Verizon’s nationwide outage, which left thousands of people without service on Monday, has raised fears that the disruption was caused by a major cyberattack.
Customers were left in the dark for nearly 12 hours after being in SOS mode from 9:30 AM ET to 7:30 PM ET.
Although Verizon did not reveal the cause, experts told DailyMail.com that it was a cyber attack by Russia or China ‘is plausible.’
The CEO of a leading global cybersecurity company explained that hackers could have triggered Verizon’s online routers to send a malicious signal to cell towers, disrupting communications for thousands of people.
Experts said it’s likely a cyberattack could have caused Verizon’s nationwide outage on Monday
Verizon users across the country were affected by the outage, but the majority were in the Midwest. Customers complained that their phones were in SOS mode and they were unable to send or receive calls or text messages
Kyle Hanslovan, the CEO of Huntress, a leading global cybersecurity company, told DailyMail.com: ‘This could be a call to action: If the (Verizon outage) was a hijacking, what are companies doing to prevent these types of attacks ? ‘
Hanslovan noted that “it is not clear whether the Verizon Wireless outage is the result of an error or something worse,” adding, “However, the likelihood that this was a deliberate cyberattack seems equally plausible.”
At least 100,000 people were affected by the Verizon outage, with customers in the Midwest, including Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, the hardest hit.
Cell phones switched to SOS mode, limiting communications to emergency calls only.
Verizon has not yet confirmed what caused yesterday’s outage, but… Dave Hatter, director of business growth at Intrust IT, told DailyMail.com: ‘The fact that Verizon has not indicated what caused the problem or how they will ensure it doesn’t happen again has led some to speculate that it could be a cyber attack.
“That said, they may be tight-lipped about ensuring that information that could lead to a cyberattack is not released.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned that cybercriminals in countries like China are targeting critical infrastructure to “physically cause damage” or disrupt services at any time.
Hanslovan speculated that the Verizon outage could have been caused by hackers gaining access to some of the company’s online routers and rerouting signals to and from Verizon cell towers to disrupt cell service across the country.
If a cybercriminal had rerouted the signals from those towers, it might have caused people’s phones to stop working.
“There is a history in China where attacks have worked this way. Where the entire global traffic was misdirected,” Hanslovan said.
“Sometimes this happens by accident, maybe the person was misinformed and directed traffic to the wrong place.”
However, Rob DeCicco, who previously worked for the National Security Agency (NSA), told DailyMail.com that it The outage was likely caused by Verizon’s focus on “rolling out 5G in other regions and a lack of staff monitoring performance.”
Verizon’s outage forced thousands of customer phones to switch to SOS mode, making it impossible to send or receive calls and texts
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is currently investigating what caused phones to switch to SOS mode.
“At this time there is no information pointing to either Verizon or the multiple ransomware groups,” Carlos Perez, a spokesperson for the cybersecurity firm TrustedSec, told DailyMail.com.
“It doesn’t mean there isn’t a cyber attack, but these types of things take time to identify the root cause,” he continued.
“If it is a cyberattack, (Verizon) is required to report it to the agency as a material incident as part of their SEC compliance.”
AT&T denied a cyberattack when its systems were hacked in 2021, but was forced to acknowledge earlier this year that hackers had obtained a significant amount of customer data, including text records, location data and phone numbers.
Fortunately for customers, Hanslovan said their data was likely protected thanks to encryption software used internally by companies that protected people’s information.
Perez added that he doesn’t believe people should take steps to protect their data, “as we do not know the extent and systems involved in the outage.”
‘Once Verizon has collected more data on what’s been affected, we should know more, but it’s safe to say that customers will still need to use a PIN to enable porting of their number or changes to their e-Sims as a basic precaution, failure or not,” he said.
The bigger question will be what companies do to protect people from future mistakes and potential cyber attacks.
According to Alex Hamerstone, director of consulting solutions at TrustedSec, an extreme amount of effort goes into maintaining mobile phone infrastructure worldwide.
“In fact, I think a lot of people would be surprised if things worked as often as they do,” he previously told DailyMail.com.
Maintaining cell phone infrastructure is a two-tiered process, Hamerstone said, because employees must keep the existing system functioning while continually improving, updating and expanding the systems, networks and equipment.
This also includes improving infrastructure resilience against security threats.
He clarified that a cyber attack could cause mobile phone disruption at any time, although “this is generally not the most likely thing to happen.”
But “regardless of the reason, democratic countries and telecom companies worldwide must ask themselves: ‘Are we doing enough predictively to encrypt traffic, modernize the backbone of the Internet, and alert those at risk?’ Hanslovan said.
“In today’s era, the question is not ‘if’ such a cyber attack will happen, but ‘when’ it will happen again.”
DailyMail.com has contacted Verizon for comment.