Cyber attack on FuboTV logged subscribers out during World Cup semi-final clash

American streaming platform FuboTV said it suffered a "criminal cyber attack" on December 14 that prevented its users from watching the FIFA World Cup 2022 semi-final match between France and Morocco.

With services in the US, Canada, France, and Spain, FuboTV is one of the leading streaming platforms globally. It was launched in 2015 primarily as a football streaming service and crossed the one million subscriber mark in 2021. It now lets subscribers watch a range of sports tournaments such as the English Premier League, NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, CPL, and international football events.

Around 2 PM ET on December 14 when the FIFA World Cup semi-final clash between France and Morocco was scheduled to begin, FuboTV subscribers were unable to log in to the application and were welcomed by an error “CB_ERR_OPENff: downstream not available Something went wrong, please try again later.”

Subscribers weren’t able to contact FuboTV customer support team as they has to first log in to the site, which wasn’t accessible. Soon after, FuboTV tweeted, acknowledged the concern, and asked subscribers to watch the match on FOX.

“Apologies to customers who are having issues with the France vs. Morocco game. We are addressing the issue. Please note you can stream this game directly on FOX as well for free,” the streaming giant said.

In a recent notification posted on its website, FuboTV confirmed that the outage on December 14 was a result of a "criminal cyber attack."  

“On December 14, 2022, the day of the Qatar 2022™ semifinal match between France and Morocco, many FuboTV customers experienced issues accessing their accounts. The incident was not related to any bandwidth constraints on Fubo’s part. We were instead the target of a criminal cyber attack,” the streaming channel explained.

Upon identifying the cyber attack, FuboTV took immediate steps to contain the security incident and worked to restore service to all its users as quickly as possible. It has notified the law enforcement authorities about the incident.  The streaming platform also did not provide any details on the nature and scope of the cyber attack but confirmed that it is working with cyber security firm Mandiant to investigate the matter further.

“Our investigation is at an early stage, but we are committed to transparency regarding this incident. We will provide an update at an appropriate time when we have more information to share.

“The entire FuboTV team is absolutely dedicated to delivering an exceptional experience while protecting customer data. We appreciate the trust our customers have in us and the opportunity to serve them every day. Although no company can ever be immune from the risk of cyber attacks, we assure you that we are working diligently with our outside cybersecurity experts to take all appropriate steps to remediate this incident and to prevent any similar incident from recurring in the future,” FuboTV added.