It's not quite that simple. The sample of 900000 customers includes some knowledgeable people, and the attack/outage has been going on for long enough to investigate a little bit.

If what they write is to be believed, and many people have posted evidence, this is a mirari-style attack on people's home routers via a hole in the TR-069 remote management protocol.

The malware then closed off the management port, locking out the Telekom ISP from performing remote maintenance to fix it. Their advice to "shut off" the devices, seems to be based on the fact that at least some variants of mirari do not persist to the device and only exist in memory.

On the other hand we have been hearing a lot about targeted cyber-attacks lately so it's not unreasonable to see it as a possibility.

Companies have always shifted blame. I think there's just less disadvantage to admitting you were hacked than there used to be.

Companies used to keep that stuff under wraps to avoid looking weak, but it's so common now that it doesn't really hurt your brand to say it.

The truth will come out pretty quickly, anyone doing transit or peering can see any attack happen

> I think there's just less disadvantage to admitting you were hacked than there used to be.

Is there any data that would support this claim?

I just don't believe it. This is the worse version of a technical failure. Admitting a technical failure would therefore be automatically better then a hack.

> This is the worse version of a technical failure. Admitting a technical failure would therefore be automatically better then a hack.

I really doubt that's the way the general public views this (and they're the ones that matter when it comes to what companies are willing to admit)

If they say they had a technical error the perception would be that it's their fault.

If they say that they've been hacked the perception would be that it's because someone else did something bad, so they're the victims.

I think this is terrible, but I fear that it's the truth

Actually most of the "general public" complain about the router. The rest complains about the general incompetence of the former government institution that failed them again (20years of them going public recently. Was a huge scam for the "general public"). But of course, there is still the Querfront fraction who doesn't want this to be just another Russia hack.

If you'd come up to them and gave them a technical reason they don't even understand, it couldn't be worse. This is Germany here. People do have a genetically build in respect for people who talk a version of the language they don't comprehend since they must be a authority.

Nothing hard but the various leaks of diplomatic cables and spy tools have made claims of state sponsored hacking undeniable. Everyone knows that all the big companies are getting hacked all the time thanks to the leaks.

How is a technical failure worse than a hack? One implies incompetence on your part, the other that you were attacked.

> Everyone knows

How could you still overestimate this in such a ridiculous way? The general public will install a Virus Scanner and expect it to protect them. If it doesn't, they will call support and write snail mail. This is Germany man and this is why a Hack is just the worst version of a technical failure. "You failed to prevent the hack. You have not been protected or your protection sucks. Go install Avira next time!"

Through conspiracy theories issued by commentators on popular pages?

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I wasn't saying that there wasn't some targeted attack on their infrastructure.

Even if there was though, isn't it incumbent on DT to provide a level of infrastructure that is resilient to these types of attacks?

Further, they don't even appear to share any evidence of an attack, just that they "can't rule it out".

No conspiracy theory, just feel like we've seen lines like this more often recently.