A cyberattack is being considered as the possible reason for this morning’s AT&T nationwide outage،
US federal agencies are investigating the causes of a major outage for AT&T subscribers this morning. With the outage of AT&T's network, mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, that rely on AT&T's network, like Cricket, also experienced outages. Verizon and T Mobile claim that their networks have never had problems and that the problems their subscribers experienced were due to their inability to connect to an AT&T customer.
By the way, analysis of Google search data on Thursday revealed a whopping 567% increase in online searches for “Cancel ATT.” In an online statement, AT&T said this morning: “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service outages this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and so far, three-quarters of our network has been restored We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.
Two sources briefed on the situation said ABC News as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as other agencies, and investigating the outage to see if it was caused by a cyberattack or technical malfunction. ABC News also obtained a confidential memo citing the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). CISA said “the cause of the outage is unknown and there is no indication of malicious activity.” CISA is the DHS agency responsible for monitoring cyber threats.
AT&T's network went down earlier this morning. Image credit-DownDetector
CISA had no additional comment on the outages in response to a request from ABC News.
Local police departments are warning residents of what they are calling a “nationwide outage” and asking them to contact emergency services, if necessary, using other means. For example, in a tweetThe Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, which polices the region that includes Charlotte, North Carolina, wrote: “CMPD is aware of a nationwide outage affecting AT&T cell phone customers this Morning. Customers were briefly unable to contact 9-1-1. There is no interruption to our call center's ability to receive 9-1-1 calls. The service should return shortly.
AT&T has approximately 100 million mobile and broadband customers who were affected by this morning's outage. Verizon told ABC News: “Verizon's network is operating normally. Some customers experienced issues this morning when calling or texting with customers served by another carrier. We continue to monitor the situation.” T-Mobile told ABC News, “We have not experienced any outages. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector likely reflects the difficulties our customers experienced when trying to connect to users on other networks.”
