large queue of undelivered e-mail messages, there may be a short delay before some e-mails reach customers' accounts."
It's believed that email accounts for less than half of Virgin.net's 200k plus customers were affected. Virgin was effectively forced to block access to the service for a period, limiting the attacks impact and allowing time to clear up any junk from the system.