Wednesday, April 22, 2009

ATTACK!

A Cyber-Attack on an American City

Testing 1-2  ... Testing 1-2-...

Just after midnight on Thursday, April 9, unidentified attackers climbed down four manholes serving the Northern California city of Morgan Hill and cut eight fiber cables in what appears to have been an organized attack on the electronic infrastructure of an American city. Its implications, though startling, have gone almost un-reported.

That attack demonstrated a severe fault in American infrastructure: its centralization. The city of Morgan Hill and parts of three counties lost 911 service, cellular mobile telephone communications, land-line telephone, DSL internet and private networks, central station fire and burglar alarms, ATMs, credit card terminals, and monitoring of critical utilities. In addition, resources that should not have failed, like the local hospital's internal computer network, proved to be dependent on external resources, leaving the hospital with a "paper system" for the day.

In technical terms, the area was partitioned from the surrounding internet. What was the attackers goal? Nothing has been revealed. Robbery? With wires cut, silent alarms were useless. Manipulation of the stock market? Companies, brokerages, and investors in the very wealthy community were cut off. Mayhem, murder, terrorism? But nothing like that seems to have happened. Some theorize unhappy communications workers, given the apparent knowledge of the community's infrastructure necessary for this attack. Or did the attackers simply want to teach us a lesson?

We should also consider whether it might be necessary to harden some of the local infrastructure of our communities. The old Bell System used to arrange cables in a ring around a city, so that a cut in any one location could be routed around. It's not clear how much modern telephone companies have continued that practice. It might not have helped in Morgan Hill, as the attackers apparently even disabled an unused cable that could have been used to recover from the broken connections.

Surprisingly, manholes don't usually have locks. ...  [Bruce Perens continued] - via Thing From Snowy Mountain

Prediction - "Pelosi wants 1.2 Trillion to upgrade sewer security."

Seriously though, it's a good thing we have Team Obama's crack Lawfare specialists at the ready to negotiate and placate, else we might be seriously vulnerable. 

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once bad guys know where to find the nodes of our way of life, then that way becomes very fragile.

In the past, the cops, a small percentage of the citizens, were enough to keep the few bad guys in line or in prison, because most of the rest of the citizens were, by upbringing, moral creatures who valued honesty, courtesy, their families, their culture and their country. Part of that upbringing taught youth to respect the law, the rights of others and policemen. Neighbors and teachers pounced on budding juvenile delinquents, carrying them home to parents who appreciated information about their kids' misbehavior and dealt with the offensive child immediately.

Forty years of the Great Society (spit) have smashed that way of living, creating a mass of me firsters and feral non-producers that even the most diligent police force/criminal justice system can't deal with without the full support of the community, and the Left has seen to it that more and more of the citizenry cede responsibility for every facet of their lives to some government organization rather than be fully involved in the community.

The fact is that an open, free society becomes vulnerable when its citizens no longer take full responsibility for their own lives and community, when they are no longer their brothers' keepers in the family, the upbringers of their children nor the caretakers of their aging parents. They become consumers rather than contributors to the community and treat the wonders created by the free society as so much low hanging fruit to be grabbed before the other guy gets it.

Without a fully responsible and moral citizenry, there aren't enough cops or manhole locks to stop this sort of thing, unless we want to live in a nightmarish police state where every person's moves are monitored and restricted, where every action must be approved by a bureaucrat, where an agency decrees what happens to every citizen in every facet of his or her life.

In an America of another day, a posse of citizens would hunt down criminals and justice was sure and swift; now we just go on plucking the low hanging fruit, expecting others to take care of the problem. When the gauzy web of our civilization is rent, and the low hanging fruit is gone, things are going to get ugly very quickly, because a couple generations of the population has been living off the low hanging fruit, and hasn't a clue how to live without a cell phone, air conditioning, entitlements from 'free' health care to a new car at age sixteen, welfare checks and all that food that grows in Kroger's.

BTW, I hope the next time those bastards cut a cable, it's carrying 33,000 volts instead of light.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

Jinglebob said...

Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick, I hope you don't mind but I just have got to post this on my blog and spread it around. Excellent!

Anonymous said...

Dang, I wish I'd a just gone to bed. You guys are gonna have me up all night again.

Anonymous said...

JB, Thanks and help yourself if Rodger does't mind. Might want to fix some subject-verb mismatches: "... generations of the population have been living off the low hanging fruit, and haven't a clue..."
Tailgunner

Anonymous said...

That was spot on, Tailgunner. Rodger must have hit a nerve, eh? =0)

Re the picture:
"He cuts down trees
He eats his lunch
He goes to the lav-a-tree
On Wednesdays he goes shopping
And has buttered scones for tea."
GrinfilledCelt

Anonymous said...


AT&T increases bounty on fiber vandals to $250K
prof. c.umulus n.imbusi

Anonymous said...

Actually, the Great Society was introduced about halfway into Step 1 of the four step Soviet Plan to destroy our society. As proof, I offer these interviews from 1985 with former KGB Officer Yuri Bezmenov. He said at the time (1985) that Step 1: Demoralization was complete. These make about 17 minutes total of eye popping, heart stopping revelation.



Ex-KGB Uri Bezmenov On Ideological Indoctrination - Part 1


Ex-KGB Uri Bezmenov On Ideological Indoctrination - Part 2--Skyhawker Doug

badanov said...

This "attack" was likely a probe.

And likely a rehearsal for an attack of some kind.

Anonymous said...

Skyhawker Doug, Link a bit faulty, but I found it anyways. Excellent video.
olds-mo-williamovichenko

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Great stuff Tailgunner - posted the vids this morning.

Anonymous said...

Rodger, I remember that scary KGB guy vid from your first posting of it. BTW, putting my screed together reminded me again how much work and skill you put into your insightful and often howlingly funny posts here.
Thanks for giving me a place to vent.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

Post a Comment

Just type your name and post as anonymous if you don't have a Blogger profile.