Cyberattack on Dish Network leads to stolen data, internal communications issues

A cyberattack on Dish Network has impacted the company’s servers, customer call centers, online service desk, and other internal communications.

Dish was made aware on Monday that data had been extracted from the company’s IT systems — and that it is possible that data contained personal customer information.

The company is working to fix its customer service communications infrastructure and has notified law enforcement of the incident. Customers will be notified if, in fact, their data was stolen.

“The forensic investigation and assessment of the impact of this incident is ongoing. Dish, Sling and our wireless and data networks remain operational,” the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday.

The wireless and data networks include Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Dish. The filing also said that the attack on Dish, which occurred on Feb. 23, involved ransomware.

At first, Dish employees were informed that there were simply issues with the company’s VPN systems preventing remote employees from logging in, according to tech website The Verge.

However, an internal memo sent later told employees that Dish had been the victim of “an outside bad actor, a known threat agent,” according to IT news publication Bleeping Computer.

Dish has not named a specific “bad actor,” nor have any known ransomware operations come forward to take credit for the cyberattack.