Reminds me of the tale when a 'Gypsy Traveller' took out one of NATOs most important front line air defence fields with his digger last year.


Even the Evil Galatic Empire had problems protecting its infrastructure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcL6DwSufMI&feature=related

Maybe I'm not paranoid enough but it seems like if someone were testing the system doing it like this would just tip their hand to the authorities, making it harder to do the same thing when it came time for the real strike.

I wonder if it was actually a warning. You know, somebody trying to point out just how easy it would be to bring it all down. It seems they could have made it a lot worse beyond just cutting the cables. Cutting them followed by torching the place would have made it a lot more difficult to repair.

-Blast

More than likely AT&T made someone redundant in the previous 6 months or having some industrial dispute at the time rather than any practise for a net centric 'terrorist' attack. Something like the company IT specialist getting made redundant who then requests an 'A' record re-point to 74.125.65.104 together with an 'MX' record repoint to some notorious exchange server in Kazakhstan. Sometimes it amazes me how long it can take your average SME business just to figure out how to fix the problem or even realise that there is one.

Possible motives:

A) Terrorists making a test run, checking the "cause and effects"?

Ask the FBI about this possibility.

B) One or more disgruntled employee(s) or former employee(s) getting a little payback?

Any recent layoffs from local or state telecommunications companies?

C) Someone(s) trying to draw attention to a weakness/security flaw in the system?

Eco-Terrorists, Extra right or left wing extremists, or an overzealous and overly concerned citizen's group?

D) The cable broke by itself due to: Earthquake 1's thru 3's/road traffic vibration/whatever else is possible?

What do you think?

A) Possible;
B) More likely than A);
C) Possibility between A) & B), not unheard of;
D) Per CDR Spock: "When all possibilities and probabilities have been exhausted, then the impossibile and improbable possibilities must be examined.

What Blast posted is more-or-less what I was thinking (stop that, dude, you're freaking me out:-). I don't buy the prelude-to-mayhem thing; it doesn't fit.

This has got to be some sort of dumb-ass grievance/revenge or criminal activity. And given the specific, precise nature the vandalism, I'll bet there's a short list that's getting shorter by the minute.

The only part that really interested me was the amateurs bailing out the pro's. Guess it's my contrary nature. I really need to get back into the ham thing.

I'd say there are far more effective models to attack than multiple underground line cuts. If it were me, I would find a microwave relay site or two and take them out. They are usually remote, not well monitored if at all, and handle a huge amount of traffic.

I don't know much about shortwave radio, but there are some low-power low-bandwidth "modes" that are text-only. I'd love to see a portable/handheld device that implemented a shortwave version of e-mail or instant message chat that would work without any support infrastructure, at least point-to-point. A shortwave Blackberry?? Does anything like that exist?

Thanks,
Steve