More information is being revealed regarding the late December attack on the Ukrainian power grid with reports indicating the attack on the utility was supported by a simultaneous telephonic denial of service (DoS)incident.
The Ukrainian DoS attack took out the company's call center so its customers could not call and let workers know that service was being disrupted, according to a published report. A telephonic DoS attack works in the same manner as one hitting a computer system, but in this case a call center is overwhelmed with calls to shut it down.
In addition, with the telephone system down the utility company staffers could not communicate effectively to fix the problem.
Telephonic DoS attacks can be used to obfuscate any type of attack to attract an IT department's attention while the real assault takes place against another segment of the network.
