Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Fiber optic sabotage

At the start of Javaposse podcast #244, Dick et al explain how they got digitally disconnected from the outside world... Saboteurs digged 2 holes and cut a crucial fiber cable at 2 different locations. Hacking with a shovel!

Anyway, this is a new type of cyber attack, or is it warfare? Fiber optic cables are usually deployed as rings. So if the cable gets cut at one point, the other part of the ring still works fine and can handle all the traffic. But if you cut it at 2 points, end of story. Not only the Internet connections were down for 50.000+ people, but cell phones were dead as well.

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