Fibra.city down since yesterday, April 19. Several users of the young operator complain a gravedisservizio widespread throughout Italy departed from approximately 3 pm on April 19 and continued until April 20. At the time of writing, the situation seems to be progressively returning with some users who manage to navigate optimally, others who manage to connect in fits and starts, still others who are unable to do so. Two serious factors: the lack of transparency by Fibra.City, thedisplay of some company equipment on the public network.
About Fibra.City
The company promotes itself on the telephone market in Italy with three strengths, citing the official website. VERA Fibra Guarantee, therefore FTTH for all users (relies on the excellent Open Fiber network), employees resident in Italy, Internal HelpDesk. Fibra.City offers several very interesting packages in terms of costs, but right from the start the assistance service proved to be incomplete in answering users' doubts. The assistance has been enhanced over the past few months, but it seems that the company still has communication problems, as demonstrated by the last down.
Fibra.City down, what happened and what emerged
Starting from 3pm on April 19th, the Fibra.City network suddenly "turned off", without giving any notice, to several users who reported their experiences online. Several customers (impossible to quantify them at the moment) found themselves without the possibility of connecting and no notice appeared on the official channels. The entire story documented in great detail on our forum and other similar online services, but still today – despite the extent of the event – there is no notice on the Fibra.City social channels n on the official website. It's hard to understand what's going on, but by contacting the HelpDesk service you get some clues
"Dear Customer,
we inform you that we are proceeding with the resolution of the problem you have reported to us, together with our international partners. As you may have known, the problem caused by a series of attacks at national level on the entire network. During today's day, connectivity will be restored (with reactivations divided on a regional scale). If your connection does not become active again by the end of today's day (i.e. after 18 on Monday 20/04/2020), please report it by opening a new ticket. We apologize for any misunderstandings which, as mentioned, have resulted from causes external to our will.
Sincerely, the Fibra.City Staff "
Fibra.City fall under the blows of "national attacks", or is it a new case of hacker attack probably fictitious INPS-style, under which to take refuge in order not to admit a situation with far deeper issues? Easy to fall into more or less valid assumptions, given that to date there are no certainties, but some things that emerged during this down make us think badly.
very simple to access the log-in screen of some network devices used by the operator (external to Open Fiber). In short, the access portal could be vulnerable to brute force attacks and the credentials used could be recovered through targeted aggression obtaining control of extremely sensitive tools. To make matters worse the bad management of some services offered to the customer: by accessing the ticket system for assistance it was enough to change the id in the URL to read the requests of other users.
Requests that sometimes included sensitive information (names, surnames, partial addresses), with the ingenuity of a certain carelessness in managing user privacy. At the moment this problem seems to have been solved, but has remained dormant for several months.
Fibra.City down, a response from the company is awaited
In short, the only marginal down problem compared to what has been found in the past few hours, also because in terms of performance the company has nothing to envy to the most famous competitors. Now, however, it must respond to its current customers (and future ones) regarding the various problems that have emerged in these hours, and not only with regard to the down. The disservices also happen to big names, and not only in Italy, but everything else to be clarified. We await a response from the managers of Fibra.City, and we will update the page if we receive exhaustive information on the problems that have emerged.
Update 20 April 2020 – 2.30 pm
Fibra.City has published an update on the official Facebook channel, which we report entirely below. The line of "attacks that blocked" the network is confirmed, and customers are warned of "a few blackouts of a few minutes in the next few days, due to the adoption of measures to remedy these problems".
"Dear users, we apologize for the inconvenience you have been having since yesterday, but we have suffered a series of attacks that have blocked the network. Unfortunately these attacks are aimed at blocking the functionality of the network itself, so it becomes difficult to keep the network operational.
We therefore warn you that you may experience small blackouts of a few minutes in the next few days, due to the adoption of measures to remedy these problems. Our legal department is already at work to understand if it is possible to identify and prosecute the culprits.
We remind you that in these cases you must open a support ticket and refer to those (not to the FaceBook pages or to the call center). Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience. "
