BBC has confirmed in an early morning report of today that TalkTalk and Post Office Broadband routers were hit by Mirai malware on the recent shopping weekend. The news source added that it was a malware attack which compromised over 100,000 of router users.
Talk Talk also confirmed this news and said that over 21% of its internet users were hit by the cyber attack which took place on Sunday.
As per the investigation carried out by a cyber security force, Mirai worm hit the routers which were running on Linux Operating System.
In October this year, Mirai malware was responsible for causing a network disruption in the US making websites like Spotify, Twitter, and Reddit inaccessible to the whole world.
This time it has affected router brand named Zyxel which is used by the UK run Post Office.
The broadband service has identified the source of the problem and is said to roll out a resolution soon.
It has to be notified here that Zyxel routers are also being used by Kcom- an Hull based ISP which was hit by Miral malware in the same week.
Talk Talk and Post Office are taking measures to block such future attacks from impacting their respective customers’ routers
In the meantime, Security Researchers from Kaspersky have suggested that D-Link DSL 3780 routers supplied to Talk Talk broadband users are also vulnerable to Mirai Malware.
Note- Mirai which means ‘Future’ in Japan is tagged as a notorious malware that turns Computer systems and routing devices as remote controlled bots. This virus hits all Linux running devices such as CCTV equipment and prepares them as launching platforms meant for DDoS attacks. As the source code of Mirai malware is freely available on open source platforms, it is being adapted in other malware projects as well.
