Issues with Central Texas 911 lines caused by 'random attack'

TEXAS - Some people in Central Texas were unable to reach 911 on Sunday, August 4, and the coordinator for the region’s emergency communications blamed a targeted attack on their systems.

Mayor Kirk Watson said on social media emergency calls were going through, but dispatchers were having difficulty hearing callers, the automatic location information was missing, and some calls were rolling to another public safety answering point.

The first report on social media was from Llano County at a little before noon on Sunday. Then Burnet, Cedar Park, Lago Vista, Lakeway, Marble Falls, Taylor, Hays, and the City of Austin said they were impacted, too.

These 911 systems are all managed by CAPCOG, or Capital Area Council of Governments, which, according to their website, said they "provide critical infrastructure to support call processing that ensures 911 systems remain operational."

On Sunday, there were technical difficulties and people calling for emergencies were directed to use other numbers.

CAPCOG’s Executive Director said the issues resulted from a random Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attack.

"Sunday’s cause of 9-1-1 issues in some of the CAPCOG counties resulted from a random Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attack that caused call volumes to exceed capacity with the intention of overloading telecommunicators and causing technical difficulties. CAPCOG learned of the problem first in Round Rock and pulled in dedicated AT&T technicians to address it; working with AT&T’s Resolution Center, the numbers receiving the robocalls were identified and disconnected with normal operations restored at about 8 p.m. Sunday.

 CAPCOG’s emergency communications staff notified all public safety answering point (PSAP) managers after the initial problem surfaced in Round Rock’s emergency call center around 1 p.m. Steps will be taken, 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 U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks are when a flood of malicious inbound calls targeting public safety response systems like 911. The attackers use automation to create hundreds or thousands of simultaneous calls.