AT&T Says Cause of Outage Wasn't a Cyberattack

The widespread outage was due to something far from nefarious.

Eli Blumenthal Senior Editor

Eli Blumenthal is a senior editor at CNET with a particular focus on covering the latest in the ever-changing worlds of telecom, streaming and sports. He previously worked as a technology reporter at USA Today.

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Eli Blumenthal

Feb. 22, 2024 5:44 p.m. PT

James Martin/CNET

The cause of Thursday's AT&T network outage has been revealed. In a statement posted Thursday evening to the company's website and shared with CNET, the carrier said the issue was the result of software and not a cyberattack.

"Based on our initial review, we believe that today's outage was caused by the application and execution of an incorrect process used as we were expanding our network, not a cyber attack," the statement said. "We are continuing our assessment of today's outage to ensure we keep delivering the service that our customers deserve."

The outage began early Thursday morning and ran for several hours, knocking off cellular connectivity for AT&T users across the country. A source familiar with the matter told CNET the issue occurred while AT&T was doing regular maintenance, which it normally does overnight.

Reports on social media suggested the outage was widespread, with Downdetector, a website where users can report issues with websites and services, showing a spike in problems with AT&T nationwide beginning at around 4 a.m. ET. The carrier recommended that customers use services like Wi-Fi calling to connect with others while the network was down.

Services were restored around 3 p.m. ET.