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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'm not sure you understand the scale of the fiber being cut.
The south really misses their slaves, don't they?
As someone who has a fiber line running in front of their house (literally, there's a "Do Not Dig Here, Fiber" post at the bottom of my driveway), but has access to only DSL, I can't say it isn't tempting.
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.
It worked for Kansas, the band. As related by the band, when they were starting out they were to open for Aerosmith once. Steven Tyler had gotten a reputation for pulling the power cables to the amps if the opening band was doing too well, it might make Aerosmith look bad when they came on afterward. Kansas' stage manager had been informed of Tyler's antics, so he rigged up the amps to take power from the other side of the stage using hidden cables and put in fake cables to where all could see.
So Kansas goes on and kills, Kansas was very hot, tight band. During the set, Tyler is pacing the sideline backstage getting more and more incensed. Kansas does one encore, Tyler is livid. They do a second encore and Tyler loses his brain cell and rips out the fake cables, which only pissed him off more since that didn't stop Kansas. After that song, Dave Hope, Kansas' bass player, threw down his bass and went to over to explain to Tyler using very colorful language what he was doing wrong. Dave Hope was a big guy back then so it was very impressive. Afterwards, other members of Aerosmith apologized to Kansas for Tyler's behavior.
So the Internet was designed with resilience unless someone has a strong pair of garden shears?
Just goes to show that security is 99.9% people just being nice and not wanting to fuck things up for the rest.
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.
"95% of all Slashdot