Top Senator Issues Warning on Chinese Cyberattack Targeting Critical Infrastructure

Sen. Marco Rubio issued the warning amid the AT&T outage on Feb. 22.

A member of the hacking group Red Hacker Alliance who refused to give his real name, uses a website that monitors global cyberattacks on his computer at their office in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, on Aug. 4, 2020. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warned on social media that the outage that affected AT&T on Feb. 22 could be significantly smaller than what a Chinese cyberattack could do.

For much of the morning on Feb. 22, tens of thousands of people on Downdetector and elsewhere complained their AT&T or Cricket service was out, while AT&T, which owns Cricket, confirmed the outage. By the afternoon, the company stated that about 75 percent of its service was restored.