Cliff Notes – Has Vodafone been hacked?
- Tens of thousands of Vodafone users experienced extensive internet outages, affecting broadband, 4G, and 5G services, with reports exceeding 130,000 issues.
- The Vodafone app and website faced downtime, complicating customer access to services during the outage, and social media users expressed significant frustration.
- Experts suggest the disruption may result from an internal network failure rather than a cyberattack, highlighting the reliance on modern digital infrastructure.
Vodafone internet services down for thousands of users
Tens of thousands of Vodafone users are reporting problems with their internet
The outages began on Monday afternoon, according to the monitoring website DownDetector, which reported more than 130,000 issues with Vodafone connections.
A spokeswoman for the company said: “We are aware of a major issue on our network currently affecting broadband, 4G and 5G services.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience while we work to resolve this as soon as possible.”
The company has more than 18 million UK customers, with nearly 700,000 of those using Vodafone’s home broadband connection.
Vodafone users vented their frustration on social media.
What is the latest from teh Vodafone outage?
“It’s like Vodafone has just been wiped off the earth. Not a single thing works,” said one X user.
The Vodafone app also appeared to be down for users, with the company’s website briefly going down too.
The ‘network status checker’ on the website was also down, and when Sky News tried to test the customer helpline, it did not ring.
“There’s Vodafone down and then there’s Vodafone wiped off the face of the f***ing planet,” posted another X user.
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at ESET, said the outage shows how reliant we are on modern infrastructure like mobile networks.
“Outages will always naturally raise early suspicions of a potential cyber incident, though current evidence points more towards an internal network failure than a confirmed attack,” said Mr Moore.
“The sudden outage, combined with the inability to access customer service lines, mirrors classic symptoms of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where attackers overwhelm the network so the site or systems collapse.
“However, malicious or not, this once again highlights our heavy reliance on digital infrastructure, especially in an age where we increasingly depend on mobile networks for everything,” he said.
“Ultimately, resilience is essential, whether the cause is a direct cyberattack, a supply chain issue or a critical internal error.”