Police lights

‘Criminal activity’ against Click4Internet claimed

Last night there was a surprise development on the week-long loss of wireless services from Click4Internet (C4I) story.

Shortly after OnTheWight published our article, we were contacted and pointed towards a service update on the WightFibre Website.

“Police have been called”
WightFibre, who provide C4I wireless access to their Isle of Wight customers that are beyond the reach of their cables, have announced, “Suspected criminal activity is continuing to cause issues with some WightFibre customers on the Click4Internet network” and that “The police have been called.”

There’s no implication that Click4Internet are themselves involved in ‘criminal activity’, but rather that it has been perpetrated on them.

WightFibre’s update concludes,

Contrary to some reports Click4Internet is not in Administration and continues as a valued partner of WightFibre. Once these issues have been addressed we expect the wireless broadband service to be better than ever.

C4I: “Repeatedly by criminal activity”
In the last few minutes Click4Internet have left a very long comment with OnTheWight which includes the following:

During this emergency we have suffered numerous unexplained and suspicious technical issues. Our email and web site servers have been attacked repeatedly by criminal activity in past days – making communication extremely difficult.

We would stress that we hold no electronic financial information about any customers and therefore there is no risk to customers in this regard.

Our server security has not been breached but outside cyber attacks have at times cut the servers off from being able to communicate and send and receive emails.

We are taking the appropriate steps to identify the criminals responsible and bring them to justice.

Service should be returning
The WightFibre update of last night went on to say that they are working with C4I and “expect to have a resolution in the next few hours.” The update was posted at 7:41 last night.

WightFibre go on to say “Unfortunately, this will still leave a small number of customers without service until Friday,” so it looks like customer’s problems should be resolved today.

Image: mattring under CC BY 2.0

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The Sciolist
6, March 2015 2:34 pm

Hmm, curious. Middle eastern terrorist networks maybe?

After all, the train line has been suspended today- due to a suspect package. Maybe the terrorists (or Russians) are picking on the Island as an easy target?

Cynic
Reply to  The Sciolist
6, March 2015 2:50 pm

…. or the French (again)? :-))

Caconym
6, March 2015 2:58 pm

I don’t see how an attack on their web and mail server (hosted in Maidenhead) has any relevance to the problems with their broadband infrastructure.

A disgruntled customer, perhaps? Or just falling over because of the large amount of traffic from people trying to find out something, anything, about why their broadband service is still out after 7 days.

Dalek
Reply to  Caconym
7, March 2015 11:31 am

As a disgruntled ex-customer of WightFibre, I can say that it wasn’t me! I wouldn’t know how to do any of that.

greenfiremouse
6, March 2015 4:42 pm

Sometimes the question to ask is: Who is benefiting from sabotaging a website, server etc.? This may be sheer speculation, but the original Wightcable went bust (and was sadly never able to complete the cable network for the Isle of Wight) partially due to interference from BT. At the time I did have a cable connection with Wightcable and encountered a BT “heavy” who tried to barge… Read more »

Cynic
Reply to  greenfiremouse
6, March 2015 4:50 pm

The “benefit” cyber-attackers enjoy is just schadenfreude at watching other people suffer. Sick minds!

greenfiremouse
Reply to  Cynic
6, March 2015 4:52 pm

It could also mean that customers are leaving C4I in favour of BT…

Ian Young
Reply to  greenfiremouse
6, March 2015 4:58 pm

As an ex BT employee of some 40 years I can say in all honesty this is a conspiracy theory that will not withstand much scrutiny.

click4internet
6, March 2015 5:42 pm

For the record we have no reason to suspect BT in any way shape or form.

Whilst BT are obviously not our favorite company and we can see why some people might think they could be responsible, the evidence that we have suggests that it is certainly not BT.

We can say no more at this stage for obvious reasons.

click4internet

Commuterman
6, March 2015 6:20 pm

Wighlink’s internet broadband almost never works any more.
Very frustrating when you have work to do.

ctdh
7, March 2015 11:59 am

I am entirely reliant on C4I for internet connection (and phones) to run a number of high tech businesses from the Island and the C4I service was a deciding factor in allowing us to base ourselves on the Island – We do not have a BT service as it was so poor. The loss of the C4I service over the last few days has been very disruptive… Read more »

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