Investigations are ongoing after Irish commercial broadcaster Virgin Media Television suffered a cyber attack.
As a result, VMTV says it won’t be able to broadcast some of its scheduled programmes on Virgin Media Three and Four, plus cable channel Virgin Media More. Some programmes won’t be available on its on-demand service, the VMTV Player.
Irish Minister of State Ossian Smyth confirmed the National Cyber Security Centre had been notified.
VMTV said in a statement on Monday that it had “temporarily disconnected” some technologies “to ensure maximum security while it complete a review process.”
The broadcaster says it expects normal service will be resumed “as soon as it has completed the review and verification process.”
The incident reportedly only affects Virgin Media’s Irish television service and none of its other operations. It’s understood the attack only affected the server used to broadcast recorded programmes on its offshoot channels. Virgin Media TV’s live programmes are not affected.
Cyber attacks have affected various broadcasters over the years. In 2015, French television network TV5 MONDE was taken off air in a major incident that cost millions of Euro to rectify.
Marc Thornham