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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 our 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."
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:47PM
NSA doesn't need to splice cables. NSA can demand access to the cables and plant child porn on anyone who refuses.
Far more plausible than your bullshit NSA theory: you're doing it, and you're the Luddite nutjob.
I don't think the GP mentioned the NSA. The NSA wouldn't have to, but It could be anyone:
Organized Crime
China
Russia
...
Wikileaks
Snowden
Microsoft (to help with Bing)
etc.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:22PM
Look at the title of that post.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:53PM
Oops, that's what I get for not reading titles (kind of hate it when the post doesn't work without the title, sigh).
In any case, the serious half of my response still stands, that there are groups other than the NSA that may want to copy and parse internet data for their own ends.