We’ll refrain from mentioning one or two possibilities for security reasons but an obvious mitigation would be for TalkTalk to temporarily filter application traffic from Indian IP addresses, a short-term solution at best. On that basis “you could go ahead and block email,” TeamViewer’s Axel Schmidt told Naked Security, pointedly.īoth companies alluded to improving security without giving detail. TeamViewer was not at fault for what happened. TeamViewer, meanwhile, told us that it had raised the issue of the block with TalkTalk as soon as it heard of it and took the view that filtering one application missed the point that criminals could abuse numerous others too. Like all ISPs we constantly monitor our network and testing regimes in order to protect our customers from any potential and known risks. And what changed on Thursday to allow it to be unblocked? Pulling the plug on an application without warning is, as far as we know, almost unheard of for a UK ISP, so one might assume that this happened because the company believed it was an emergency situation.īut why block an application without informing customers until a day later? Forum comments suggest that even TalkTalk’s own telephone support staff were unaware of the TeamViewer block at first. Still puzzled, we decided to probe deeper. On Thursday, TalkTalk turned off the block and TeamViewer started working again. The BBC reported on this two days before the block, including the disturbing claim that the criminals had been able to quote stolen customer account data to make scam calls sound more convincing. We now know (as some suspected at the time) that the block was connected to abuse of TeamViewer by criminals based in India who had been using it as part of a tech support scam targeting TalkTalk customers. TeamViewer and TalkTalk are in extensive talks to find a comprehensive joint solution to better address this scamming issue. Terrible.īy Thursday, journalists dragged the truth out of the company that it had “blocked a number of applications including TeamViewer,” which led to a joint statement confirming this on TeamViewer’s website: If they can’t fix this within the day will have to cancel as I need this connection for my livelihood (sic). No access in North Yorkshire with TalkTalk – nightmare for work.
It’s a popular application with remote support professionals and power users alike and so support forums soon filled with complaints from perplexed users who noticed that access was possible with 4G and some TalkTalk business connections but not home broadband.
Last Wednesday, for no apparent reason, the TeamViewer remote desktop application stopped working on the network of one of the UK’s largest ISPs, TalkTalk.
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