Eircom knew about broadband security hole since March, says engineer

While some Eircom customers may have been surprised to learn that their wireless broadband wasn’t as secure as they first thought, yesterday’s news came as no surprise to Eircom itself, it has transpired.

Software engineer Peter McShane allegedly first alerted the company of the problem back in March and was frustrated to note that they didn’t make any moves to fix the problem, nor did they make any noise about notifying the quarter of a million customers it affected. Eircom told McShane that only a person with technical expertise would be able to gain access to another persons connection.

McShane told Siliconrepublic.com that in the months following, he kept in contact with Eircom regarding the issue. However, seeing little movement he contacted the Commissions for Communications Regulation at the beginning of last month.

This prompted the company to do something about the issue and so Eircom intended to include information on how to change the default WEP key in with the new modems with information on the website on how to change it for existing customers. McShane felt that this wasn’t enough and insisted, because of the number of people affected by the flaw, further steps would have to be taken to notify customers of the problem.

McShane was in discussions with Eircom on how they should attempt to notify the 250,000 affected customers when another source made the glitch public knowledge.