US telecommunications company Frontier Communications reports major outages following cyber attack
The telecommunications giant said in an SEC filing that operational shutdowns could cause a “material” impact and that personal information was accessed.
In an April 15 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), U.S. telecommunications company Frontier Communications reported what appeared to be a serious cyberattack.
According to the filing, the incident was detected on April 14, when the company detected that an unauthorized third party “had gained unauthorized access to portions of its information technology environment.”
Frontier took action to contain the incident and was forced to shut down some of its systems.
“Upon detection, the company initiated its previously established cyber incident response protocols and took steps to contain the incident,” Frontier said in its SEC filing.
“As part of this process, containment measures, which included the shutdown of some of the company’s systems, resulted in an operational disruption that could be considered material.”
A material risk is any incident that could affect investors’ decisions.
However, Frontier also noted in the same document that it did not expect the incident to affect its finances.
“The company continues to investigate the incident, has retained cybersecurity experts, and has notified law enforcement authorities,” Frontier said.
“The company does not believe that the incident is reasonably likely to materially affect the company’s financial condition or results of operations.”
Frontier believes, according to the filing, that the likely threat actor was a “cybercrime group.” However, no group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. Frontier has also said it believes the hackers gained access to “personally identifiable information” (PII) as well as “other information.”
It is currently unknown what that information is and how much PII they got away with. Frontier is in the process of restoring its systems.
“As of the date of this filing, the company believes it has contained the incident and restored its core information technology environment and is in the process of restoring normal business operations,” Frontier said.
The company does not appear to have filed any complaints with the Texas Attorney General’s Office regarding any data breach. Frontier had a statement on its website last week warning of ongoing technical issues, but as of this writing, the company’s website is returning a 403 error.
It is unknown if this outage is related to the cyberattack.
Frontier Communications serves 25 U.S. states and has approximately 3.5 million customers and a fiber optic network serving 5.2 million locations.
