[88059] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sgorman1@gmu.edu)
Thu Jan 19 13:01:44 2006
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 13:00:43 -0500
From: sgorman1@gmu.edu
In-reply-to: <43CFC5EC.4010107@ttec.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
While it is always fun to call the government stupid, or anyone else for that matter, there is a little more to the story.
- For one you do not need a backhoe to cut fiber
- Two, fiber carries a lot more than Internet traffic - cell phone, 911, financial tranactions, etc. etc.
- Three, while it is very unlikely terrorists would only attack telecom infrastructure, a case can be made for a telecom attack that amplifies a primary conventional attack. The loss of communications would complicate things quite a bit.
I'll agree it is very far fethced you could hatch an attack plan from FCC outage reports, but I would not call worrying about attacks on telecommunications infrastructure stupid. Enough sobriety though, please return to the flaming.
----- Original Message -----
From: Joe Maimon <jmaimon@ttec.com>
Date: Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:01 pm
Subject: Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat?
>
>
>
> Dennis Dayman wrote:
>
> > "In 2004, Department of Homeland Security officials became
> fearful that
> > terrorists might start using accidental dig-ups as a road map
> for deliberate
> > attacks, and convinced the FCC to begin locking up previously
> public data on
> > outages. In a commission filing, DHS argued successfully that
> revealing the
> > details..."
> >
> > --MORE--
> >
> > http://wired.com/news/technology/0,70040-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
> >
> > -Dennis
> >
> >
> >
>
> This is really stupid. Assuming the terrorist actually have the
> dozens
> of backhoes needed to completely erase meaningfull internet
> connectivity
> in north america, they would probably prefer to use them to smash
> cars
> and kill people on the interstate highways or something.
>
> Terrorist inflict terror by killing people, not by forcing
> internet
> explorer to display "page cannot be displayed".
>
> Let us not assume that murderous terrorist are as dumb as people
> in DHS.
>
