Federal agencies are looking into whether a cyberattack was to blame for the network outage that is affecting AT&T customers in the U.S. on Thursday. The business confirmed the outage and advised customers to place calls over Wi-Fi in a statement to ABC News.
75% of AT&T's network have been restored, according to an update released later on Thursday morning.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies, are currently conducting an urgent investigation to ascertain whether the AT&T outages are the result of a cyberattack, hack, or simply some sort of technical malfunction, according to two sources briefed on the situation.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), tasked with monitoring cyber threats, stated that “the cause of the outage is unknown and there are no indications of malicious activity” as of 5:00 a.m. ET.
Local residents have been forewarned of what was referred to as a nationwide outage by numerous police agencies and municipalities. Officials have subsequently advised callers to make alternative calls to emergency services.
CISA responded to ABC News’ earlier request by stating that they had no comment about the outages.
Customers may have trouble contacting people affected by outages at other providers, but Verizon and T-Mobile's respective networks’ claim they are not experiencing outages.
“We did not experience an outage. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,” T-Mobile told ABC News.
