Important Takeaways:

• Was America Just Attacked? We Have Now Been Put On Notice That Our Communication Infrastructure Is Extremely Vulnerable
• [Daily Mail reported] 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 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.
  • 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.
• [The Express Reports] 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.
• Today, there are a number of foreign powers that possess very robust cyberattack capabilities.
• One of them is China, and the Washington Post is reporting on a trove of leaked documents that show that the Chinese “are attempting large-scale, systematic cyber intrusions against foreign governments, companies and infrastructure”…
  • A trove of leaked documents from a Chinese state-linked hacking group shows that Beijing’s intelligence and military groups are attempting large-scale, systematic cyber intrusions against foreign governments, companies and infrastructure — with hackers of one company claiming to be able to target users of Microsoft, Apple and Google.
  • The cache — containing more than 570 files, images and chat logs — offers an unprecedented look inside the operations of one of the firms that Chinese government agencies hire for on-demand, mass data-collecting operations.
  • Of course, I have no idea if China was involved in the incidents that we witnessed today.
  • But without a doubt the Chinese have some of the most advanced cyberattack capabilities in the entire world.
• On Thursday, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio ominously warned about what China could do to us if a full-scale war breaks out…
  • ‘I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage,’ said Sen. Marco Rubio, Fla., top Republican on the Intelligence Committee.
  • ‘But I do know 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 went on.
• He is right.
• But the Russians have similar capabilities.
• So do the North Koreans.
• In all of human history, there has never been a “cyberwar”, and so we don’t know exactly what one would look like.
• But it is clear that our communication infrastructure is extremely vulnerable, and what we just witnessed should definitely be a wakeup call for all of us

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