Dish Network Confirms Network Outage Was a Cybersecurity Breach

Dish Network, one of the largest television providers in the United States, confirmed on Tuesday that a previously disclosed 'network outage' was the result of a cybersecurity breach that affected the company's internal communications systems and customer-facing support sites. CNBC reports: 'Certain data was extracted,' the company said in a statement Tuesday. The acknowledgment is an evolution from last week's earnings call, where it was described as an 'internal outage.' Dish Networks' website was down for multiple days beginning last week, but the company has now disclosed that 'internal communications [and] customer call centers' remain affected by the breach. Dish said it had retained outside experts to assist in evaluating the problem.

The intrusion took place on the morning of Feb. 23, the same day the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings. 'This morning, we experienced an internal outage that's continuing to affect our internal servers and IT telephony,' Dish CEO W. Erik Carlson said at that time. 'We're analyzing the root causes and any consequences of the outage, while we work to restore the affected systems as quickly as possible.' According to Bleeping Computer, the Black Basta ransomware gang is behind the attack, first breaching Boost Mobile and then the Dish corporate network.

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