Cyberattack on vendor Intrado knocked out 988 Lifeline calls for nearly a day
- Organization
- 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline
- Exploit
- Supply Chain Attack
- Industry
- Public Health
On December 1, 2022, voice calling to the U.S. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline stopped working for close to a full day. In early February 2023 the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration confirmed the cause was a cybersecurity incident rather than a technical fault.
The incident struck the network of Intrado, the telecommunications company that carries calls for the 988 system. A SAMHSA spokeswoman said the Lifeline's voice calling functionality was, in her words, "rendered unavailable as a result of a cybersecurity incident." Federal officials did not name an attacker, describe the method, or indicate that caller data had been taken.
People phoning the helpline during the outage could not reach a counsellor. Text and chat services continued to work, and SAMHSA redirected callers to them while the disruption lasted.
Intrado engaged a third-party assessor to investigate and law enforcement agencies were notified. The Federal Communications Commission said in December that it was investigating the outage.
As of the February 2023 disclosure no attacker had been publicly identified and no attribution had been offered. Representatives Tony Cardenas and Jay Obernolte introduced a bill calling for better coordination and reporting around cyberattacks on the 988 system.