GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — It’s been over two weeks since an outage impacting Cellcom customers first began as the result of a cyber incident.
The company said in a post Tuesday that most customers should have regained full service again. But by and large, a lack of communication from Cellcom throughout the cyber incident has been customers’ biggest complaint.
However, there may be a legal reason behind that strategy.
May 14 marked the first day of the Cellcom outage, leaving many customers’ phones without service and the inability to make phone calls and send text messages. It took until May 20 for Cellcom CEO Brighid Riordan to speak publicly for the first time, announcing the cause of the outage.
“The cyber incident that we’re experiencing is segmented to the voice and texting part of your service… We were prepared for this, we were prepared for these incidents and we are rolling our protocol through this,” Riordan said.
Riordan said Cellcom reported the incident to the FBI.
“The more the company talks, the harder it’s gonna make it on the Bureau, and the bad guys are going to know,” said Jack Jupin, a retired FBI agent and president/CEO of Jupin International.
Jupin said cyber security is one of the biggest threats in the United States right now. When a cyber security incident like this happens to a company, they’re being directed by the FBI to keep quiet.
“Everybody says, ‘Well, I want more information about it.’ Well, they can’t give information about it because it’s an FBI investigation, so they can’t give any information out. The FBI won’t allow that,” Jupin said.
Cellcom customers were sent a letter Wednesday addressing the company’s lack of communication; and attributed their silence to exactly what Jupin described.
The letter reads, in part:
This wasn’t a typical outage. It was the result of a cyber incident, which has been reported to federal authorities including the FBI, FCC, CISA as well as state and local officials. In that, we now stand alongside countless other critical infrastructure providers who have been disrupted and forced to confront the growing reality of sophisticated threats driven by forces beyond our control, intent on destabilizing the systems we all rely on. Unfortunately, cyberattacks like this are impacting companies across industries and across the country, no matter the size…
Our teams acted quickly, engaged global and national cybersecurity experts, a cyber incident response team and followed federal industry protocols. We immediately reached beyond our own walls to ensure we had the best resources working with us. We worked with urgency and care to restore service as securely and swiftly as possible. Because of their tireless work, we’re confident the impact was far less severe than it could have been.
Due to the nature of the incident and the ongoing investigation, we remain limited in the level of detail we can provide. We understand this is different than the transparency you’ve come to expect from us.
Jupin said the fact that Cellcom has said anything at all is impressive, considering most companies don’t go public with this kind of information.
When the FBI takes on a cyber investigation, they send out their Computer Analysis and Response Team (CART) to check all systems and look for any bit of evidence to lead them back to the perpetrator.
The issue? 99% of cybercriminals act from overseas, according to Jupin.
“Will we find out? Yeah, eventually we’ll find out who did it. Are you going to put somebody in jail over this? Probably not. But, they’re gonna stop the bleeding and you’re not gonna pay the ransom,” Jupin said.
Jupin warned if a ransom is paid, cyber criminals are more likely to attack again. Cyber incidents like these are becoming more common, with thousands happening each year. Not only because of the money, but also the convenience.
“If you’ve got the smart guy in the room, it’s easy and the repercussions are slim-to-none,” Jupin said.
Jupin said the investigation into Cellcom’s cyber incident could take months.
