Dish Network, the satellite television provider and owner of Sling TV, has been facing an “internal systems issue” that has left many of its services and websites inaccessible for the last few days. The outage began on Thursday morning, with customers reporting a range of issues, from being unable to access IPTV services to login into their online accounts to pay their monthly TV and cellular bills. The outage has affected nearly every part of the company’s footprint, including Boost Mobile, the prepaid wireless carrier Dish purchased in 2020, and its call centers, which have been unreachable since the outage began.
Dish Network has been providing updates on the outage through its website and Boost Mobile’s landing page. The company’s teams are working hard to resolve the issue, but it has not yet provided any information on the cause of the outage. There have been conflicting reports about the reason for the outage, with The Desk initially reporting that it was not due to a cybersecurity incident, while Bleeping Computer suggested on Saturday morning that the outage was due to a likely ransomware attack.
Dish Network has not confirmed whether the outage was due to a ransomware attack, but a source told Bleeping Computer that employee computers are showing signs of malware infection. A separate source said that their manager had informed them that the outage “was caused by an outside bad actor, a known threat agent,” but Dish has yet to determine how they had gained access to its internal systems.
The outage has impacted the company’s internal communications systems, customer care functions, and websites, with many remote workers unable to do any work due to issues with Dish’s internal VPN service. Dish Network’s DISH TV, Sling TV, wireless services, and data networks continue to operate and are up and running. However, the company’s teams are still working hard to restore affected systems as quickly as possible.
