Telefónica Confirms Cyberattack, Urges Users to Update Passwords

Spanish multinational telecommunications company Telefónica, S.A, which recently suffered a cyberattack, has asked its customers to change their Wi-Fi passwords to secure their network.

While it is not determined how many users have been impacted so far, the company assured its customers that no sensitive personal data was affected by the cyber-attack. However, Telefónica customers were urged to change the passwords in both their home and business Wi-Fi.

Telefónica is informing its customers about the incident via emails. The letter clarifies the steps that need to be taken to change the Wi-Fi router passwords, as well as gives assurance that user names, addresses, ID numbers, or call logs have not been exposed.

What is the result of a previous attack?

Telefónica suffered a ransomware attack in May 2017 that led to the shutting down of 85% of its systems. The hackers demanded $550,000 in Bitcoin with nearly $300 per machine. The cyberattack witnessed several staff of Telefónica quit their jobs, with almost 9 out of 10 devices getting infected.

The staff was asked to shut down their devices. It was speculated that the cyberattack originated in China. As per a translated post by CCN, the Spanish national government’s portal for cybersecurity, a spate of ransomware attacks affecting Windows systems were found and reported.

As per the report, the cyberattack worked through a vulnerability and expanded its reach through connected systems as described in bulletin MS17-010 using EternalBlue/DoublePulsar. However, since this attack works on outdated systems, companies were asked to update their devices to protect their systems.

Caused by a variant of the WannaCry ransomware, these attacks were carried out by encrypting all the files and exploiting the previous paragraph to execute remote commands through a server message block (SMB). WannaCry ransomware was discovered in 2017 and impacted 2,30,000 computers in 150 countries, creating a global stir.

Security updates were made available for the following systems:

1. Microsoft Windows Vista SP2
2. Windows Server 2008 SP2 and R2 SP1
3. Windows 7
4. Windows 8.1
5. Windows RT 8.1
6. Windows Server 2012 and
7. R2 Windows 10