Dish Network has multi-day customer service and website outages

In the last few days, “internal system issue” left many of the services and websites operated by satellite TV provider and Sling TV owner Dish Network inaccessible. The outage began Thursday morning when customers of the dish began reporting numerous issues. On Downdetector and Twitter, there are complaints about people not being able to access IPTV services like Watch ESPN with their dish credentials. Other customers say they can’t log into their online accounts to pay monthly TV and cellular bills. The outage appears to have 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.

“Thank you for your patience,” says a banner atop the dish’s website. “We have a system issue that our teams are working hard to resolve.” The Boost Mobile website provides a more helpful explanation. “Due to internal system issues some users may experience difficulty with their Boost Mobile accounts, paying their bill, or accessing Boost Care,” the landing page says. “Please be assured that if your account is affected, these issues will not affect your wireless service and your service will not be terminated due to non-payment.”

There are conflicting reports about the cause of the breakup. When the company’s problems started on Thursday, The desk they were reported not to be the result of a cyber security incident. Early on Saturday morning, however, Computer Bleeping said the breakout was caused by a ransomware attack. A source told the outlet that employees’ computers are displaying “white icons,” suggesting they are infected with malware. A separate source said their manager told them that “the breach was caused by an external bad actor, a known threat agent,” and that Mias still didn’t know how they gained access to its internal systems.

“A system problem occurred with our corporate network on Thursday which continues to affect internal servers and telephone systems, and we are actively investigating it. Our DISH TV, Sling TV, wireless services and data networks continue to be up and running,” a dish spokesperson told Engadget. “However, some of our corporate communication systems, customer care functions and websites were affected. Our teams are working hard to restore the affected systems as quickly as possible.”

Dish would not confirm whether the outage was due to a ransomware attack, but said it hoped to share more information soon. According to The Championship, as of Friday afternoon, the company was not aware of the employees about what was going on with its internal systems. Many remote workers are reportedly unable to do any work due to problems with Dish’s internal VPN service. Engadget will update this article as more information becomes available.