Verizon to prosecute anons for communications sabotage Verizon's mad as hell, and it just doesn't know who to take it out on. Yet. The US's largest mobile telco has reportedly filed a lawsuit against vandals who plunged large chunks of Silicon Valley into communications darkness by sabotaging a fiber-optic cable. The catch? US authorities investigating the incident have yet to …
"AT&T has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the perpetrators."
That's been upped to $250,000.00 as reported here on El Reg over a week ago.
"Normally, a network outage can be attributed to Steve the builder inadvertently putting his JCB digger or Kango drill through some cable."
I believe the universal unit of measurement is "backhoe" for these events.
"In this case, though, there was clear intent."
Indeed.
"Authorities reported the vandals had to lift up some heavy manhole covers"
~100 pounds isn't heavy.
"using a special tool"
Crowbars are special? I've never seen a manhole cover that needed more than a crowbar.
"climb down a shaft"
Read: 'support own weight until feet hit bottom of 4 foot pit'.
"and then chop through heavy cables."
Not chop, rather saw, with a hacksaw, according to what I saw on the news. The marks are unmistakable. Except the San Carlos fiber ... That looked like it had been cut with a PVC cutter. In my mind there is more than one perp, and one is a copy-cat.
"The four AT&T cables were encased in tough plastic sheath, with one cable containing 360 fibers and the other three holding 48 fibers each."
552 bits of glass total? Bringing down a total of 100,000 customers? Either there is a hell of a lot of dark fiber involved (likely), or a couple of those customers use a lot of bandwidth (considering Verizon had issues, even more likely ...).
It looks like an inside job; as most people on the street would have no idea where to begin to go to cut off this kind of service. This nearly always happens during contract negotiations in some part of the country. AT&T made billions in spite of the economy and is currently playing whack-a-mole with the union negotiators for all the different unions they deal with in different parts of the country.
Me, personally....I hope they catch these scum and throw the book at them.
This was a disgruntled (probably ex) employee. It sounds like they did not pick a random "thing" in a tunnel to wack, but knew where to go and what they were doing. Ergo the most likely culprits are people who have that knowledge through formal channels, which means they had that knowledge due to their present or former profession. Probably not a long list, especially with the "who got fired recently" filter applied.
I have really been expecting something like this to happen. It usually takes a lot of effort to get to at the lines, but there is also usually zero security.
Since no group has taken credit it was probably someone pulling a prank. A prank that affect 911 calls, medical/police/fire communications ..... can easily cost lives. Not to mention the actual losses both financial and personal caused by this.
Hopefully such sites are going to suddenly sprout motion detectors, infra red IP cameras .... then they just need a guy at a PC to get the alert, check the most recent footage and call the police. Maybe turn on some flood lights for a better picture, have a nice chat.
My first thought was "single point of failure", but on reflection that's not the message here. If the attack really was intentional, it wouldn't be hard for a small organisation to cut two lines, or three. So how much disruption can one cause by cutting a few cables? Was this someone trying out a movie plot scenario for Bruce Schneier?
I think word has spread through the animal community and this is the first wave of assaults against humankind, being lead by the critters of the world. Since we, as people, have redirected our military technology efforts to the cleansing of certain types of undesirable creatures, I believe they’re hitting us in our Achilles heel, by depriving us of communications, internet connectivity, email, face book, and porn.
You’d figure that since we have opposable thumbs, we’d have the upper hand. However, if the crackberry dies or someone is unable to send 300 million emails regarding free erectile dysfunction aid, everything grounds to a screeching halt.
I think each and every one of us should quietly reflect on what’s ahead of us, as it’s a sobering reminder of how bad things could get. Before you know it, we could be forced to listen to poor quality analog wireless radio, what do you think that kind of impact would have on our children?
Maybe in a year or two we'll see pics of the perps on Google Streetview, blurred faces and all. You have to wonder though, if these fiber optic links were so important why did they only secure them with a manhole cover needing a special tool instead of a proper lock? Weather concerns?
There's an apostrophe in aren't because there's a letter (o) missing.
Apostrophes have two jobs:
1. They indicate possession (John's hat, the dog's b*ll*cks, assorted ladies' underwear)
2 They indicate missing letters (aren't, haven't, pick'n'mix)
The poor things are seriously misunderstood, even more seriously misused, and find themselves in some really unpleasant places (the plural of tomato is not tomato's, or even tomatoe's).
Signed: One who knows.
Your case 1 (possession) is actually an archaic form of case 2 (missing letters) because Old English appended "es" in the genitive case (not unlike modern German, which draws from a similar linguistic ancestry).
Not useful, I know, but if you're the sort of person who cares about apostophes then you might find it interesting.
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