topic Re: LOS red light on ONT in Full Fibre

LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:05:26 GMT

Had this tonight and therefore no internet. Texting the bot says there's a fault and I need an engineer visit, but that won't be for 2 days. Anyone got any thoughts how I might get this fixed quicker?

I'm not surprised it's failed tbh, I have zero faith in the installer. He was complaining how difficult it was to strip fibre cable without breaking it - did he not have a proper fibre stripper tool? He drilled my wall from the inside so broke a chunk of brick off as the drill broke through which I now have to repair. He put the screws holding the ONT directly into the wall without wall plugs so they are loose and the box is wobbling. He left the router in "setup" mode, I had to do a lot of googling to learn I had to put my own username/password in.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

bmc — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:13:57 GMT

@geoffday67

Can't help with the loss of service but you can file a report with OpenReach about the quality if the install. The form is on their website somewhere.

Installers always drill from the inside to out. It sounds as though they may have forgotten to turn off the hammer function on the drill before they got close to the external wall.

Brian

Re: LOS red light on ONT

outcast — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 21:42:16 GMT

@bmc wrote:

... you can file a report with OpenReach about the quality if the install. The form is on their website somewhere.

Probably this - https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/damage-health-and-safety

Re: LOS red light on ONT

MisterW — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 05:46:51 GMT

@geoffday67

Other have answered regarding quality of the install but to answer the remaining...

Texting the bot says there's a fault and I need an engineer visit, but that won't be for 2 days. Anyone got any thoughts how I might get this fixed quicker?

It requires an Openreach engineer and so will be subject to their standard SLA for fault investigation

He left the router in "setup" mode, I had to do a lot of googling to learn I had to put my own username/password in.

That's normal, the router should autoconfigure with the correct credentials. Also the installation engineer is an Openreach contractor and has no access to your username details.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

bmc — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 08:22:48 GMT

@geoffday67

Hope you're not based in Scotland.

OR engineers could well be re-assigned to deal with the storm damage.

Brian

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 09:11:44 GMT

Thanks for the info, but I had to enter my password as part of my credentials. Does that mean that Plusnet also has access to my password?

When I rang support recently I was asked for letters from my password which suggests again that Plusnet store my password in non-hashed form.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

jab1 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 09:42:21 GMT

@geoffday67 Your password is stored by PN , otherwise how would they validate a login by you?

It is stored in hashed form - when support ask for characters from you password, only those being requested are displayed on the agents screen.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 09:48:49 GMT

Thanks, but if it's hashed then the original password can't be extracted in order to see certain letters, or to send remotely to my router.
When I enter my password on the website, the web site hashes it and sends the hashed version to PN which compares it to the hashed password in their database. So the plain version is never stored. That's my understanding of normal practice. So if there is a hack then only the hashed passwords can be stolen in the worst case.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

jab1 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:01:04 GMT

You will never know, because for obvious reasons, PN will never reveal their security protocols.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:04:57 GMT

I know what you mean, but the fact that they can see letters from my password and supply my password to my router shows that they are storing my password un-hashed iiuc.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

jab1 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:07:29 GMT

If they are, do you not think that there wouldn't be countless PN accounts hacked?

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:14:24 GMT

I'm definitely not a security expert and I'm sure that a big company like PN would have robust security as you say. Still, there's a question to be answered, how they are able to access my password.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

jab1 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:16:40 GMT

Which you won't get an answer to, as that could compromise their security protocols.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

Ian06 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:22:22 GMT

@geoffday67 wrote:
I'm sure that a big company like PN would have robust security as you say. Still, there's a question to be answered, how they are able to access my password.

I am not a security expert either, but they must store the pw encrypted so that they can be programmatically decrypted to check and distribute to the router.

You would assume a user interface for CS will prompt for some of the letters from your password and validate them against the pw that is stored encrypted... they must use 2-way encryption to be able to do this and not a 1-way hash that could only be used to check the whole password... it would obviously be much less secure if you needed to given your whole password over the phone to someone.

I doubt anyone will give a proper explanation of how it works and how they store password - for security reasons.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 10:33:48 GMT

That's my point, passwords are stored in a decryptable format. Is that allowed? How secure is the decryption process? Sure I wouldn't expect PN to give me any details, and I don't lose sleep over it. But if there's a data breach like the co-op etc then someone will get a decryptable password list at best, maybe the decryption key too or whatever they use at worst.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

outcast — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:10:09 GMT

@geoffday67 wrote:

... if there's a data breach like the co-op etc ...

What do you mean "IF" ?, it has already happened multiple times !

On at least four breach events, I personally have had to change passwords and email accounts, directly due to Plusnet leaks.

This list appears to cover some of the known breaches, but is missing events like the ACS Law incident.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

RealAleMadrid — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:21:45 GMT

@geoffday67 I'm not sure why all this password discussion has taken over the thread, the important matter is have you got an Openreach appointment to fix your fibre LOS fault?

Also you should not have needed to enter your username and password in the router, that is assuming you are using a Plusnet supplied Hub. It should configure automatically when your service is activated using the TR-069 Remote Management protocol which on Openreach FTTP uses a dedicated secure VPN channel. At the Plusnet end the router serial number is used to indentify the account and transmit the Username and password to the hub. You could ask Plusnet to check that your hub is set up correctly on the management platform.

Just to recap on the Password question, I have been active on this forum for many years and the security of having to reveal letters of your password has been questioned on occasions. Plusnet say it is secure but will, understandably not give any details. I would tend to agree with @jab1 in post #11. If the system really is insecure I'm sure there would be a lot of forum posts about it.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:22:42 GMT

Wow I had no idea. The ACS Law report talks about sending unencrypted data - that's exactly why I don't want my password stored in a decryptable way. If this kind of incident happens I want to know that the worst that's exposed is a one-way hash of my password.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

jab1 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:26:35 GMT

@geoffday67 wrote:
The ACS Law report talks about sending unencrypted data

15 years ago - I'm fairly certain that, and other, potential security issues will have been plugged.

Re: LOS red light on ONT

geoffday67 — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:30:20 GMT

Storing decryptable passwords is inherently insecure for the reasons highlighted by the ACS case.

The installer didn't say anything about waiting for credentials, hence I fixed it myself.

And yes I do have an engineer appointment for tomorrow so🤞 all will be well again! It's been great to have fibre bandwidth, don't want to come across as just complaining!