What caused the AT&T outage? Experts weigh in as cellphone service goes down nationwide

A massive outage that  knocked cellular services offline for hours had Americans asking: 'what caused the issues?'

More than a dozen cellular providers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, reported disrupted services, but there has been no official explanation yet.

While we waited for answers, researchers shared with DailyMail.com the possible scenarios that could have led to tens of thousands of users losing cellular service.

These experts suggested the causes could be human error, an intentional malicious hack or a solar flare that erupted from the sun - though the latter is the least likely scenario.

Experts suggested the causes could be a cloud misconfiguration, intentional malicious hack or a solar solar flare that erupted from the sun just a few hours before networks went down

Lee McKnight, associate Professor in the iSchool (The School of Information Studies) at Syracuse University in New York, said: 'The dirty secret of telecom networks these days is they are just a bunch of wires and towers connected to the cloud like everything else in modern life, whether Netflix or your grocery store.

'With little information released on the cause of AT&T's cross-country outages, the most likely cause is a cloud misconfiguration. 

'Which is a fancy word for saying human error. I was reviewing this exact issue in class yesterday.'

Cloud misconfigurations are gaps, errors and vulnerabilities that occur when security settings are poorly chosen or completely neglected.

Such mistakes can disrupt performance of a system or leave the cloud open to infiltration by adversaries.

This issue allowed Russia and China to 'attack Google' in 2018.

Data belonging to users across the globe was intercepted by servers in Nigeria, China and Russia - including those run by major state-owned telecoms providers.

However, it is unknown if hackers took advantage of Thursday's outage.

DownDetector's outage map highlights New York, Boston, Washington, Montreal, Honolulu, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco as hot spots with disruptive service

Cloud misconfiguration can happen in several different ways, such as unchanged defaults.

Some refer to unchanged defaults as an 'elementary mistake,' which is made by someone working with systems who did not change the default usernames and passwords.

Another is ignoring logs that collect information about the system's security gaps, unauthorized access, breaches and other related items.

If the logs are not attended to in a timely matter, staff working on the system will become backed up with details that become difficult to correct.

However, it is unclear what type of cloud misconfiguration caused the outage or even if that was the issue.

'A possible but far less likely outcome is an intentional malicious hack of AT&T's network, but the diffuse pattern of outages across the country suggests something more fundamental,' said McKnight, who is also an Affiliate of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSTC).

AT&T has suffered data breaches in the last year with one in March that impacted nine million people.

In 2023, Ukraine's top mobile service, Kyivstar, was hit by a cyberattack that knocked out services for half of the population, damaged IT infrastructure and put millions of people in danger of not receiving alerts of potential Russian air assaults.

AT&T fell victim to a solar flare in 1972 that interrupted landline services. A meteorologist shared on X that a solar flare erupted on the sun around midnight - hours before Thursday's massive outage

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website showed a radio blackout occurred on the eastern side of Africa and below Asia

But in the US, most hacks have stolen data and did not cause a cellular blackout.

AT&T fell victim to a solar flare in 1972 that interrupted landline services.

The storm that hit Earth was compared to the event in 1859 known as the Carrington Event, which saw the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

If such a solar storm were to happen in today's world, the effects would be catastrophic on our communications systems.

A meteorologist shared online that a solar flare had erupted from the sun around midnight on Thursday, noting that the 'timing is interesting.'

'Yes, there was a strong solar flare reported around midnight. But, is it connected to the cell phone outage? Not impossible and the timing is interesting, but not sure we can say that just yet, Justin Horne with Texas-based KSAT 12 posted on X.

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website showed a radio blackout occurred on the eastern side of Africa and below Asia.

A solar flare ionization of the lower levels of the atmosphere which causes interference for long-range radios used by commercial airlines, military groups and government agencies.

Donald Trump Jr commented on allegations that the outage was sparked by a solar flare.

'Does anyone actually believe this was a 'solar flare?' Next they'll tell us that the stars are aligning in retrograde or some crap, which made it worse. lol. At this point if you don't have a hard time believing anything the government tells you, you must be living under a rock,' he shared on X.

The outage, which appeared around 4am ET, left many iPhones in SOS mode, leaving them unable to make phone calls, send messages or surf the web.

The SOS Only appears in the top-right corner of the control center with the latest iOS software and the top left corner in previous versions.

However, you can make Emergency SOS calls to authorities.

Some cellular networks appear to be coming back online, but that still leaves many asking the million dollar question of what triggered the massive outage,