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San Francisco Fiber Optic Cable Cutter Strikes Again
HughPickens.com writes: USA Today reports that the FBI is investigating at least 11 physical attacks on high-capacity Internet cables in California's San Francisco Bay Area dating back to at least July 6, 2014, including one early this week. "When it affects multiple companies and cities, it does become disturbing," says Special Agent Greg Wuthrich. "We definitely need the public's assistance." The pattern of attacks raises serious questions about the glaring vulnerability of critical Internet infrastructure, says JJ Thompson. "When it's situations that are scattered all in one geography, that raises the possibility that they are testing out capabilities, response times and impact," says Thompson. "That is a security person's nightmare."
Mark Peterson, a spokesman for Internet provider Wave Broadband, says an unspecified number of Sacramento-area customers were knocked offline by the latest attack. Peterson characterized the Tuesday attack as "coordinated" and said the company was working with Level 3 and Zayo to restore service. It's possible the vandals were dressed as telecommunications workers to avoid arousing suspicion, say FBI officials. Backup systems help cushion consumers from the worst of the attacks, meaning people may notice slower email or videos not playing, but may not have service completely disrupted. But repairs are costly and penalties are not stiff enough to deter would-be vandals. "There are flags and signs indicating to somebody who wants to do damage: This is where it is folks," says Richard Doherty. "It's a terrible social crime that affects thousands and millions of people."
Mark Peterson, a spokesman for Internet provider Wave Broadband, says an unspecified number of Sacramento-area customers were knocked offline by the latest attack. Peterson characterized the Tuesday attack as "coordinated" and said the company was working with Level 3 and Zayo to restore service. It's possible the vandals were dressed as telecommunications workers to avoid arousing suspicion, say FBI officials. Backup systems help cushion consumers from the worst of the attacks, meaning people may notice slower email or videos not playing, but may not have service completely disrupted. But repairs are costly and penalties are not stiff enough to deter would-be vandals. "There are flags and signs indicating to somebody who wants to do damage: This is where it is folks," says Richard Doherty. "It's a terrible social crime that affects thousands and millions of people."
I live in what might be considered a rural area by some but I am 5 miles from my state capitol. There are underground fiber lines going down the main highway and fiber up my road to about 100 yards from me.. I actually walked down and watched them snake it under a road with a pneumatic torpedo.. cant get it.. the guys who install cable are Russian Illegals hired by a third party contractor for Verizon .. I talked with them for a while .. If our country ever gets attacked a few well placed people in these third party contractor companies that don't get checked will be able to take out our whole country in hours. They will know every weak point.
Agreed. Some of these cables are 600+ count fibers or are multiple bundles within the conduit.
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
A ways back a broker got us a diagrammatic fiber map for a region (200x200 miles) so we could review options for siting a data center. With the limited level of detail and some driving around you can quickly detail things out. If you understand how common-trench utilities work, it isn't hard to determine sensitive areas.
Just saying it doesn't take much inside information if you are willing to open a set of manholes in two locations and cut everything in and out at the same time.
I am surprised though that more of the manholes aren't alarmed though. It is relatively easy to do, and for meet-me manholes we always had them on each bolt.
So the Internet was designed with resilience unless someone has a strong pair of garden shears?
The Internet will do just fine. Your personal ability to access it, watch a movie or dial 911 will not.
The big networks all have many data centers and diverse physical routing paths between them. But most people seemingly fail to realize that your house, your neighborhood - heck, maybe even your county if you're rural - probably does not. There is more than one physical path to get data from a colo facility in San Francisco to one in Seattle (even if it adds a lot of latency). There is probably only one physical way to get data to your house. Yes, even your cable provider and the telco almost certainly share a conduit somewhere near you. Mostly that's because there are simply a limited number of good rights of way to run fiber (frequently railroad tracks, gas pipelines, etc.) in any given area.
And that's also because it makes doesn't make financial sense to spend the money to ensure that your house has two redundant cables coming out of it that take two separate paths out of your neighborhood to different COs, etc. That's true not just for houses but in many cases for cell towers, Central Offices and other telecom points of presence that make last-mile connections rather than backbone connections. So that's why a fiber cut is so bad - everyone served locally by that fiber will be out of luck, even if the Internet as a whole is not.
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