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