Top Senator Issues Warning on Chinese Cyberattack Targeting Critical Infrastructure

A member of the hacking group Red Hacker Alliance who refused to give his real name, uses a website that monitors global cyberattacks on his computer at their office in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, on Aug. 4, 2020. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned on social media that the outage that affected AT&T on Feb. 22 could be significantly smaller than what a Chinese cyberattack could do.

For much of the morning on Feb. 22, 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. By the afternoon, the company stated that about 75 percent of its service was restored.

The outage drew a response from Mr. Rubio, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said that while he doesn’t know what caused the outage, he does know that “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 said.

A number of federal officials over the years have increasingly issued warnings about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) 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,” he said, according to an FBI transcript.

“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,” he said. “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, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis commented that U.S. infrastructure is vulnerable.

“Imagine if we had an EMP [electromagnetic pulse] attack. What would end up happening to this country?” he asked. “You’re so naturally reliant on having cell service. It’s a little bit jarring to think about.

“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 [if that] happened on a much grander scale.”

An EMP is “a burst of electromagnetic energy produced by a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, considered capable of widespread damage to power lines” and other systems, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

AT&T Outage

AT&T had more than 58,000 outages at about noon EST on Feb. 22, in locations including Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago. The outages, which began at approximately 3:30 a.m. EST, peaked at around 73,000 reported incidents. The carrier has more than 240 million subscribers, the country’s largest.

In a statement to several media outlets on Feb. 22, 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 the following notice: “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 stated in the afternoon that it was making progress on the issue, saying that its “network teams took immediate action” and that, at that time, three-quarters of its network had been restored and that it was “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.

If Wi-Fi isn’t available, there are few options for cell phone users. It’s possible to switch services if a phone is unlocked, but that requires signing up online and porting your phone number. Some apps, including Google Maps, have limited service offline. Payment apps also do not use a phone’s cell service to work and should also be useable.

Other Outages

Change Healthcare, which handles patient payments and orders for pharmacies around the nation, confirmed in a statement on the afternoon of Feb. 22 that it noticed a cybersecurity incident affecting 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 media outlets.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.