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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Vulnerbilities of Interconnection
At 07:41 PM 05/09/2002 -0400, batz wrote: Quick summary for those not familiar with this storyOn Thu, 5 Sep 2002 [email protected] wrote: :The question is what if someone was gunning for your fiber. To date :cuts have been unintentional. Obviously the risk level is much higher :doing a phyisical attack, but the bad guys in this scenario are not :teenage hackers in the parents basement. This happened recently in Quebec where there is a labour dispute with Videotron and one of the unions representing its workers. The dispute has been exaserbated by the sabotage of the companies fiber lines. http://therecord.com/business/technology/z083017A.html Its an interesting to contemplate how this event was presented in the media and perceived by the public at large. Consider the end result in the above story and consider two different motives. a) Angry union or union sympathizers cut fibre optic lines to put pressure on company, or corporate strike busters cut cable to make union look bad.... vs. b) International terrorists cut fibre optic lines.... With a) its a filler news item to be displaced by Shark Attacks and Gary Condit. b) Two words: media frenzy. Same end result, but two totally different reactions because of who the terrorists are/were... How about network operators ? Would you be any more or less pissed and react differently at the motives as to why someone attacked your network ? On a day to day basis, I see far more attacks from the "usual suspects" than from anything media frenzy worthy. I mean, how many code red and MS-SQL worm attacks do you see on a day to day basis.... Its so much, that I explain to customers its like cosmic background radiation when they turn on their firewalls for the first time and see connect attempts to port 1433 from international IP addresses :-( ---Mike
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