The Communications Council of Great Britain said that several of its members working in the field of VoIP technologies have been subjected to ransomware DDoS attacks over the past month.
The industry group says the DDoS attacks were part of a “coordinated international ransomware campaign” backed by “professional cybercriminals.”
All affected companies say the attacks damaged their infrastructure and affected telephony and messaging services, resulting in long, multi-day business interruptions. The UK’s Communications Council says the attacks affected the country’s critical infrastructure, including police, NHS and other government services. This ransomware campaign is referred to in the report as “an attack on the UK’s underlying infrastructures.”
Although the organization does not disclose the names of the affected companies, VoIP providers Voipfone, VoIP Unlimited and VoIP.ms have indeed been subjected to DDoS ransomware attempts since August this year. In addition, representatives of upstream provider Bandwidth.com also reported that it was subjected to a ransomware attack, which was repelled at the end of September.
As part of this campaign, cybercriminals launch DDoS attacks and then send letters to victims demanding huge ransoms to stop the attack. Attackers understand that companies like VoIP providers cannot afford long-term interruptions and interruptions without incurring huge financial losses.
Cloudflare, which helps mitigate such attacks, along with other DDoS protection vendors, has also noted an increased focus on VoIP by attackers.
However, despite numerous reports about this campaign, the attention of the media and information security experts does not stop cybercriminals: attacks continue to this day. For example, the company Voipfone withstood another wave of DDoS’a only last week.
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