Attacks on Fiber Networks in California Baffle FBI

WSJ ^ | 8/12/15 | Drew FitzGerald

[Kartographer]

The attacker struck close to midnight, climbing into a manhole at the mouth of California’s Niles Canyon and slicing a series of cables that collectively carried billions of bits of Internet data.

Hundreds of miles away at a Zayo Group Holdings Inc. network operations center in Tulsa, Okla., engineers saw the disruption immediately and later a second break made further up the road the same February night.

As monitoring software lighted up with red bars indicating several circuit failures, technicians pinpointed the breaches at a familiar place—the site of two previous cuts. Several months later, in June, Fremont, Calif., police reported a fifth cut.

[kingu]

I remember when there was some mysterious line cuts near China Lake and Ridgecrest a number of years ago. Large chunks of telco wire were sliced at two points along a major trunk. When 128k modems came out, there was some line issues that were preventing them from being used at full speed. Turned out that right smack between the two line breaks was a house owned by a Russian sleeper who had installed quite a clever little installation to monitor modem communications over telco lines.

I imagine that the only way to tap a fiber line is to make a couple cuts and install whatever device you want somewhere between the breaks.

[driftdiver]

No problem. It was over time (aka doubletime) after all

[driftdiver]

There are other ways if you have the right equipment. A break is way to obvious and would be investigated.

[driftdiver]

Its called welding.

[kingu]

I can see them inspecting multiple miles of lines after the first break.. By the fifth, doubt they’d consider doing that.

[huldah1776]

non-subscribers...

http://tomfernandez28.com/2015/08/12/attacks-on-fiber-networks-in-california-baffle-fbi/

[driftdiver]

The dont really visually inspect the cable. They can tell where the break is almost to the foot through test equipment. Plus most of its buried so they couldnt see it anyway.

I worked in the telecom industry for several years. Not in teh field but in the operations center side of these cuts. There is equipment which can read the signal through the glass but the more dependable just requires them to disconnect the cable and connect it to their device. WOuld be a very short outage which would probably not investigated. The harder issue is actually using the signal and interpreting the data. Much of which is hopefully encrypted.

[BwanaNdege]

Fiber optic can have signal injected and removed without cutting. If you make a cut and install your own equipment, that cut/equipment can me pinpointed by a OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometer), basically a laser rangefinder that shows all connections or the first break in the fiber.

The OTDR then gives an optical range to that "event". Plug that data into your Cable Management GIS (Geospatial Information System) software which will then give you a map location for the event.

OptiCon Demo

[realcleanguy]

The FBI is’t really looking. Seriously. a good Telco manager, with the data and cable maps could figure this out in 90 days. I can see a pattern just from the news reports. I forwarded information to the FBI and got “No Response”. They could care less. The FBI is nothing but an arm of the ruling party. I mean, look how long it took them to request Hillary’s server? 3.5 years????Who are these guys, the keystone cops, or a partisan security team?

Ok, I’m off my soap box. But they are a lame organization

[Political Junkie Too]

Looking at the map in the article, three thoughts pop out.

1. The cuts triangulate around the largest company in the area, Chevron. Could this have been an attempt to disrupt Chevron?

2. Looking at cut #1 and #4, could this have been an attempt to disrupt the Lawrence Livermore Sandia National Laboratory in Livermore, by cutting the communications to Berkeley?

3. Could the cuts have been intended not to disrupt, but really have an agent on the repair team to install some sniffers right into the lines as a part of the "repair?"

-PJ

[x]

Giant moths?

[GingisK]

I imagine that the only way to tap a fiber line is to make a couple cuts and install whatever device you want somewhere between the breaks.

It just takes a couple of turns of the cable around a photo-multiplier tube. Enough photons leak out of a bend to provide a fully functional tap.

[Toliph]

Probably the same guys who shot at those transformers down south of San Jose a few years back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

[TangoLimaSierra]

...a series of cables that collectively carried billions of bits of Internet data.

Kind of an understatement there.

[VideoDoctor]

Probably within a half dozen to a dozen more cuts they’ll probably have some definite clues. /s