A cyberattack threatened to shut down Central Texas' 911 call system Sunday.
The Capital Area Council of Governments, which operates the system, confirmed to KUT that intermittent 911 outages were the result of a denial-of-service attack in which hackers flooded call centers with robocalls. The attack caused technical difficulties in Austin, Cedar Park, Hays County and Lakeway.
CAPCOG said it was notified about the hack around 1 p.m. by Round Rock's 911 call center. It said it determined the robocalls came from AT&T numbers, so it worked with the provider to identify and disconnect them. Normal operations were restored around 8 p.m.
Betty Voights, executive director of CAPCOG, said in a statement Monday that the agency is working with AT&T "to prevent a repeat of this type of attack that is intended to intentionally overload 9-1-1 phone systems."
The Dallas-based telecom giant told KUT it's investigating the incident.
CAPCOG said the attack disrupted service at call centers in at least seven of its 10-county area, affecting 21 law enforcement and first-response agencies in Central Texas:
- Round Rock Police Department
- Lakeway Police Department
- Travis County Sheriff's Office
- Austin/Travis County EMS
- Austin Fire Department
- Austin Police Department
- Kyle Police Department
- Llano County Sheriff's Office
- Burnet County Sheriff's Office
- Cedar Park Police Department
- Hays County Sheriff's Office
- Texas State Police Department
- Pflugerville Police Department
- Taylor Police Department
- University of Texas Police Department
- Marble Falls Police Department
- Georgetown Police Department
- Fayette County Sheriff's Office
- Leander Police Department
- Lockhart Police Department
- Luling Police Department
The incident comes less than a month after news of a 2022 hack came to light in which data from "nearly all" AT&T customers was stolen. Another hack earlier this year exposed the data of nearly 8 million AT&T customers.
CAPCOG said it informed federal authorities about the attack, per federal guidelines.
