Spark Stabilizes Network Following Nationwide Internet Crash

Au.ibtimes.com published news on 8th September, 2014 announcing that a broadband provider in New Zealand Spark known as Telecom before confirmed that it had solved the problem of meltdown on its system which had affected its Internet and mobile platforms on Saturday, 6th September, 2014.

Conor Roberts, Head of Communications of Spark, said that employees of telco solved the problem by working throughout the night and by Sunday, 7th September, 2014, the network became back to normal operations.

Cyber criminals attacked systems of Spark with malware by placing attractive click bait on the Internet which caused problems. They triggered links to the naked photographs of female celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence, star of Hunger Games, and singers like Avril Lavigne and Rihanna.

A hacker named Bryan Hamada was alleged to have stolen the images from a cloud storage system but he denied the allegation.

When computer users clicked the links on Friday, 5th September, 2014, and were directed to alleged sites of nude photos which were posted initially at 4Chan, criminals actually installed malware which caused bulk traffic in offshore site and in turn overloaded network of Spark.

Nbr.co.nz reported on 7th September, 2014 quoting Roberts as saying on 7th September, 2014 "Our teams have taken many steps to reduce the issue during last two days and at the very same time the stress on our network from these hits is receding. We have also isolated those connections of customers which had been exploited by cybercriminals to send huge amount of traffic via our network to destinations overseas." Roberts said this while assuring its 600,000 customers that they are continuously trying to solve the problem.

Roberts had said at that time that it is important to know that the network of Spark itself wasn't compromised. Customers who unintentionally installed this malware turned into vectors for the attack on other part of Internet.

While some have speculated that "vulnerable customer modems" caused the crash but security firm Trend Micro have seen tweets with the name of Jennifer Lawrence in them linking to sites asking users to download a "video converter" , which is actually a malware, to see hacked images and video of the actress.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/16/2014