Bandwidth — along with several other voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) providers, like the Canadian company Voip.ms — said a DDoS attack has caused intermittent disruptions to its service over the past three days.
A DDoS attack, or distributed denial-of-service, is a flood of fake requests and traffic to a company's website or service. The requests can overwhelm a company, leading to normal users being unable to access its services, according to CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the information and technology profession.
Bandwidth is one of the country's largest providers of VoIP technology, which helps companies connect phones and messaging to customers over the Internet. The company provides key services that make phone calls possible on platforms like RingCentral, Google and Zoom. It also helps many 911 emergency services handle call traffic.
The attack, which began on Sept. 25, is causing some phone calls and messages to fail.
A status page on Bandwidth's website showed partial outages for its inbound and outbound call services — though most of its services are operational again, including its 911 services.
"While we have mitigated much intended harm, we know some of you have been significantly impacted by this event. For that I am truly sorry," Bandwidth CEO David Morken said in a statement. "You trust us with your mission-critical communications. There is nothing this team takes more seriously.
"We are working around the clock to support your teams and minimize the impact of this attack."
Bandwidth declined to comment on the incident beyond Morken's statement, and it is unclear how many customers have experienced outages.
Bandwidth is not the only VoIP company to be impacted by cyber attacks this month. Canada-based Voip.ms and England-based VoIP Unlimited also saw their call services disrupted by a DDoS attack, the tech publication ArsTechnica reported.
The perpetrators of the attack against Voip.ms demanded that the company pay 100 bitcoins, or around $4.2 million, to stop the DDoS attack, ArsTechnica reported.
Bandwidth is one of the fastest-growing companies in the Triangle.
The company — which made $343.1 million in 2020, up 47.5% from 2019 — has pledged to hire more than 1,000 employees in Raleigh in the coming years.
It is currently building a massive new headquarters at the corner of Edwards Mill and Reedy Creek roads.
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