Cyber Attack on American City

Cyber Attack on American City

perens.com

Just after midnight on Thursday, April 9, unidentified attackers climbed down four manholes serving the Northern California city of Morgan Hill and cut eight fiber cables in what appears to have been an organized attack on the electronic infrastructure of an American city. Its implications, though startling, have gone almost un-reported.

That attack demonstrated a severe fault in American infrastructure: its centralization. The city of Morgan Hill and parts of three counties lost 911 service, cellular mobile telephone communications, land-line telephone, DSL internet and private networks, c

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This actually happened in April, but I don't recall seeing any activity on ATS about it. It was recently brought to my attention by a fellow infosec colleague of mine. I recommend you read this and understand what is required from a technological perspective to survive.

1. Cash is King - As long as the problem is local, the value of the cash in your pocket will go up, only because now there is a scarcity of currency.

2. Backup Communications are Required - Cell phones, Voip, Nextel Connect's, Text Messages, etc become null and void. 2-Way Walkie Talkie, Ham Radio, and Scanners are essential. At the very least, purchase a scanner. I have a handheld Digital Trunking Scanner I purchased from RadioShack for ~$300. It has saved my butt more than once already (in traffic etc) and will many times alert you to when the police are coming to your door. Plus it's great entertainment while you are learning about radios etc. If you don't do any of these things, at least link up with your local ham radio club and make one of those guys your friends...



perens.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by HunkaHunka

A big plus for Morgan Hill was that emergency services had an well-practiced partnership with the local hams. Since you can never budget for all of the communications technicians you'll need in an emergency, using these volunteers is a must for any civil authority. They come with their own equipment, they run their own emergency drills and thus are ready to serve, and they are tinkerers able to improvise the communications system needed to meet a particular emergency.

It sounds like some kind of national security drill but one they don't want us to know they are conducting. None of the reasons you'd think someone would cut the lines have materialized.

Wasnt that the same time as the Undersea cables being "damaged" or cut feeding north Africa and the middle east to?

I am sure it was close to then?

Kind Regards,

Elf

I do remember this, and I remember hearing references to contract disputes regarding union labor. Of course the unions denied that they would ever sabotage to prove a point.

But the OP point is still valid. Much of our infrastructure is in pretty precarious spots nowadays.

Sounds like an inside job. I don't think you can just Google the schematics for the fiber optic networks of a city of your choosing. You'd have to know where the cables are, which cables to cut, which manholes to crawl down to get there, and the number of cables you need to attack to shut down communications.

Either several people in the communications companies were seriously gullible to social engineering, or the attack was conducted by people within those companies.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


thats nuts!

I wonder if this is related to the attacks on the government websites in the last few days?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

something fishy happening?

The undersea cables being cut happened from the begining of 2008 in february until as late as December 2008 with 5 major ones, including some to the US being severed:

Feb 08

Feb again 5th cut


And then some more in Dec 2008

Here

Kind Regards.

Elf



[edit on 7-7-2009 by MischeviousElf]

I remember the undersea cable story from a year or more ago as well. This story is a great find OP. Pretty darn interesting considering the DDOS attacks talked about on other threads.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


oh hunka... i am scareded nows. plz hold me kthnx.
were the culprits all wearing masks from "Scream" and "Halloween"?

and hunka...who do you think it was that did it?

was it blue eyed blonde haired "nordic al quaeda"?
(those are the most sneaky kind of al quaedases.)


-

I'm leaning on the side of disgruntled union workers to be honest...

It's funny though because TCP/IP was developed as a protocol which did not require centralization, however the protocols built on top of it implement a more client-server model in which they DO require centralization...


Go figure...

Originally posted by XKrossX
I do remember this, and I remember hearing references to contract disputes regarding union labor. Of course the unions denied that they would ever sabotage to prove a point.

But the OP point is still valid. Much of our infrastructure is in pretty precarious spots nowadays.

Ive worked on construction sites in N.Y.C.where non union work was sabatoged by union guys.Dont mess with the unions.The only other thing is maybe some kind of terrorist attack dry run.