AT&T Offers $250k Reward To Find the California Fiber-Optic Ripper

An anonymous reader writes: AT&T have offered a $250,000 reward to anyone providing information leading to the arrest and conviction of what appears to be a serial disruptor of fiber-optic connections in California. The latest incident has taken place in Livermore in the San Francisco Bay Area, where an individual thought by the FBI to possess expert knowledge and specialist tools severed a critical AT&T cable, gaining access to the enclosure via a manhole. The attack precedes 11 previous ones in California in the preceding twelve months.

Comments

OMG, he's messing with my netflix

[known_coward_69]

death penalty

No real harm done

[Anonymous Coward]

Since AT&T was obviously not using those fiber lines properly to begin with.

Anonymous Grammar Nerd

[Anonymous Coward]

No, "The attack is preceded by 11 previous ones", not precedes them!

Re:Anonymous Grammar Nerd

[Frnknstn]

precedes 11 previous ones in California in the preceding twelve months.

No grammar nerding needed, that sentence should annoy anyone with a basic understanding of English.

I know who did it

[Coren22]

Just take a look through the list of people laid off by AT&T in the past year.

missed opportunity

[mschaffer]

Personally, I am a bit disappointed that the reward wasn't 256k.

Re:missed opportunity

[93 Escort Wagon]

250K ought be be enough for anybody.

Expert knowledge, specialist tools and TIME TRAVEL

[gweilo8888]

My god, he has access to time travel as well!

I know I know!

[Krishnoid]

It's these guys! Can I have my money now?

Critical Cable?

[TechyImmigrant]

There shouldn't be critical cables. There should be redundant paths to make the network tolerant to any individual cut.

Re:Critical Cable?

[Harlequin80]

Redundancy does not preclude criticality. In the end no network is infinite so if you keep cutting cables eventually it will do down, but irrespective with every cut connection performance will degrade.

Re:Critical Cable?

[Shatrat]

I think that's the point. This guy knows the fiber paths and goes around cutting both sides of the ring. Even if all traffic is protected it costs tens of thousands of dollars to do emergency repair work on a fiber cable.

Also, diversity is typically only used from office to office. From the office out to the environmental cabinets and pedestals and so forth servicing individual customers there's typically a single fiber path.

Re:Critical Cable?

[Harlequin80]

I'm not in the US so I don't know what your fibre service failure levels are like.....

But what level of redundancy is required and is reasonable? Major backhaul sub-surface cables are rarely cut but when they are it is usually because someone hit them with a digger. In this case you need geographic redundancy to avoid having your redundant cable cut. So you run a second back haul cable in the opposite direction giving you 100% redundancy should either cable get cut. The odds that both cables get severed at the same time is vanishingly small, so is a third cable reasonable to build?

You get way more major failures due to software or in data centres where someone kicks out the wrong plug then you do from the physical fibre in the ground.

Also I would be surprised if any executive bonuses came close to the cost of a fibre run. The monopoly thing is a whole different story and I don't believe it should exist.

Re:Critical Cable?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

There shouldn't be critical cables. There should be redundant paths to make the network tolerant to any individual cut.

They ARE redundant. They're typically arranged in rings. You have to cut them in TWO places, one on each side of the area you want to darken, to cause the failure.

When the first one is cut the traffic switches to alternate routing in milliseconds. (Typically: The other way around the ring.) It's when the second cut is made that the failure occurs.

Unfortunately, it takes a lot longer to fix the first break than it takes the bad guy to go to the second location and cut the second cable.

The need to cut two cables to cause failures is a sign that the person doing it may have inside information, in order to know which lines to cut to create outages. On the other hand, he's cut a number of lines, so maybe it's just that he's lucked into creating outages by cutting enough that he isolated some areas.

what a reward.

[nimbius]

As a californian, 250k might not seem like a lot, but with that kind of cash you could afford to water the lawn AND take a shower after!

Laid off telecom worker?

[r-diddly]

Maybe those layoffs weren't such a cost-saver after all!

Re:'Precedes' preceding previous 'preceding events

[swillden]

*sigh*

It's not a mistake, it's a clue. A good one. Clearly, the perp is a time-traveller, which really narrows down the list of suspects.

Re:I know where he is.

[Anonymous Coward]

And, he's probably gay. From the summary:

* The latest incident has taken place in the San Francisco Bay Area
* Gained access to the enclosure via a manhole

I mean, comeon. Right?

Expert knowledge and specialist tools?

[pla]

Seriously? Find a pole marked in orange (or in this case, manhole). Take the bolt-cutters to the only armored cable on the pole / in the hole. Make sure to repeat at least a few feet away to make it virtually impossible to splice cleanly.

This doesn't take "expert knowledge and specialist tools", any moron could do it.

Now, doing it without blinding yourself with a 40W IR laser beam...

Re:Dangerous Act Of Terror

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we maybe stop referring to every fucking criminal act out there as a "terror attack?" It's childish and stupid. It's the same mentality that got the front page story of the day on practically every website, a non-white kid in a US school builds a clock and brings it to school to show to his teachers. They arrest him and attempt to have him charged. People like you are DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for this. Your irrational fear of "terrorists" has gotten the better of you, mentally and as a society as a whole.

"Let's home this is not the scheme of some foreign enemy," fuck's sake...grow the fuck up you racist cocksucker.

Re:Dangerous Act Of Terror

[Kjella]

Cutting communications lines is a particularly difficult type of terror attack to prevent. Anyone who has ever worked around vital communication lines knows where they are and breaking those lines can be quite easy. Catching such a person may take quite some time and expense. Let's hope this is not the scheme of some foreign enemy.

Terrorism, as in "violence or threats of violence used for intimidation or coercion"? I'm afraid it fails both the first and second part. While sabotage seems to be spot on, "the deliberate destruction, disruption, or damage of equipment, a public service, etc, as by enemy agents, dissatisfied employees, etc"