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Learning from major cyber security incidents
Learning from major cyber security incidents

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3 Case study 2: the TalkTalk hack

At around midday on 21 October 2015, the website of TalkTalk – a large telecommunications company and internet service provider – suddenly became unavailable. A holding page, as shown in Figure 3, stated that TalkTalk was having some technical issues and that engineers were working to fix them.

Described image
Figure 3  A holding page stating that TalkTalk’s website is unavailable
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This figure shows a screenshot of a webpage. Not all the details are described.

The page is titled ‘TalkTalk’ and contains text split into two main sections. The first section is headed ‘The TalkTalk website is unavailable right now’. Below that is the text ‘Sorry we are currently facing technical issues, our engineers are working hard to fix it. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.’

The second section is headed ‘Access to your emails…’. Below that is the text ‘we know that due to our current downtime some customers are unable to access their email via our webmail site. Customers with email on their mobile phones or tablets are able to access their emails. Our engineers are working to restore online Webmail access, but if you do need support in setting up email on devices, links are below. We apologise for the issues and we are working as quickly as possible to get everything back up and running.’

Below this is a subsection headed ‘Setting up email for mobile phones or tablets’. It gives a link to a guide for setting up email on other devices. This is followed by a link to a help site.

Figure 3  A holding page stating that TalkTalk’s website is unavailable

So what had really happened?