What really happened? New York says it is investigating AT&T’s claim that the nationwide outage that left 70,000 people without service was a technical problem

New York is opening an investigation into what caused AT&T’s massive mobile outage that left thousands of Americans without service last week.

Attorney General Letitia James announced the investigation Thursday, noting that nationwide outages are dangerous, especially the one on Feb. 22, which prevented calls, text messages or internet access for up to 12 hours.

AT&T blamed it on a “software glitch” and told affected customers they would receive a $5 credit on their next bill.

James also urged all affected New Yorkers to file a complaint with her office.

The Federal Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had opened an investigation the day the cell service went down.

“Americans rely on mobile service providers for consistent and reliable service to help them with almost every aspect of their daily lives,” says James.

‘Nationwide outages are not only inconvenient, they can also be dangerous, and it is crucial that we protect consumers when an outage occurs.

“I encourage every New Yorker affected by this disruption to file a complaint with my office.”

The outage was first reported in the early hours of Thursday morning when customers were unable to make emergency calls. Multiple 911 centers reported users were unable to connect.

Smartphones were stuck in ‘SOS’ mode.

There were reports that other networks were affected, but this was believed to be due to failed attempts to call AT&T numbers.

Cyber ​​experts told DailyMail.com that the problem had hallmarks of a cyber attack, possibly an attempt by hackers to blackmail the company or steal user data.

The outage was first reported in the early hours of Thursday morning when customers were unable to make emergency calls. Multiple 911 centers reported users were unable to connect. Smartphones were stuck in ‘SOS’ mode

James also urged all affected New Yorkers to file a complaint with her office. Pictured are AT&T customers standing in line at a store last week hoping to get answers

The widespread nature, experts said, appeared comparable to “a massive Distributed Denial of Services (DDOS) attack on the core infrastructure of the Internet.”

With DDOS, cybercriminals attempt to crash a website or online service by bombarding it with a flood of unnecessary requests at the exact same time.

The surge of simple requests overloads the servers, causing them to become overwhelmed and shut down.

DDOS was deployed in 2016 when it disabled major sites like Netflix, Twitter, Amazon and PayPal for hours.

But the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reported that “the cause of the outage is unknown and there is no evidence of malicious activity.”

Still, National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters Thursday afternoon that DHS and the FBI were also investigating the outage and working with the technology industry and network providers to see what can be done “from a federal perspective to further their investigative efforts.” strengthen’. Find out what happened here.’

On Friday, a pro-Russian hacktivist group had claimed responsibility for the AT&T outages, which left many customers’ phones stuck in “SOS mode.”

Goups 62IX, the People Liberation Front and Anonymous Legion claimed responsibility for the incident.

These groups, which were criticized by a cybersecurity expert as pro-Russian, have also claimed responsibility for other US telecommunications disruptions.

But the claim is false, claims an expert on cybersecurity and hacktivism, who goes by the alias ‘CyberKnow’ in a post on

It’s an example of what the writer called “post-event victim claiming” designed to sow confusion and enhance their reputation.