AT&T announced that a several-hour outage to its U.S. cell phone network appears to be the result of a technical error rather than a malicious attack.
AT&T said the hours-long outage of its U.S. cellphone network Thursday appeared to be the result of a technical error rather than a malicious attack.
The outage knocked out cell phone service for thousands of users across the U.S. starting early Thursday, and it was later restored.
AT&T did not provide further details, but claimed the incident was caused by a coding error.
“Based on our initial investigation, we believe today's outage was not caused by a cyber-attack, but rather by the incorrect application and execution of processes used in expanding our network,” the Dallas-based company said. Stated.
Trouble tracking service Downdetector noted that the outage, which began around 3:30 a.m. ET, peaked at about 73,000 reported incidents. AT&T reported more than 58,000 outages around noon ET in areas including Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. This carrier is the largest in the country, with more than 240 million subscribers.
By 9 p.m. ET, there were fewer than 1,000 reports on AT&T's network.
At one point, AT&T's Cricket Wireless experienced more than 9,000 outages, but reports had subsided by late afternoon. Users of other carriers, including Verizon and T-Mobile, also reported problems, but those companies said their networks were operating normally and that the problem was caused by customers trying to connect to AT&T users. He said it was highly likely.
During the power outage, some iPhone users witnessed SOS messages appearing on the status bar of their phones. According to Apple Support, this message indicates that your device can't connect to your mobile provider's network, but you can still make emergency calls through other carriers' networks.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Federal Communications Commission has contacted AT&T about the outage, and the Department of Homeland Security and FBI are also investigating.
The FBI confirmed it had been in contact with AT&T. The agency said, “If we become aware of malicious acts, we will respond accordingly.''
The power outage also caused concern at the Capitol.
“To fully understand what went wrong and what can be done to prevent incidents like this from happening in the future,” House Speaker Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington Republican, said in a statement. “We are working to assess today's disruption.” Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Bob Latta, Republican of Ohio, Chairman of the Communications Technology Subcommittee;
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Lindsey Whitehurst and Seung-min Kim in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.
