LIME says the majority of the customers experiencing degradation in their broadband services over the past few days are now back online and connecting at normal speeds.
A release from the telecoms company today stated that the technical teams will, however, continue to monitor the networks to make sure that service is fully restored for all affected customers.
LIME described the issue affecting customers as a “deliberate attack on the internet infrastructure by an external source”.
It stated: “The attack, though confined to a small portion of LIME’s internet customer base, inconvenienced the affected customers and gave the appearance of a wide scale service impacting problem on the company’s network.
Alex McDonald, Managing Director said: “LIME customers can be assured that this was not widespread and that our servers have not been compromised. Our firewalls are robust and are configured to international standards. In fact, to guard against these types of attacks we have increased our defences both locally and internationally.”
He added:“Over the weekend, our engineers implemented some changes in the broadband network to isolate the IP address of the possible offending external source which appears to be acting as the master or controller generating this heightened activity on our network. This modification ensured that the affected customers could regain access to the network. It is our intention, if the source is identified, to consider legal action for this type of internet criminality.”
This type of attack, known in the IP field as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is common across the world often targeting companies and users of their networks. It is defined as an explicit attempt by an attacker to prevent legitimate users from accessing or utilising that particular service, according to the release.
McDonald said, “To those customers inconvenienced by this attempt on the company’s network, we express our deepest appreciation for the patience you displayed while we worked to return your service to normal”. (PR)
