Cell Phone Outage Last Week Shows Infrastructure Vulnerability

 Maybe some of you awoke last week and realized your cell phone didn't work?  My wife and I have AT&T and while my phone wasn't out, my wife's just said SOS.  How long would it be out?  What if you had to contact someone?  Does anyone have land lines anymore?  Do we know anyone's phone number even if we did have to dial it on a landline??  I know for a fact that I don't know my kids phone numbers if I could find a landline to dial them anyway.  And even if I did, what good would it be if their phone was out??

As we have always said, technology is awesome...until it doesn't work.

What would we do if we suddenly couldn't use the Internet or our phones any longer?  For a lot of people, such a scenario would be unthinkable.  

In fact, it felt like the "world is ending" for many AT&T customers last week.  The disruption to AT&T's network only lasted for a few hours, but it created quite a frenzy.  

If we are going to see this much panic for an outage that happens for just a few hours, what would our society look like if Internet and phone communication was down for days, weeks or even months?

Once the outage began, federal authorities moved very rapidly to determine whether it was a cyberattack or not...

Federal agencies are 'urgently investigating' whether the massive cellular outage that plagued Americans on Thursday was a cyberattack.

The Federal Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are on the hunt to track down what disrupted service AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and a dozen other cellular providers.

While the agencies have not shared details, a security expert told DailyMail.com that the outage has hallmarks of a hack.

Lee McKnight, associate professor at Syracuse University in New York, said the widespread nature appears to be 'a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack on core Internet infrastructure.'

I have a feeling that they will assure the general public that it was not a cyberattack no matter what they discover.

In situations such as these, keeping everyone calm is often deemed more important than telling them the truth.

Interestingly, pharmacies all over the U.S. were also having major problems on Thursday due to a cyberattack against "one of the biggest healthcare technology companies in the nation"...

Pharmacies all over the country are experiencing delays in prescription orders due to a cyberattack on one of the biggest healthcare technology companies in the nation, Change Healthcare.

Change Healthcare first noticed the "cyber security issue" affecting its networks on Wednesday morning on the East Coast.

According to Change Healthcare, it appears that a "nation-state associated cyber security threat actor" was involved in that attack...

In a statement the firm says it had 'identified a suspected nation-state associated cyber security threat actor had gained access to some of the Change Healthcare information technology systems.'

Are the issues at AT&T and the issues at Change Healthcare related?

I have a feeling that they are, but I certainly cannot prove that.

In any event, the truth is that we have just been put on notice.

Our communication infrastructure is extremely vulnerable, and it can be attacked at literally any moment.

Today, there are a number of foreign powers that possess very robust cyberattack capabilities.

Here;  America Put On Notice - AT&T Outage Warning Of Vulnerable Infrastructure (prophecynewswatch.com)

Can you even imagine the chaos that would happen if some hackers from Iran, Russia, North Korea or China were able to knock out our cell service at the same time they were launching some sort of coordinated attack on US assets?  Of course all of these things are totally out of our control and yet every single one of us is totally reliant on these technologies.  It makes us realize how incapable any of us would be to survive if the electricity went out along with our cell phones and the grocery stores went empty and no trucks were coming to resupply them.  We pray these things won't happen before the rapture.