Internet services of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd have been disrupted for the past few days due to malware.

MTNL Chairman and Managing Director PK Purwar told BusinessLine : “A malware attack led to reconfiguration of all modems. Approximately 10,000 consumers have been hit due to the malfunction in a Taiwanese chipset.”

MTNL staff has been working from Friday through Sunday to reconfigure all the affected devices, he added. The attack comes weeks after a global internet security threat due to the Wannacry ransomware.

MTNL is the preferred telecom and internet services provider in Central and State government offices in the capital, and a security lapse puts all government communication at risk.

Consumers in New Delhi had been experiencing internet outages from last week. According to an MTNL consumer, malware was being injected to computers connected through Wi-Fi. He said: “Over the past three months, the browser would redirect to random links showing advertisements. Even secure and declared malware-free websites such as gmail started throwing junk links while browsing.” Mobile devices connected through wireless internet were not affected, according to another MTNL consumer.

Consumers said computers connected through the infected MTNL Wi-Fi network would redirect to pornography, advertisements, malware and data theft-associated web pages while consumers browsed the internet. The volume of redirects started to peak towards June-end.

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