Tag Archive for: Dish

Dish Network Confirms Hack Following Chaotic Multi-Day Outage

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Photo of Dish Network sign

Dish Network, the television provider and satellite/telecoms company, has been hacked, according to a statement published Tuesday on its website. Dish— which owns Boost Mobile, Sling TV, and, weirdly, the last remaining scraps of Blockbuster, among other subsidiaries—has been experiencing significant disruption since February 23.

Still, days later, the company hasn’t recovered. Its primary website, dish.com, remains gutted except for a notice of “a system issue that our teams are working hard to resolve.” Some of the corporation’s other related sites, like dishwireless.com, are completely down. Internally, employees of Dish and its subsidiaries haven’t been able to access their remote desktops or internal communication system to actually work, accord to a report from The Verge. Customers have reported being unable to pay their television or phone bills because of the outage.

Though the company claims its services “should not be interrupted during this time,” in the pre-recorded message that’s replaced its customer service phone line, there’s been a noted uptick in reported service outages in recent days, per Down Detector. In short: it’s been chaos for Dish Network and its customers these past few days.

Now, the company has admitted the ongoing disruption is the result of a “cybersecurity incident.” In its statement, Dish wrote that the breach “has affected some of our internal communications, customer call centers, and internet sites.” Further, the company noted that on Monday, it “became aware that certain data was extracted from our IT systems as part of this incident.”

The company said its investigation into the breach is ongoing, and that it doesn’t currently known if any customer data was accessed by the hackers. “The security of our customers’ data is important to us, and if we learn that information was compromised, we’ll take appropriate steps and let any impacted customers know,” Dish wrote.

Both cybersecurity experts and law enforcement are aware of and involved in addressing the Dish breach, the company said—however, Dish didn’t offer any details of when the various, persisting problems might be resolved.

“As a result…

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Dish Network Hit With Multi-Day Outage, Suspected Ransomware Attack

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Dish Network has been hit by a suspected ransomware attack that’s taken down the company’s websites(Opens in a new window), apps, and customer service systems. The outage is now on its fourth day. 

The company’s main website currently features this message: “We are experiencing a system issue that our teams are working hard to resolve. For help with common issues, please select the Current Customer Support option below to see our FAQs and Troubleshooting guides.”

In a statement, a Dish spokesperson said: “We experienced a systems issue with our corporate network on February 23 that is affecting our internal servers and telephone systems, and the issue is being investigated. Our DISH TV, Sling TV, Wireless services, and data networks continue to operate and are up and running. However, some of our corporate communications systems, customer care functions, and websites were affected. Our teams are working hard to restore affected systems as quickly as possible and are making steady progress.”

As The Verge notes(Opens in a new window), the outage hit when Dish CEO Erik Carlson was on an earnings call. He reportedly said the company was dealing with an “internal outage that’s continuing to affect our internal servers and IT telephony.” 

Dish employees told(Opens in a new window) Bleeping Computer they are seeing “blank icons” on their desktop, typical of a ransomware infection that has encrypted files.

According to a Dish employee who spoke to BleepingComputer, their manager told them the incident “was caused by a known threat agent,” though the satellite-TV provider is currently in the dark on how they gained access. It is working with an “external vendor” to fix the outage.

BleepingComputer also reports that Dish customers are having issues when they try to sign in to TV channel apps like MTV and Starz with their Dish logins. Dish customers have taken to social media to report that they cannot activate equipment or SIM cards from the company. Customers have also said they are being prevented from paying their bills. 

In response to one customer who complained about the outage, the company’s Twitter support account tweeted(Opens in a new window) that an…

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How much does it cost to hack a Starlink dish?

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It appears there is a pretty easy way to hack into SpaceX’s Starlink system. Lennert Wouters of KU Leuven university in Belgium discovered the vulnerability and recently demonstrated it at the Black Hat Security Conference.

Starlink provides Internet services using satellites in orbit and a dish that customers install outside their home in order to receive Internet signals. Using just $25 worth of materials, Wouters was able to build a device that can hack into any Starlink dish. It works by temporarily shorting the system with a fault injection attack, which disables the dish’s security measures, granting the hacker access.

Wouters reportedly informed Starlink of the vulnerability last year and was even rewarded through their bug bounty program. However, Wouters was able to get around the patches that the company issued at the time, finding that the core vulnerability still exists and will require a much more involved fix. Starlink has confirmed that it is still working on a new update to better repair the vulnerability.

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Dish buys Boost prepaid biz from T-Mobile, finally enters wireless market

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The words

Enlarge (credit: Dish Network)

Dish Network has completed a $ 1.4 billion acquisition of Boost Mobile, a former Sprint subsidiary that resells prepaid mobile service.

After years of buying up spectrum but never delivering service, Dish is finally a mobile provider—albeit as a reseller that doesn’t yet operate its own network. Dish was able to buy Boost as part of the merger agreement in which the Department of Justice allowed T-Mobile to buy Sprint. The DOJ required T-Mobile and Sprint to sell Dish the prepaid business as well as spectrum licenses and wholesale access to the combined T-Mobile/Sprint network. The prepaid sale and wholesale access are intended to let Dish operate a wireless business as a network reseller while it builds its own 5G network that could eventually make it the fourth major wireless provider.

“With this purchase, Dish officially enters the retail wireless market, serving more than nine million customers,” Dish said in a press release today. Starting tomorrow, Dish said its Boost subsidiary will offer a “$ hrink-It! plan, which starts at $ 45 for 15GB, reduces customers’ monthly rates by $ 5 after three on-time payments, and by an additional $ 5 after six total on-time payments.” Boost will also “offer a $ 35 10GB plan that includes unlimited talk and text,” Dish said.

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