Americans woke up on February 22nd to a nationwide AT&T outage, similar to the blackout in the movie 'Leave the World Behind'. The outage affected AT&T and its subsidiary, Wireless Cricket, with a total of 71,000 reports of outages. Other cell services like Verizon and T-Mobile also experienced outages, but to a lesser extent. The outages impacted customers in the south and southeast United States, with reports coming in from Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. The outage caused concerns as residents couldn't even call 911 due to the loss of signal. Additionally, pharmacies across the country experienced outages due to a large-scale cyberattack. [e068a423] The movie 'Leave the World Behind' trended on social media as users expressed their concern that the film's plot was happening in real life. This is the second time reality has mirrored the movie plot, as a recall of self-driving Teslas occurred shortly after the movie's premiere. The movie has changed the way people think about outages and technological failures, drawing comparisons to 'Leave the World Behind' and raising questions about whether they are errors or orchestrated attacks.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has opened a formal investigation into the nationwide AT&T outage that occurred in February. The outage, caused by an internal issue during network expansion, affected millions of AT&T customers, preventing them from making calls, sending text messages, using the internet, or accessing emergency services. AT&T has apologized for the outage and offered credits to affected subscribers. The company is working with the FCC to improve network resiliency and reliability. The exact number of people affected by the outage is still unknown. The FCC's investigation will evaluate the incident and determine any necessary actions or penalties. [fd922717]
In Bangladesh, Teletalk, a mobile network operator, is facing issues with weak power backup for its mobile network towers. A significant portion of Teletalk's towers lack adequate battery backup systems, with 21.52 percent of the 3,856 towers supplied by Teletalk unable to provide more than one minute of backup. Additionally, about 40 percent of Teletalk's towers cannot provide network access if electricity outages persist for more than an hour. This short battery backup duration leads to signal loss during power outages, impacting customer service. As a result, Teletalk has lost 2.3 lakh customers in the past year, shrinking its market share to 3.38 percent. In contrast, other companies like Edotco Bangladesh and Summit Towers provide two to six hours of power backup for their towers. [c4f1652c]
US mobile operator AT&T reported that hackers stole call and message data from virtually all of its customers for six months in 2022, affecting around 90 million people. The data mainly comprised records of phone calls and text messages made between May 2022 and October 2022. The stolen data did not include the content of calls and messages, nor personal information such as names or social security numbers. AT&T has secured the access point used by the hackers and at least one person has been apprehended. The company is working with law enforcement to arrest those involved. This is the second major cyberattack on AT&T this year, following a breach in March that leaked the personal data of over 70 million customers. The Department of Justice is investigating the incident. [29ab1e81]
A hacker claims that AT&T paid approximately $400,000 to have stolen call and text logs erased. The hacker provided a Bitcoin wallet address that showed a transaction in mid-May, which analysts believe aligns with an extortion payment. A person familiar with the ransomware negotiations confirmed the payment from AT&T to the hacker. The scope and details of the data breach pose national security risks, and the size of the ransom payment is relatively low compared to other recent high-profile attacks. AT&T declined to comment on the alleged payment, and the FBI and Department of Justice also declined to comment. The hacker claims to have fulfilled their agreement with AT&T and provided a video showing the deletion of the data. The authenticity of the video and the involvement of other hackers in the attack could not be verified. Chainalysis Inc. examined the payment record and confirmed it as an extortion payment. The transaction occurred while AT&T was working with law enforcement officials to respond to the breach. The payment is relatively low compared to other recent ransom demands. The hacker claims that the stolen data is not valuable and does not know who would be interested in purchasing it. The hack of AT&T records is part of a larger campaign that also targeted the data analysis software provider Snowflake Inc. AT&T said it does not believe the stolen data has been made public. [69dfddd4]