Dish Network admits that it suffered a ransomware attack

Last week, Dish Network suffered an alleged cyberattack, which impacted their systems and workflow. However, this American satellite broadcast provider and TV company finally confirmed that it experienced a ransomware attack that caused an outage.

The ransomware campaign caused significant problems that affected the company’s website and apps, such as Dish[.]com, Dish Anywhere app, Boost Mobile, and other websites and networks. Its users have also reported that Dish Network’s call centre phone numbers are out of coverage.

 

Dish Network initially reported that the transaction was due to VPN problems instead of ransomware.

 

Based on reports, Dish Network blamed the outage on a VPN issue within their systems. Unfortunately, further investigations revealed that the company interruption came from a ransomware attack by a known threat group.

The satellite broadcast provider company filed a form to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The network stated that the outage was due to a cybersecurity event. Moreover, they have contacted relevant law enforcement agencies to help them address the incident.

In addition, the company claimed that the filed data relates to its expectations about its ability to contain, evaluate, and remediate cybercriminal activity. The filed information also indicates the impact of the ransomware attack on its employees, business, operations, customers, and financial results.

Dish Network also revealed that the threat actors harvested troves of data from its infected systems. The company did not disclose the origin of the data, whether it belonged to its customers, employees, or both.

The company learned that the actors extracted the stolen details from their IT systems on February 27. Furthermore, subsequent investigations will reveal if the data includes personal information.

The website of Dish Network still suffers from the massive outage, and only a handful of them is partially working. Other websites still display advisories informing visitors that the site is still experiencing system issues.

Lastly, some Dish Network employees expressed their disappointment by saying that the company has kept them in the dark by sharing little information about what is happening with the incident.