Verizon Network Issue Resolved As People Speculate the Cause
The massive outage that left thousands of Americans without mobile phone network on Monday has raised concerns about what caused the disruption. On Tuesday, October 1, 2024, the company said the Verizon network issue had been resolved.
However, Mashable reported that frustration among students, healthcare workers, and others who use the service continues to linger. The Verizon outage left customers in the dark for close to 12 hours with their phones stuck on SOS mode.
Examining the Cause
As Verizon works to fully restore its mobile network service, questions abound on what could have caused the outage. The DailyMail reported that experts are not ruling out a possible cyberattack by China or Russia.
A global cybersecurity expert suspects that hackers disrupted mobile communication by prompting Verizon’s online routers to send a malicious signal to cell towers.
“It isn’t clear whether the Verizon Wireless outage is the result of a mistake or something more nefarious. However, the likelihood this was a purposeful cyberattack seems just as plausible,” Huntress CEO, Kyle Hanslovan said. Huntress is a Global Security Firm.
Verizon has not made public information on the possible cause of the outage. This information gap has caused many people to speculate that it could have been a cyberattack- it’s still too early to rule this out.
“At the moment there is no information pointing to one either from Verizon or from the multiple ransomware groups. It does not mean it is not a cyberattack, but matters like this take time to identify a root cause. If it is a cyberattack, Verizon is obligated to report it as part of their SEC filing as a material incident to the agency,” Carlos Perez of TrustedSec said.
Government Response
US agencies have weighed in on the Verizon network issue. On Monday, September 30, 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it was keeping tabs on the situation.
“We’re aware of a Verizon outage impacting customers in parts of the country. We are working to determine the cause and extent of these service disruptions,” the FCC posted on social media.
The FCC added that it is investigating what could have caused mobile phones on the Verizon network to switch to SOS mode. Former National Security Agency employee Rob DeCicco told the DailyMail that the Verizon outage may have been caused by the company’s focus on 5G rollout in other regions. He added that a lack of personnel to monitor network performance may have contributed to the problem.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned that hackers in countries such as China may attack critical infrastructure like communication to disrupt services and wreak havoc. The FBI says such attacks could happen at any time.
Data Security
Verizon’s mobile network outage has raised questions over the security of customer data. In 2021, AT&T downplayed a cyberattack when its communication systems were breached. However, early this year, the telecommunication giant was forced to admit that hackers had accessed significant volumes of customer data. This included phone numbers, texts, and location data.
In the Verizon case, Hanslovan says “Customer data was most likely protected by encryption software that companies use to safeguard information internally. Since the scope of system disruption is unknown at this point, people may not need to take steps to safeguard their data.”
‘Once Verizon puts more data of what was affected we should know more, but it is safe to say that customers should still use a PIN to allow porting of their number or changes to their e-Sims as a basic precaution, outage or not,’ Perez said.
Verizon isn’t the only company that has suffered an outage this year. In July 2024, a software update by global cybersecurity company, CrowdStrike triggered a massive technology outage across the world. The Microsoft outage affected computers running on the Windows operating system, massively disrupting flights, television broadcasts, banking, and telecommunication systems.
As investigations into the outage continue, the bigger question that experts pose is what telecommunication companies such as Verizon should do to mitigate potential cyberattacks and prevent mistakes in future. The Verizon service outage hit more than 100,000 customers mostly in the Midwest states of Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.
