Thousands of wireless, Internet and landline phone customers were without service from about 1:30 a.m. PDT after vandals had cut four fiber-optic cables owned by AT&T, reports C/Net. A cable in San Carlos, owned by Sprint Nextel, had also been severed about two later. But Sprint spokeswoman Crystal Davis said the company was able to reroute most of that traffic onto another fiber link and for the most part, service was not disrupted.
The loss of landline, cell phone and Internet service in parts of southern Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties, as well as areas of San Benito County, was amplified by the fact that multiple carriers were sending traffic on the same fiber-optic cables, which are owned by AT&T. Verizon Wireless and Sprint use AT&T’s regional network to connect their wireless cell phone towers to their respective national networks. The Mercury News has more details on the disruption.
The cell towers communicate with a switching station either over cable or through microwaves. “If the switch is not working, you are out of business,” said Ken Fattlar, a Verizon engineer.
The sabotage essentially froze operations in parts of the three counties at hospitals, stores, banks and police and fire departments that rely on 911 calls, computerized medical records, ATMs and credit and debit cards.
Police today are continuing their investigation into who deliberately cut fiber-optic cables in two underground locations in San Jose and two more in San Carlos around 1:30 a.m. Thursday in an apparent coordinated act of sabotage. The FBI is helping with the investigation.
This week’s report that cyber spies have hacked into the U.S. electric grid shines a bright light on some of the potentially catastrophic vulnerabilities in our national infrastructure.
The malicious computer programs the spies left behind would have allowed them to disrupt service. The intrusions, discovered by officials from the intelligence community, were found after electric companies gave the government permission to audit their systems. Cyber criminals may use SCADA systems (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition), as targets for extortion.
How serious is threat to power grid? Depends who you ask, says Network World. ABCnews.com steps you through a week without power.
“It’s all hype and it’s fear-mongering,” says Bruce Schneier, a security technologist who writes a blog and is chief of security at BT, a UK-based communications services company. He says odds are those countries have mapped U.S. power grids just as the U.S. has no doubt mapped theirs – but that it’s sort of business as usual rather than cause for concern.
