AT&T outage update: Company apologizes for massive system outage but rules out cyberattack | Top Vip News

“CISA is aware of the reports and we are working closely with AT&T to understand the cause of the outage and its impacts, and we stand ready to offer any assistance necessary,” the agency’s deputy executive director for cybersecurity, Eric Goldstein, said in a statement. . .

“Today’s cell service outage is another example of the critical need to maintain AM radio in cars,” the association said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter. “When there’s no internet, power lines are down, and cell phones can’t find a signal, AM radio is there, providing reliable alerts and updates that save lives.”

According to CNN, Homeland Security spokesman John Kirby said the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are investigating Thursday’s incident and reaching out to partners to “see what we can do from a federal perspective to lend a hand to their investigative efforts.” to find out what happened there.”

Still, he said, officials are not sure what caused the widespread outage.

“The bottom line is that we don’t have all the answers to that. I mean, this just happened today. And that’s why we’re working very hard to see if we can get to the truth about exactly what happened.”

On Thursday, AT&T recommended that affected users access WiFi and use it to call people. (Instructions are below.)

But there are also many other ways to communicate without a telephone connection.

You can download offline maps, for example (Google has long allowed this and Apple Maps has recently introduced it as well). And you can download music and videos to your phone ready for any long trip.

Residents in four Texas cities and other cities in the Midwest and East Coast reported the most service outages, according to Downdetector, a website that tracks that information.

The affected people lived in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin. Meanwhile, other residents who had difficulty getting cell service were primarily in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Miami and Indianapolis.

AT&T directed affected customers to a special page on its website during the outage. It’s not very detailed:

“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service outages this morning. Our network teams took immediate action and three-quarters of our network has been restored so far. “We are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”

It’s only been a few months since the release of Leave the world behindthe Netflix movie with a slogan that seems a little familiar today:

Of course, there is Internet and most phones still work. But it is a reminder that such disruption is possible.

“Some of you may not have cell phone service this morning,” DeSantis said while speaking to a crowd about the work of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District on Thursday.

“You think about your daily life as…honestly, it’s like imagining if we had an EMP attack or something like what would end up happening in this country,” he said. “It’s not necessarily a good idea.”

Probably not, says Ryan French, an astrophysicist.

AT&T apologized for widespread outages that affected tens of thousands of consumers, but said the network outage was not due to a cyberattack.

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