//The Wire//2130Z February 23, 2024//

//ROUTINE//

//BLUF: NO NEW INFO ON YESTERDAYS CELL OUTAGE. FARMER PROTESTS CONTINUE IN EUROPE.//

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-International Events-

Europe: Farmer protests continue as before, expanding in both the severity of disruptions caused and the number of nations affected. So far, major protests are underway in 14 European nations, with smaller, localized demonstrations of solidarity being reported in almost every nation in Europe. Major actions appear to largely be concentrated in France, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, and Poland.

Red Sea/HOA: Yesterday, the M/V ISLANDER was attacked with two Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs), causing damage and injuring one crew member. The vessel is continuing its voyage. No further details have been released by CENTCOM regarding this attack.

-Homefront-

USA: Information regarding yesterday’s mass cellular outage remains scarce. There have been few public statements from the various entities involved, with unconfirmed rumor mostly driving the public discourse surrounding the outage. Initial theories falsely attributed causation to the solar activity that appeared to coincide with the initial outage; the solar activity had nothing to do with the outage, and did not impact cellular networks in the United States.

Officially, AT&T (the root cause of the outage) has simply stated that the outage was the result of technical error, and not a cyberattack. No further details have been provided.

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Analyst Comments: More details regarding the cause of yesterday’s cell outage are not likely to be made public. As AT&T has confirmed that the outage was a deliberate action, the list of potential theories regarding the incident more or less boils down to intent. As AT&T has been extremely quiet regarding the cause of the outage, a wide range of possibilities exists; A careless/incompetent technician could have been the cause, or it could have been a deliberate cyberattack that authorities are trying to keep quiet. As a reminder, many substantial cyberattacks of recent memory were publicly disclosed as a “user error” at first, before quietly being confirmed as a cyberattack weeks later once the event is out of the press cycle.

Analyst: S2A1

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