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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the where'd-I-put-my-sidecutters dept.

Vandals snipped another fiber optic cable line in the San Francisco Bay area this week, the 12th incident of its kind in the region over the past year.

The latest attack occurred in the San Joaquin Valley town of Stockton, disrupting Internet, mobile phone, and 911 service for tens of thousands of AT&T and Verizon customers in three counties east of San Francisco. Service was restored about a day after the Tuesday incident.

The FBI, which is investigating the attacks, has not stated a motive, but it said the attacks usually occur in remote areas where there are no surveillance cameras. The initial attacks on California telecommunications lines began in July 2014. Whoever is responsible appears, for the moment, to be operating with impunity.

It would be funny and appropriate if they kept snipping the cables running to the Wall Street high frequency traders that keep front-running everyone's trades. Also, potentially lucrative if you go long in Depends adult diapers first.


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  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:37AM (#211809)

    I dunno why the word "attack" is used so many times to describe the snipping. If it's just people vandalizing the cables, then wouldn't we call it an attack when someone unauthorized paints up a box at the train yard too?

    I just get a bit tired of everything being worded so sensationally. Cutting fiber is different than spraying graffiti, sure, but it isn't necessarily an attack.

    My guess is that it's people doing it for sport and enjoying the headlines, wondering when they'll get an official designation like "terrorists" or "communists" from the state or federal government. I guess we can use "attack" after they get re-branded as "home-grown cyber hardware warfare insurgents" though.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:16AM (#211828)

    I dunno why the word "attack" is used so many times to describe the snipping. If it's just people vandalizing the cables, then wouldn't we call it an attack when someone unauthorized paints up a box at the train yard too?

    There's a difference between cutting fibers and painting up a box. Painting up a box doesn't affect the functionality of the box; it's a purely aesthetic issue (one may even argue that sometimes the painted box looks better). Cutting fibers, on the other hand, causes them to no longer work. In other words, it's a denial of service attack. Just a physical one, rather than a purely traffic-based one.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:49PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @03:49PM (#211973)

      The scale of the damage or what sort of damage is done is irrelevant. We don't know the person's intent, so we can't say it's an attack.

  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:44PM (#211880)

    Yeah, but Cyber Terrorism is the next Bin Laden. See the military industrial complex needs bogeymen in order to sell us as many $5000 hammers as possible.

    Seriously, turn on the TV and try to find a CSI-ish show which isn't constantly beating the Cyber-Terrorism drum.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @12:50PM (#211882)

    One possibility that is easily overlooked is a strategy the U.S. military (used?) to use. Damage would be caused to a cable in one location, and a team would use the known disruption in the fiber line to splice into the line at another location in order to intercept data. By the time the original repair is made, the splice is up and running, and nobody is the wiser except the spies.