Cyber attack on networks of major telcos in July

A cyber attack incident was noticed on the networks of Tata Communications, Airtel and Vodafone in July, hitting internet services in Maharashtra and Mumbai and other parts.
"A case has been reported of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on July 18, 2016, in the network of Syscon Infoway Pvt Ltd, a class B internet service provider (ISP) operating in Maharashtra, Goa and Mumbai. As per the licensee, services were restored by July 24, 2016," Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.
He was replying to a question whether a cyber attack in last few days had been responsible for slow speed of internet across Maharashtra.

In the DDoS attack, cyber criminals artificially generate massive internet traffic with help of softwares and direct it towards a website or IP address to block its access and choke internet bandwidth.
"The DDoS attack was launched from the multiple internet protocol (IP) addresses from different countries through the upstream service provider namely Tata Communications, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone. Syscon after rearranging the upstream bandwidths and help from the upstream service providers was to contain the DDoS attack," Sinha said.
He said that the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has analysed the reports and logs to identify the nature of the attack.

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Reacting to the information shared by Sinha, Vodafone said that it has adequate monitoring and control systems to identify such data surges and address them.
"In this case too, Vodafone had observed data surges originating primarily from the international traffic which were duly monitored and the customer was timely alerted," Vodafone said in a statement.