We had a scary situation last night as 911 outages hit Nevada, Texas, South Dakota, and Nebraska.
I thought it was over last night when I saw this.
At least six cities in four different states across the United States reported experiencing 911 call outages earlier in the evening, according to officials. Many of those outages had been restored by Thursday morning, authorities said, although a few police departments in Texas had yet to announce whether cell and landline services were back online.
Here was the Las Vegas Police Department last night at 7 p.m.
And luckily, two hours later,
Vegas' 911 services came back, along with the rest of Clark County, which had also lost service.
The entire statewide emergency calling system in South Dakota experienced an outage, Pierre police confirmed to ABC News Wednesday night. Early Thursday morning local time, though, the Highway Patrol announced it had been restored …
Dundy County, Nebraska, and surrounding areas were experiencing outages the sheriff's office said on Facebook. The non-emergency line was working as well as 911 texting, police said. Both cellular and landline 911 service were later restored, the department said in a later post.
Multiple cities in Texas also had outages, including Del Rio and Kilgore.
Kilgore Police Department posted on Facebook it was experiencing interment outages, and urged residents to call 903-983-1559 ext 1 to report any emergencies.
Texas is the only place where the services still aren't back in some places, though it seems only a matter of time before they come back.
Interestingly enough, here's an article that dropped yesterday, just hours before these 911 services went down.
The analysis, compiled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and obtained by ABC News, outlines concerns that the Emergency Service Sector can be exploited and mined for sensitive data, in turn hampering medical and law enforcement services and posing an ongoing threat to personal information and public safety.
'Cybercriminal exploitation of data stolen during ransomware attacks against the Emergency Service Sector (ESS) likely poses a persistent criminal threat due to the exposure and availability of victims' personal information,' according to the April 10 bulletin.
Ransomware attacks have 'disrupted the networks of police department and 911 call center operations," the bulletin continued, putting computer-aided dispatching services out of commission and forcing emergency services "to revert to manual dispatching to sustain their operations.'
Once stolen, potentially sensitive personal information and police records can be leaked, sold or otherwise used by the attackers 'to facilitate additional crimes — including extortion, identity theft, and swatting,' the DHS bulletin said.
No confirmation yet as to whether last night's outages were the product of a cyberattack, but with this bulletin being released just over a week ago it really makes you wonder if somebody got in there and mined a bunch of data.
We'll get you an update once we know more about these outages.
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