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Vandals Keep Snipping Fiber Optic Cables in California With Impunity

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:29AM

    by zocalo (302) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:29AM (#211838)
    Given that it is possible to benchmark a fibre optic cable's performance and use changes in that benchmark as an indication that the link has been tampered with (e.g. potentially tapped), maybe these cuts are just a red herring. Some bad actor could theoretically sever a fibre they want to tap at Point A, then relocate to Point B a few splices away, and install a tap onto the same fibre they just cut at Point A. Telco engineers will eventually turn up at Point A and repair or replace the cut fibre - the 1,200ft run in TFA - then the NOC re-benchmarks the entire fibre *including* the tap installed at Point B as part of their updated anti-tampering data. Not foolproof, certainly. There are lots of risks for the bad actor - especially in the timing - but most of that could be mitigated by having a man on the inside, which they would likely need in the first place to get sufficiently detailed information on cable routes and IDs to know which cables to tap and where best to tap them.

    I wonder if anyone has thought to see if there are any patterns in the kinds of companies/organizations that are being impacted by these cuts, or check the entire fibre optic run, not just the section that was cut...
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:49AM (#211844)

    There are lots of risks for the bad actor...

    Unless you're a tla. Or Too Big To Fail. Or...

  • (Score: 1) by btendrich on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:24PM

    by btendrich (3700) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @04:24PM (#211984)

    I thought this might be possible too for a while, but if they are testing from both directions (as they should) during an outage, the two sides wouldn't be able to agree on the location of the cut, since each side would be seeing a different cut. Also, the tap should be visible on an otdr trace. In any case, this may be practiced in other countries where we can't exert pressure on the telco, inside the U.S. I'll bet it's easier to exert pressure on th company and just tap it at the endpoint.

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday July 21 2015, @05:32PM

      by zocalo (302) on Tuesday July 21 2015, @05:32PM (#212006)
      As you say, very little reason for a US government agency to be doing this - they'd have just gone to the telco directly, ideally with an NSL in hand. I was actually thinking more of industrial espionage or a foreign government, but it does require that they know when the initial fault finding and location detection tests have been done to make the second cut or tap (hence the inside man) and the technical capability to tap the fibre without leaving an obvious telltale on an OTDR or other diagnostic trace. The latter is technically possible, but does kind of limit the potential number of actors who could pull it off, and even there there's always the risk of someone inadverantly stumbling across the tap while doing other work along the fibre route.

      Personally, I think it's far more likely to turn out to be someone(s) upset at the effects the tech industry is having on local house prices, employment prospects and other social issues, or some similar form of axe to grind against the telcos or their customers, but what use is a tech web forum without some tinfoil headwear? :)
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!