The Tribune

A FAILED attempt to hijack consumer routers is being blamed for network outages that left almost a million people in Germany without internet service last weekend.

Around 900,000 of Deutsche Telekom’s 20 million network customers were affected by the outages, which began on Sunday and lingered into Monday, the German telecommunications giant said in a statement.

The attack was designed to quietly recruit the devices for a wider offensive, the second such large-scale attack on internet-connected devices in little more than a month, the company said.

“The attack attempted to infect routers with a malware but failed, which caused crashes or restrictions for four to five per cent of all routers,” the company said. “This led to a restricted use of Deutsche Telekom services for affected customers.”

The company said it is rolling out a software update to fix the issue. It also recommended that customers temporarily disconnect their routers from their power source to reboot them free of the malware.

A similar attack occurred in late October, when hackers used what’s known as a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), conscripting hordes of internet-connected devices like computers, routers and security cameras into a botnet that rendered dozens of popular websites inaccessible for several hours.

Germany’s foreign intelligence chief is warning of cyberattacks aimed at political destabilisation as the country prepares for an election next year, and says evidence suggests Russian involvement in hacking during the US presidential campaign.

Bruno Kahl, who leads the Federal Intelligence Service, told Sueddeutsche Zeitung that his agency knows of “cyberattacks that have no other point than causing political insecurity.” He said that “Europe is in the focus of this attempted disruption, and Germany in particular”.

US authorities have concluded Russia was responsible for hacking Democratic National Committee emails, which Russia denies. Kahl said he has “indications it comes from those quarters”. He said it’s technically difficult to assign blame to any “state actor” but that “some things speak for it being at least tolerated or wished for on the part of the state”.

Cnet.com and Associated Press