I work as a telecom engineer troubleshooting/programming the Ciena 5164 optical router used for Verizon and At&t. These companies and many of my colleagues know exactly what it was but the more interesting part that raised some eyebrows was the fact that cc payment processing and emergency services/SOS/911 calls WERE possible for most of the affected customers. This is key. (This all runs on the same fiber optic network and should have been ‘down’ also.)
I cannot overstate how anomalous the above fact pattern is because when our networks go down, they don’t go down in this piecemeal way.
Here’s the takeaway: The goal of a ‘cyber weapon’ is maximum disruption. Whoever deployed (tested) this ‘cyber tool’ went to great lengths to pause communication ONLY. This surgeon scalpel approach we saw was a MUCH more difficult task than to just ‘nuke’ the whole system so to speak. A tool like this would need to be tested a few times to ensure a reliable partitioning of the ‘Target’ [calls/data] and the ‘Not Target’ [911/cc processing].
I'm a patriot who loves their country so I will not say what 'it' was/is, but if you reread the above a few times, and ask yourself the right questions, logical deduction should provide the answer.
PBD had Erik Prince on his podcast a few days ago and this came up. Prince's opinion was it was the Chinese and it was intended as a kind of shot across the bow (Taiwan , etc.) He put his odds at 70%.
I have no idea really, but it is plausible. Remember when there was a hack inro the Anthem Blue Cross database about 10-12 years ago? I was working at a Brokerage that did employee benefits, and initially they had these big town halls to address it so we would have something to tell the customers and then....nothing. There was talk that it was state sponsored, but it got hushed up pretty quick. (When CV hit, I thought about that because at one point, most people have had Anthem for medical. )