Sen. Marco Rubio issued the warning amid the AT&T outage on Thursday.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned on social media that the outage that impacted AT&T Thursday could be significantly smaller than what a Chinese cyberattack could do.
For much of Thursday morning, tens of thousands of people on DownDetector and elsewhere complained their AT&T or Cricket service was out, while AT&T, which owns Cricket, confirmed the outage. As of Thursday afternoon, the company said that about 75 percent of its service was restored.
Drawing a response from Mr. Rubio, the vice chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee noted that while he doesn’t know what caused the outage, “I do know it will be 100 times worse when China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a Taiwan invasion.”
“And it won’t be just cell service they hit, it will be your power, your water, and your bank,” he added.
A number of federal officials over the years have increasingly issued warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) abilities to carry out cyberattacks targeting American infrastructure. According to a recent statement from FBI Director Christopher Wray, the CCP is currently carrying out cyberattacks against the United States and its allies.
“You might find your companies harassed and hacked, targeted by a web of corporate CCP proxies,” he said earlier this month in Germany. CCP hackers and proxies may be “lurking in your power stations, your phone companies and other infrastructure, poised to take them down when they decide you stepped too far out of line, and that hurting your civilian population suits the CCP.”
Related Stories
“China-sponsored hackers pre-positioned for potential cyberattacks against U.S. oil and natural gas companies way back in 2011, but these days, it’s reached something closer to a fever pitch,” the director continued, according to an FBI transcript. “What we’re seeing now is China’s increasing build-out of offensive weapons within our critical infrastructure, poised to attack whenever Beijing decides the time is right.”
Amid the AT&T outage on Thursday, Gov. Ron DeSantis suggested that U.S. infrastructure is vulnerable.
Continuing, he added: “If you’re in the car, you need to figure out where you’re going to go. All this other stuff. So it’s a little bit jarring to think about the implications of something like that [it that] happened on a much grander scale.”
AT&T Outage
AT&T had more than 58,000 outages around noon ET, in locations including Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago. The outages, which began at approximately 3:30 a.m. ET, peaked at around 73,000 reported incidents. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, the country’s largest.
In a statement to several news outlets on Thursday, AT&T confirmed the outage and urged people to use Wi-Fi calling in the meantime. “Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them,” it said in a statement.
AT&T’s outage web page included a notice that “some customers in your area are having trouble making or receiving calls. As a result, we are experiencing long hold times. We apologize for this inconvenience and we are working to resolve this issue.”
That came before AT&T said on Thursday afternoon that it was making progress on the issue, saying that “our network teams took immediate action and so far three-quarters of our network has been restored” and that “we are working as quickly as possible to restore service to remaining customers.”
AT&T urged customers to connect to Wi-Fi to use their phones. Wi-Fi calling is a built-in feature on most Android devices and iPhones and can be turned on under the phone’s settings.
“Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored,” AT&T said in a statement.
Other Outages
Change Healthcare, which handles patient payments and orders for pharmacies around the nation, confirmed in a statement on Thursday afternoon that it noticed a cybersecurity incident impacting its networks, according to its website.
“Change Healthcare is experiencing a network interruption related to a cyber security issue and our experts are working to address the matter. Once we became aware of the outside threat, in the interest of protecting our partners and patients, we took immediate action to disconnect our systems to prevent further impact,” Change Healthcare told news outlets.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
Running For Office? Conservative Campaign Consulting – Election Day Strategies!