Deutsche Telekom Routers Targeted in Global Hacking Attack

Hackers attacked Deutsche Telekom customers’ routers, causing as many as 900,000 of the carrier’s more than 20 million landline subscribers to lose service or see disruptions starting Sunday, the company said. While the carrier’s network wasn’t affected, it will take some time for all customer routers to work again, the carrier said Tuesday in a website statement.

“We saw attacks from the Mirai botnet that targeted customer routers globally,” Thomas Tschersich, head of IT security at Deutsche Telekom, said in a video message posted on Twitter. “The attack led to the devices crashing.”

The issues have been largely fixed after the carrier sent software updates to the devices and updated its network with “filter mechanisms” to prevent malware from spreading again, Tschersich said. Deutsche Telekom said no customer data was stolen and it has no evidence who the attackers were.

Deutsche Telekom rose 0.6 percent to 14.74 euros at 12:17 p.m. in Frankfurt, reversing earlier losses of as much as 0.5 percent.

Security professionals have been anticipating more attacks on internet-connected gadgets since a hacker released software code that powers malware called Mirai. The type of malware, which targets vulnerable devices such as cameras and digital video recorders, was also to blame for the cyberattack that took down some of the world’s most popular websites last month.

The hackers also tried to disrupt government networks but failed to breach its security systems, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, said in a statement.