The origin of the disruption that affected thousands of MEO customers with difficulties accessing Internet, mobile communications, and television still lacks a definitive technical explanation. The operator claims to have been the target of a "mass attack," but public data indicates anomalies in network traffic routing, although a link between these scenarios is not proven.
The instability began on the night of September 13-14 and intensified on Monday afternoon, with reports of failures coming from various parts of the country, including Madeira. The Downdetector website registered a peak of over seven thousand complaints related to MEO, although other operators like NOS, Vodafone, and DIGI also reported issues on a smaller scale.
MEO confirmed the "mass attack" that caused "congestion and degradation of the international network," assuring that mitigation measures were activated to restore services. The company stated that there was no intrusion into its systems or access to customer data. The term "mass attack" is generic and could be compatible with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which aims to overload the network and prevent legitimate user access.
