'Coordinated attack' downs services with cut lines

Internet services were apparently choppy when several key backbone lines were cut.

They seem to think this was a coordinated "attack".

Is the U.S. Internet system vulnerable?

What would "people" do if the internet was chopped off for a week?

'Coordinated attack' downs services with cut lines

see map for details...

Internet providers suffered disruptions Tuesday in what a West Coast internet provider said appeared to be a coordinated physical attack on three high-capacity "backbone" lines in California.

Wave Broadband said three major fiber-optic cables in the Sacramento area were "physically severed in what appears to be a coordinated attack on multiple internet carriers."

Wave spokesman Mark Peterson said the company's subscribers in the suburban Sacramento area were suffering outages, and crews were working to restore the connections, which were severed at 4:20 a.m. local time. Peterson said Wave itself is a customer of the two backbone companies apparently targeted, Level 3 and Zayo. Both backbone companies are based in Colorado.

Was anybody affected?

Strange things happen

a reply to: xuenchen

Just asking, but if they were affected, how could they respond?

I know people wouldn't like the internet shut off.

I'm not sure what "people" would do though.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: xuenchen

Just asking, but if they were affected, how could they respond?

Well I never thought of that !!

But maybe some were just affected by slow-downs in semi-affected areas.

a reply to: xuenchen

Interesting to say the least. I hope nothing happens, but this is a conspiracy site and if any sort of coordinated attack on the U.S. would happen, this would be in the major suspicion area. I myself work off of satellites for internet, so unless they are shot down i should be good.

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: xuenchen

Just asking, but if they were affected, how could they respond?

Wait, what...? I'm pretty buzzed right now, so I may have misinterpreted your reply, but are you assuming the loss of a T-3 line prevents one from picking up a land line or their cell and reporting it..?

Long live Scotch..!!!!

a reply to: xuenchen

The "general" location of this attack is 15 miles from that underground electrical room in west Stockton shot-up with assault weapons a few years ago. There was an ATS thread on it...I am mobile so not easy to search archives.

That case went cold with no physical evidence found.

This sort of thing happens quite a lot - maybe not "coordinated" - I work in the telecoms industry and the amount of fibre cuts we get for a variety of reasons beggers belief.

One one shift cycle, we had 7 breaks in 4 days, some malicious, some are the result of civils work being carried out, other times it's those pesky rodents. One one break we had last week on the Scottish borders - as a result of highway work - it took out almost 2,000 Sky Broadband customers for nearly 2 days.

originally posted by: BestinShow

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: xuenchen

Just asking, but if they were affected, how could they respond?

Wait, what...? I'm pretty buzzed right now, so I may have misinterpreted your reply, but are you assuming the loss of a T-3 line prevents one from picking up a land line or their cell and reporting it..?

Long live Scotch..!!!!

All traffic, be it IP, Voice or Data will eventually traverse these "backbone" fibre optic cables. Depending on how the network is built would depend on whether traffic is affected, but there is no such thing as a dedicated "backbone internet" fibre. By the time it hits the core network, it is usually in the higher SDH/SONET domain or even DWDM, which is an aggregate of all traffic types.

My internet service was down a day and a half last week. Not fun.

I found this site today that tracks real time outages across the country:

Outage Analyzer

a reply to: xuenchen

You need to understand that the internet is not just one set of fiber connections.

It's alot of them.

Sprint, at&t etc etc. Many companies provide internet backbones.

If you cut a few in one place. Others will take up the slack. Sure those connections will be saturated.
However traffic can be rerouted so that websites can still function.

A coordinated attack would have to take out fiber all over the country to cause a disruption.

I suspect someone's testing the lines and response times.

I've been saying for ages that if terrorists really want to upset Americans, they should stop going after high security targets like airplanes and buildings, and go after the infrastructure that people rely on in their every day lives.

Internet security is extremely heavy at the 14 or so hub sites around the world, but if you know where the fibre lines are, a bit of digging in a remote area with a good backhoe would cause chaos.

Rent about ten backhoes, and put them in areas where the fibre lines get run through very remote sections, you wouldn't be noticed and you'd be able to take out most of the internet in the USA very quickly.

In Canada, one fibre line got cut a few years back and took out all communications in Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC, and the entire Northwest Territories.

If terrorists really want to take out America, they should go after the completely unprotected soft underbelly, instead of trying to hit hard high security targets.

a reply to: babybunnies

Well now you've told somebody how to do it !!

originally posted by: grey580
a reply to: xuenchen

You need to understand that the internet is not just one set of fiber connections.

It's alot of them.

Sprint, at&t etc etc. Many companies provide internet backbones.

If you cut a few in one place. Others will take up the slack. Sure those connections will be saturated.
However traffic can be rerouted so that websites can still function.

A coordinated attack would have to take out fiber all over the country to cause a disruption.

Many of those backbones are shared between the major providers - ie Sprint or Shaw BigPipe might run in one part of the country, and is shared with Comcast, Time Warner, etc, then Time Warner etc might put in fibre in another part of the country and it's shared with Sprint, Comcast etc.

There are a LOT of fibre lines all over the USA, but all those networks need to be connected for it to really work. If you take out a few fibre lines across the Midwest, no traffic would be communicated between East and West. Shortly after 9/11, ONE undersea cable was cut in the Mediterrean and took out internet services to almost the entire Middle East.

The Internet is a much more fragile system than a lot of people realize.

originally posted by: xuenchen

originally posted by: chr0naut
a reply to: xuenchen

Just asking, but if they were affected, how could they respond?

Well I never thought of that !!

But maybe some were just affected by slow-downs in semi-affected areas.

Yes, partial connectivity is possible but if the cuts were coordinated and networks running near the capacity of backbone device routing tables, a re-route may take some time, during which there would be a break in connectivity and after which there would be likely to be capacity limitations.

originally posted by: xuenchen
a reply to: babybunnies

Well now you've told somebody how to do it !!

A denial of service attack against the backbone routers would be cheaper and more effective than physically cutting lines.

Perhaps a poisoning of the router tables with invalid or high latency addresses.

There is much security in place to prevent this but if someone has a back door in the routers (such as the Chinese did recently at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, or the Russians did last year), it gives them a bypass to nearly all security measures.

As we know the NSA mandates the inclusion of such back doors and key escrow (under their authority), this type of attack is likely to occur because the exploit exists and is awaiting discovery by malicious parties.

the internet does go down locally once in a while but in general its not a long lasting problem, if the service wasnt being provided for whatever reasons for longer than a day it would be a major problem for most households

a reply to: xuenchen
Map here

snf

These are located by quite a few military installations.

a reply to: chr0naut
Perhaps by tethering to your phone.

There's multiple backbone carriers heading in multiple directions throughout and beyond the United States. It would take a lot of breaks to truly take down the "internet" in the US. With such complexity, what is more likely is what usually happens. At any point in time, most systems and segments are operational, with some links down for a variety of reasons. A coordinated attack to take down the "internet", or at least severely cripple it, would take a lot of people in more than a few locations physically cutting line. If you tried to do it through cyber attack, you'd have to mount attacks across multiple systems and overwhelm their defenses. Most systems worth a damned have DDOS protection and competent sys-admins to ward off attacks. I run a basic packaage in a datacenter and get DDOS included, and can do a bit to setup my system to handle some types of attacks automatically. In the event someone really wants to mess with it, I would be alerted of suspicious activity and have the tools available to deal with the perps. That's a junior admin on standard hardware. Enterprise level has a ton more available for their gear.