I wonder if this is a cyber incident. Curious if any telecom folks know what the most likely explanation for an event like this would be, and what telltale signs/symptoms might first indicate this was caused by something nefarious.
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Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
311–320 of 486 posts
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#312Using myATT app doesn't even show my wireless account anymore. My entire family account doesn't even show up as a service. Seems like a hack or internal issue that deleted accounts? Can others confirm whether they see their accounts?
From what I read just a bit ago, basically there is a problem with the database of SIM numbers. So, SIMs all just dislodged from the network because they lost their network authorization. That would lead one to believe it was a botched software push. I imagine online accounts get this information somehow which could explain the portal being broken. I have a prepaid hotspot and it works fine, but none of the "family p…
That would be consistent with the symptoms. Big telco networks are hierarchical with most functions pushed to regional data centers with a very small number of services in a redundant pair or trio of central data centers. Subscriber database (HSS, UDR) would be one such function.
The cause of a failure of the HSS could be manifold, ranging from router failures to software bugs to cyber attack (databases of 100M+ users being a juicy target).
One slightly scary observation from NANOG was that FirstNet, the network that ATT built for first responders, was down. That would be ugly if true and I'd expect the FCC to be very interested in getting to the bottom of it.
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#313JFYI in December largest Ukrainian operator Kyivstar was down for days after sophisticated Russian hacker attack
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#314Did anyone have a phone fail during this outage?
My Pixel 4XL was working at 2am as I placed it on the charger (even though it had about 80%). Noticed zero bars. Shrugged and went to sleep.
Woke up at 9am and the phone is totally non operational.
Yes I know sometimes phones just break, but less rarely while not moving, not wet, not dropped, or due to a charging issue.
What a coincidence.
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I just always imagined the GSM spec was so resilient that you could always make a 9-1-1 call if a working network was available but this outage proved that wrong. As I recall it is slightly more nuanced than this and was particular to the failure mode, and has a couple of different things aligning to create the failure mode. If you're phone is just blank, no sim card. To make an emergency call, it has to just start…
Multi-faceted failure mode. 0) At the network terminal level (mobile phone): at least for emergency calls if a given network fails to connect, fail over and try other networks. Even if the preferred networks claim to provide service. 1) At the network level: failure thresholds should be present. If those thresholds are crossed enter a fail-safe state. This should include entering a soft offline / overloaded response…
it’s that “0” level that surprised me the most here.
Days later, Rogers said you might be able to pull out/disable your SIM card to call 9-1-1, but then it depends: if Rogers is the strongest network, you might end up in the same predicament anyway.
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
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Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#317Outage Over Status: Restored AT&T FINAL, Service Degradation, Global Smart Messaging Suite AT&T Global Smart Messaging Suite Event description: FINAL, Service Degradation Impacted Services: MMS MT Start time: 02-21-2024 22:00 Eastern, 21:00 Central, 19:00 Pacific End time: 02-22-2024 11:00 Eastern, 10:00 Central, 08:00 Pacific Downtime: 780 minutes Dear Customer, We are writing to inform you that Global Smart Messagi…
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Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worth noting that GPS does not rely on cell service.
The routing does though. I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though. Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox. (Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone). I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?
Carriers have mapping independent of networks. Drivers keep personal GPS too. You would lose traffic and road conditions, I guess, but nothing proper trip planning wouldn't cover.
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#319Late yesterday, I tried to place a 911 call while driving on the 101 north toward San Francisco. Before I could complete my report, the call dropped, and for the next 10 or so minutes I had no service, only "SOS". I'm on Verizon, and the timing doesn't match up with this headline, but now I'm suspicious.
Sounds like a standard dropped call due to a dead zone.
VZW doesn't have dead zones on 101 in the Bay Area, in my experience.
Re: Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
The routing does though. I have Google offline maps downloaded for areas I end up in just in this case. Gotta do traffic rerouting the old fashioned way though. Or have an old-school GPS map thingy in your glovebox. (Also have kiwix and a whole archive of Wikipedia on my phone). I wonder if meshtastic communicators sales took off during this. How’s LoRa traffic these days?
Carriers have mapping independent of networks. Drivers keep personal GPS too. You would lose traffic and road conditions, I guess, but nothing proper trip planning wouldn't cover.
> Drivers keep personal GPS too.
Do they? I know there are a lot of old units out there but I figure people would have tossed them.
At least I’ve found Waze has been pretty good at starting off with wifi and loading the map of the whole journey after coverage was lost with some resilience for stops/detours.