Cellcom says has restored wireless phone service for customers but warns that some intermittent issues may still occur.
The wireless service provider updated its Facebook page on May 27, directed customers to its webpage and said text messages and voice calls are performing well for most customers, although many “may still see occasional issues as systems stabilize.”
Cellcom advised customers to reboot their phones if they are having problems.
Meanwhile, a former FBI agent said this type of incident is happening more frequently and is usually motivated by financial gain.
When did the outage begin?
The outage, which began at 9 p.m. May 14, affected SMS texting and voice calls, leaving customers with their phones on SOS mode for days. On May 19, the company restored texting and Cellcom-to-Cellcom, with some users still reporting issues. On May 20, Brighid Riordan, Cellcom’s CEO said the outage was caused by a cyber incident.
Riordan said the company was following all protocols and had notified the FBI and Wisconsin officials. She said the incident was in an area of the network separate from where the company stores sensitive information about Cellcom and Nsight customers.
What doesn’t it mean to get the FBI involved?
Jack Jupin, a former FBI agent with 23 years of experience, including roles as supervisor of the Joint Terrorism Task Force and SWAT team in New Jersey, said that once the FBI is involved, almost no information can be shared publicly. The agency sends a cyber team that collects forensic information from the systems to track down all details and find out who’s behind the incident.
“The company would not be able to share information,” Jupin said. “They would pretty much be acting at the direction of the FBI.”
Jupin said the bureau would not share details to avoid false leads and because it would be an active investigation.
“When these incidents happen, which are very frequent, you run into people who also want to claim credit for it, to get notoriety,” he said.
Jupin said the main objective is to figure out what happened, who was behind the attack and work with different partners to find accountability.
What has Cellcom said about the incident?
Riordan said the incident was “segmented to the voice and texting part of your service.” She added that they have no evidence personal information was impacted. The Green Bay Press-Gazette asked for an interview several times, but the company declined.
“Our system detected unusual activity on our network on May 14, and we took down the network in line with our protocols. We determined this unusual activity was a cyber incident executed by a third party,” the company said on its website.
Cyber incidents have increased in the last 10 years
Hackers have been targeting telecommunications firms in the United States, according to a report by the Washington Post from Aug. 27. It was later reported that hackers had affected at least nine companies, including AT&T, Verizon, Lumen Technologies, and T-Mobile.
Late last year, the Biden administration also urged the FCC to impose regulations that would make it harder, riskier and costlier for hackers to access Americans’ data in response to the Chinese Salt Typhoon group hack in October, which affected an unknown number of Americans.
Jupin said that in incidents like the Cellcom outage, the cause is typically a ransomware attack motivated by financial gain. In such cases, cybercriminals seize control of systems and demand large payments, often to offshore accounts, to restore access.
“They are not only after you or me,” he said, “they are also going after big companies.”
The FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report noted 880,418 complaints in 2023 with losses of $12.5 billion, and 2024 saw a rise to $16.6 billion in cyber-enabled losses, with ransomware the major threat.
Jupin said that even if it’s not clear if this was a ransomware case, with the FBI involved, there was a hack of part of the Cellcom systems.
“We may be talking about the same thing just using different language,” he said.
He said no matter if hackers used firewalls to hide their location, in time, the FBI will track them down.
“It’s all traceable, it just takes a lot of time,” Jupin said.
Who owns Cellcom?
Nsight, the Howard-based telecommunications company, owns Cellcom as well as Nsight Telservices and Nsight Tower.
Ariel Perez is a business reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach him at APerez1@gannett.com or view his Twitter profile at @Ariel_Perez85.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Outage update: Cellcom says services ‘performing well’; ex-FBI agent explains lack of shared information
Reporting by Ariel Perez, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
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