Is the voice service outage that TelePacific Communications experienced today the result of cybercriminials attacking TelePacific’s SIP infrastructure?

TelePacific offers a service called “SmartVoice” that appears from their website to be the basic type of SIP service provided by many service providers these days. On March 24th, they started experiencing an outage and their Twitter page tells the tale, from the initial report to the beginning of a recovery to a 50% recovery to more reports on March 25th through to full restoration on the 25th.

Today, however, there is a report in Channel Partners Online provocatively titled: “TELEPACIFIC NETWORK OUTAGE: CYBER-TERRORISM?” The article quotes TelePacific President and CEO Dick Jalkut:

Jalkut said the “cyber attack choked our servers and resulted in a significant loss of service to customers – in most cases an inability to make and receive calls.” But the attack did not impact customers’ Internet or data services.

He goes to say that they have implemented further monitoring and protection, particularly in their session border controllers.

At this point TelePacific indicates they have engaged the FBI to assist in tracking down the external sources of the attack. TelePacific also indicates that they plan to more information during upcoming industry forums and I look forward to hearing more about this. From the bare details provided thus far, it certainly sounds like an attack focused on their SIP infrastructure – and it would be good for the rest of the industry to hear about and learn from.

P.S. Kudos to TelePacific, too, for what appears to be a solid use of Twitter as a way to keep customers and others informed of what was going on during the outage.

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