No reason to believe cyber attack caused Singtel service outage: Yaacob

SINGAPORE — The fibre broadband outage that hit Singtel customers last December was due to a technical issue that affected a SingNet server, Minister for Communications and Information Yaacob Ibrahim told Parliament on Monday (Jan 9), adding that there was no reason to believe it was a cyber attack.

Responding to a parliamentary question by Member of Parliament (MP) Ong Teng Koon (Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC), Dr Yaacob said investigations by the Infocommunications Media Development Authority (IMDA) are still ongoing, but preliminary findings suggest a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol server was affected by a technical issue.

The server assigns Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to modems to enable users to connect to the Internet.

Dr Yaacob said more details on the investigation will be provided soon that will determine whether the disruption could have been avoided, and if all necessary actions had been taken by Singtel to restore services quickly.

It will also review measures to ensure that such incidents do not happen again, he added.

MP Zaqy Mohamad (Chua Chu Kang GRC) also asked if there are plans to improve the resilience of Singapore’s networks, noting the disruptions that have hit telcos here in recent months.

In October, StarHub suffered two disruptions, caused by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, originating from customers’ malware-infected Internet connected devices.

In response, Dr Yaacob said that studies have shown Singapore’s networks are “generally as resilient as our international counterparts’”.

SingNet and StarHub have also exceeded IMDA’s Quality of Service standard of more than 99.9 per cent fixed-line broadband network availability.

Nevertheless, his ministry and IMDA will continue to review measures to strengthen the resilience of the networks, he added.