France high-speed rail traffic disrupted by 'malicious acts' on Olympic ceremony | Hacker News Reader

France high-speed rail traffic disrupted by 'malicious acts' on Olympic ceremony

lemonde.fr

182 pointsKuinox509 comments

There were four sabotage teams. One team, on the line to Marseilles, was surprised by rail maintenance workers and ran away, but left some equipment, and possibly vehicles, behind.[1]

[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240726-sabotage-on-f...

It's frightening how easy it is for an foreign actor to knock out a country's railway system. Something similar happened in Germany 2 years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at...). I assume that it's a kind of warning by Russia or some other country. They don't even need weapons to attack countries that rely on public transport. If they'd systematically attack the railway system for a longer time, they could probably disable it for many months or even years.

We can be glad we have cars, trucks and roads that are a bit more resistant to attacks.

I don't think it's this simple: someone could do significant damage to the US's economy by sabotaging a small number of bridges that transit or cross I-95. Meanwhile, Ukraine appears to be operating military railways with relative success, given that it's currently engaged in the largest European land war in 80 years.

And let's not forget the premise is all wrong as well.

It's frightening how easy it is for an foreign actor to knock out a country's railway system

The attack on SNCF was not "easy". This was a methodical, large scale, coordinated attack. They knew what to take down. How to take it down with least collateral damage. And when each should be taken down. (Order likely counts here. You're trying to plug up tracks.) Point being, these attacks are not "easy". In a place with as much unrest and discontent as France has bubbling beneath the surface, the trains would go down twice weekly, every week, if it was "easy" to do so.

A similar methodical, large scale, coordinated attack on our bridges would shut the system down as well. I won't even mention some other infrastructural assets that, if targeted, easily will shut us down for months because I think they are just that soft as targets. I honestly believe it would be irresponsible to even put the idea out into the ether.

The takeaway here is that if you're dealing with large organizations, with even a modest amount of resources, and a grievance, you're likely dealing with orgs that have a lot of young people they can send to successfully carry out such attacks. Thankfully, these attacks still require a level of technical knowledge that seems to elude such groups. So it's just matter of keeping that information as secure as possible on the one hand. While working towards security and resilience of those assets on the other.

I'd say that it's "easy" with regard of the resources on the spot. No hundreds of brain-washed fanatics. No tons of explosives. No extensive concealed digging or something similar. No desperate suicide attacks or hot chases or anything else highly visible. Apparently no bucketloads of cash.

It looks more like an elaborately prepared barbecue party: careful planning, getting all the details figured out ahead of time, coordination and, well, relatively calm execution.

You are seriously understimating how easy it is to burn an electrical substation. It is actually a frequent occurrence in France (as seen on TV these days..) and everywhere else. Almost as frequent as copper thefts. Close to where I live they famously left a silicon foundry powerless for a day (with the consequent astronomical bill to restart it) by setting fire to one specific bridge.

The only novel thing here is coordination, but it doesn't seem like a huge stretch of the imagination to target the 4th most frequent high speed rail crossroads, which is exactly what they did.

I think it’s easy in the sense that it was only a single day attack of probably not more than a few people. What would happen if 50 foreign agents would do this every day over the course of months or years?

This required a lot more than 50. There was a lot of planning and execution on this.

Maybe foreign agents could do it with 50? If they were supported by satellites and other tools to which these attackers likely did not have access. But foreign agents are operating in relatively large teams even for simple missions. I don't think with this level of coordination, and this number of targets, spread over this large a geographic area, any intelligence agency is going to send one guy/gal per target. It only works like that in Bourne and 007 movies.

we accidentally self-sabotage our transport network routinely due to car crashes.

and traffic.

and frogs passing the streets from left to right. the other way around would reset the damage. but no...

Sabotaging the NYC water tunnels could make the city uninhabitable for years.

???

Um, sabotaging any city's water tunnels would make the city uninhabitable for years.

Most frightening experience I ever had as engineer in my life:

I was intern. At a place in a midwestern city where a city's water infrastructure can be monitored. Long story short, I heard "PING". Then three more "PING"s. Then another "PING". Then 2 more. Even as an idiot intern, I knew what the implications were with respect to tensioned concrete. I was thinking in my head, "8 feet diameter. 96 inches." But I couldn't remember the PSI because I probably had already soiled myself. Thankfully there was a grey beard there who coolly looked over at me and said, "Probably want to start shutting that down son."

2 things I learned. Calm is contagious. And our infrastructure is way more frail than should be the case.

Shutting what down? Anyway, terrifying.

But NYC has a rather high level of vulnerability with a small number of choke points (there are currently only two water tunnels for the entire NYC metro area), but yes, the water infrastructure for a lot of major cities could be disrupted disturbingly easily.

What does ping mean?

> "Probably want to start shutting that down son."

Can totally picture

You could bring the entirely of NYC to a standstill by simply abandoning a large bus or truck in a single artery of manhattan or one of the bridges. Literally just drive into a tunnel, then get out and walk off. The amount of chaos this would cause would take ages to get any towing services in to clear it.

While many bridges and tunnels have tow trucks and operators stationed at both ends for normal vehicles, they probably do not have heavy-duty towing available quickly. These specialized trucks can tow other semi-tractor-trailers, dump trucks (both garbage and material haul trucks), etc.

Extra points for putting the large bus or truck on it's side, requiring a crane or much more work to get it on its wheels.

And you don't have to walk off, you can unload your electric scooter and zip away to start your new life as a fugitive.

No need to put on its side. Slash the tires!

It doesn't take ages, they have dedicated teams for this as it happens pretty frequently in the lincoln tunnel that buses and trucks break down. There's a weird little specialized towtruck they have that can remove vehicles quickly and cameras are everywhere. Some details on it: https://www.nj.com/traffic/2018/08/how_do_they_unclog_the_li...

Buses and trucks break down all the time in Manhattan bridges and tunnels.

That’s a nuisance but not economically threatening. Disabling railway permanently is a serious threat. Especially in countries dependent on railways for logistics.

A stopped vehicle is a few minutes to tow clear. But add fire.... At least twice in recent times, a gasoline tank truck crash has destroyed a bridge that took weeks to replace.

I wonder if Kubernetes/Cloud Cluster guy jumps in conversation telling how they could resolve this issue by using Cloud resiliency techniques.

Real world has lot to learn from IT infrastructure management. :-)

If you ever want to turn your hair grey prematurely consider an attacker that infiltrates Tesla's Full Self Driving development and adds a "crash into the nearest X at maximum acceleration" hidden subroutine that can be triggered via an over-the-air signal. Millions of Teslas suddenly deciding to point at the nearest power pole or transformer and flooring the accelerator in the hopes of crashing hard enough to start a battery fire.

A mere decade ago this was pure science fiction, but over the past few years it has become a possibility.

This has been a concern for well over a decade, and self driving cars only changes it a little bit. You can google "remote car hacking 2010" or earlier to find great examples and reports of this going back pretty far. It's been awhile since this was science fiction.

Basically every modern car can have software that says "slam the gas pedal as far as possible". Combine that with cars that are heavily integrated into their infotainment system or even include built in wifi and you've got the "over the air signal" covered.

Telling the car to aim and steer at a specific type of object is something that has only recently become possible. Computer vision has come a long way in the past few years, especially computer vision built into automobiles.

I also believe that drive by wire systems are going to become even more commonplace in the future and eliminate the possibility of a driver attempting to muscle the car back into control.

A sufficiently hard left would get most cars into either a barrier or a head on collision, no aiming required

The attacker just needs to make appropriate modifications to some open source library or framework that Tesla FSD software uses. Of course, these modifications would be made by people who have been contributing to the project for many years and have built up impeccable reputations for writing safe, reliable and secure code.

There was a similar scenario in the recent film Leave the World Behind

Not even a malicious actor. Just a Crowdstrike like bad Tesla update.

We have no way of knowing whether sun h an implant already exists, wait inf to be turned on at the moment of maximum damage. Luckily I have no hair to turn gray.

Having a railroad functional enough for military purposes is easy enough: get the rails hooked up. Put soldiers at switches to flip them, use radio for coordination. For high speed high frequency passenger travel it's more complicated: you need automation flipping switches at the right times, automatic block signaling to ensure that trains are where they're supposed to be and won't crash into each other, etc.

That's why they were able to get some of the trains back to operation: they can't run them as close together as before, but can still use the tracks.

This is a bit ironic given the fact that Russia makes a conscious choice to rely on railways for military logistics. Why? Because they are more resilient and easier to repair than roads - Russia has railroad engineering units in their military and can repair just about anything you could do to a railroad in a couple of hours, and in fact they do as Ukrainian partisans (rightly) go after railways.

Meanwhile if someone throws spike strips on a busy highway/tunnel/bridge between two chokepoints, you're effectively screwed. If this is done in a concerted manner it will probably take at least a day to fix.

If you have more resources (say a state actor attacking a nation that isn't on a wartime footing), you can also exploit the fact that asphalt is a petroleum fraction and therefore soluble : spill a lot of diesel or hydraulic oil, for example (and optionally set it on fire) and you will unrecoverably ruin that section of asphalt, which could take weeks to fix: this is why gas stations are paved with concrete.

So while it's not as easy to do this as it is to derail a train or screw around a signaling system, it's far more difficult to repair professional roadway sabotage than railway sabotage, and in the end the railways are probably more resilient.

> We can be glad we have cars, trucks and roads that are a bit more resistant to attacks.

Now that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has occurred, and cheap armed quad-copters are a publicly known thing, I can say this openly:

Are you kidding me? Because we are still petro-centric, we are extremely fragile. For example, the West Coast has a handful of oil refineries. To shut down the West Coast's road traffic it would take one guy, and less than $10,000 in equipment. This could all be accomplished in 3 days, and there are no deployed defenses for this attack vector.

This is one of the best non-environmental arguments I've heard for the conversion to EVs.

Thank you.

I have been trying to argue that the transition to EVs is a natsec issue for 10+ years. However, I am just some forum schmuck, and it has not been going well. Any help with moving this thinking up the chain would be greaty appreciated.

A possible analogy: The Internet was designed to be a multi-path, decentralized, and distributed communications system to withstand attack. That's what EVs are for transportation.

Wait until you hear how ridiculously easy knocking out a power substation is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9q2lOZ1Fw&pp=ygUSaGFja2luZ...,

Meanwhile, FERC found that knocking out just nine strategically located substations, of 55,000 at the time they did the assessment in 2014, would plunge our country into darkness.

https://time.com/6244977/us-power-grid-attacks-extremism/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304020104579433...

aren’t the drone defense weapons

> We can be glad we have cars, trucks and roads that are a bit more resistant to attacks.

Cars with so much electronics on board are just vulnerable as the worst cellphone out there; always connected may seem a cool buzzword, but in reality means always ready to be exploited. The reason they're not commonly exploited is that usually who is motivated to do that would rather look for bigger targets that give back more media coverage or potential ransom money.

> always connected may seem a cool buzzword

Which shows a cultural disaster - an idiocracy - that should be taken as a priority.

I do not think that the general public is nearly as hopeless as people make it out to be.

The march to touchscreen controls in cars has happened despite massive consumer complaints across the board.

Well Bob, they bought them anyway, did they not? And thus made that market a success.

Edit: myself, I have seen an overwhelming majority of users that just shrug. (Plus, a number of shocked users that could not believe the situation when told - but that does not mean they will not conform when pressed by the lack of options.)

Now: there are documented proofs of people in pornographic delight handling cars through smartphones; the facts are reachable of gadgets in contemporary premium cars that would be refused by a seventies' pimp; there are definite anecdotes of large amounts people not having the slightest idea of the security and privacy faults of contemporary cars (etc.).

To discuss how «hopeless» a population is we should probably assess and throw numbers in: "uninformed | unaware | drooling | flabbergasted, etc.". Even if the number of the «cool buzzword» enthusiasts were smaller than thought by some, the elements are there for concern and societal action.

We could make our railway more resilient to such attacks, but in general why bother ? It is probably cheaper to pay the cost whenever the disruption happens.

At least in times of peace.

There are two issues here though. The first is that the Olympics is a special event and it is more likely for somebody to try to cause the disruptions, and as such more control is probably warranted.

The second is that somebody else (Russia) is not acting like they are at peace with us so we should act accordingly

The railways get hit fairly often in Russia and nearby but while they are easy to knock out they are also easy to repair and are usually back running in a day or two. Large bridges would be an exception.

It's not unique to Europe, or foreign agents. See https://time.com/6244977/us-power-grid-attacks-extremism/ as well.

That was plausibly a lone actor.

This was at least 4 different actors, perhaps 4 different groups of actors, executing a coordinated action simultaneously.

Cars are vulnerable to attacks on fuel stations, attacks on bridges, dumping a load of nails on the road during rush hour, etc. I’m not sure I’d automatically assume disrupting thousands of car passengers is necessarily harder than disrupting thousands of train passengers.

>It's frightening how easy it is for an foreign actor to knock out a country's railway system.

I get phishing mail with very pertinent information only JR West would know any time I make train or rental car reservations with JR West.

Yes, I am willing to bet hard money that they've been backdoored and/or compromised at the human level. Standard fare for Japanese IT, honestly; see Kadokawa.

Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Maryland_train_collision

Damaging highways isn't exactly hard, even if they don't contain any roads or bridges. And if you take out the highways the rest of the roads don't have nearly enough capacity.

> We can be glad we have cars, trucks and roads that are a bit more resistant to attacks.

Cars/trucks/roads are so much more dangerous than train travel that it actually seems worth the tradeoff to me even if these sorts of attacks were a regular occurrence. Putin (or whoever did this) sucks but they have not killed 1,105 Americans in a single year. That's just the number of cyclists killed by cars in 2022. Deaths of pedestrians and drivers/passengers are significantly higher.

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2024-06-24/us-...

And that doesn't include effects of local pollution in dense city emvironments. Both air and noise kills us.

Nor does it include the lack of physical exercise induced by cars, the time spent driving, oil related conflicts, etc.

It's surprising how little people know about how cars came to be so prominent: https://web.archive.org/web/20230216004635/https://libraryar...

oil refineries are also quite a weak point for gas vehicles

caltrops could also paralyse entire highways

also bridges

I could also imagine that it's not difficult to insert sugar into gas stations

Who's "we" in this case though?

How France seems to communicate on this is that it's French people who are behind these

Not to mention, bridges falling apart on their own

Why do you assume that it's a "foreign" actor? I think it is utterly idiotic to hold an event of such scale in a country which has seen several consecutive years of mass protests. I mean sure, you can cordon off parts of Paris with fences and razor wire, but you can't do that with all of France.

Because it's the only logical conclusion and multiple Russians have already been arrested in France for plotting to disrupt the Olympics, including one who set himself on fire with chemicals in his hotel room. Oh and Russians have been doing this sort of thing all over Europe for the past few years.

If this were an internal political entity they would have already claimed responsibility and put out a manifesto.

> Because it's the only logical conclusion and multiple Russians have already been arrested in France for plotting to disrupt the Olympics

In Belgium they arrested seven muslim terrorists who were planning a terror attack during the Olympics, they were from Chechnya (so, technically, russian but it sounded like the usual islamic terror attacks that was planned and not some "russia vs the west" thing).

> It's frightening how easy it is for an foreign actor to knock out a country's railway system

It's frightening how easy it is to establish as a cultural norm that guessing is proper thinking.

Because nobody has claimed responsibility, and it's the sort of thing Russia does.

Still, why not a disgruntled ex-employee or a crafty IT-security student? Finding out how GSM-R works, where the towers are and what cables you have to cut is not exactly rocket-science

If the past has shown anything, then that both politics and infrastructure providers greatly overestimate the skill required for disrupting/hacking such systems and networks...

> Still, why not a disgruntled ex-employee or a crafty IT-security student?

“Simultaneous operations by 4 teams in different parts of the country” does not work well with “a disgruntled ex-employee or a crafty IT-security student” as a hypothesis.

Who needs foreign actors when you have `climate protestors` who traditionally face way too little consequence for their actions and annoy their fellow citizens so persistency they do their entire movement a disservice?

Didn't five climate activists in the UK just get 4-5 years for being on a zoom call for merely planning to block a junction?

> We can be glad we have cars, trucks and roads that are a bit more resistant to attacks.

Hack traffic light controls and set them to all-green (assuming the safety interlock is done in software), all-red, or just off. Dumbass drivers will do the rest for free.

Alternatively, disrupt Google Maps and Waze. Barely anyone has a dedicated offline navigation system any more - take these two out or "suggest" fake traffic jams to overload side streets [1] will also cause a lot of chaos.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/berlin-ar...

> assuming the safety interlock is done in software

It's not. There's a conflict monitor unit that is completely separate from the signal controller. It has direct inputs from all green or other permissive lights, and a diode matrix that determines which combinations are allowed.[1] If it detects a conflict, all signals go to flashing yellow. "This monitor uses a standardized programming card for channel compatibility (permissives), minimum flash time, per channel Minimum Yellow Change Disable, CVM latch, and 24 volt monitor latch. Programming of this card is accomplished through the use of soldered wire jumpers. The programming card plugs into the monitor through a slot in the front panel."

All 4-way intersections use the same interlocking pattern, so there's a standard card that covers most cases. Only unusual intersections need a custom programming card soldered up.

[1] https://www.editraffic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/MMU2-1...

>Hack traffic light controls and set them to all-green (assuming the safety interlock is done in software), all-red, or just off. Dumbass drivers will do the rest for free.

Have you never driven during a blackout? People get a little awkward figuring out four way stop priority, but it's not pure chaos.

> Have you never driven during a blackout? People get a little awkward figuring out four way stop priority, but it's not pure chaos.

Maybe I'm biased but I've seen incredibly dumb shit happening in urban areas (Munich in winter to be precise). People forget how to drive when lights go out and street markings are covered by snow.

Rural drivers in contrast have zero problems because they're used to driving without constant guidance.

Yesterday a Russian "chef" was arrested after drunkenly bragging about a sabotage operation to disrupt the Olympic opening ceremony.

https://theins.press/en/politics/273350

> On May 7, he was in Russia and due to fly from Moscow to Istanbul, where he’d catch a connecting flight back to Paris the next day. Except he couldn't. He got so fall-down drunk at Istanbul Airport that he was barred from boarding his plane. Instead Griaznov took a taxi to the Bulgarian border, where another car delivered him to St. Vlas, a resort town on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria, where Griaznov owns property.

> Griaznov stayed at his apartment for a few days before moving on to Varna, a Bulgarian city 60 miles north of St. Vlas. From there he flew on to Paris. During one of his beach-side dinners he got drunk again and let slip to the neighbors that he had a special assignment this summer in Paris to disrupt the opening ceremony of the Olympics. At first the neighbors were incredulous. That’s when Griaznov brandished his FSB ID, witnesses told The Insider. A few days later, Griaznov made his way to Varna and took a flight from there. Before flying to Paris, Griaznov made a call to his FSB boss and informed him that the operation was on track. Griaznov even said he’d recruited “one more Moldovan from Chisinau.”

It would be humorous if it weren't so serious.

The official website of the insider seems to be thins.ru, not theins.press

The article exists on both though

https://theins.ru/en/politics/273350

Potentially more trustworthy source: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/07/25/the-secr...

It's a collaboration with The Insider and Der Spiegel.

>By Lucas Minisini, Thomas Eydoux, Charles-Henry Groult, Der Spiegel and The Insider

LeMonde and The Insider collaborated on the story, which is noted on both versions of it.

I’m just not initially inclined to trust a website ending in .press or .ru as much as I would le Monde, so I posted this to demonstrate that it can be trusted.

What a failure of our western surveillance organizations that the only spies we catch are the ones that are so bad at their jobs that they get drunk and brag about it.

How do we fail so badly to counter foreign influence, sabotage, and espionage operations?

The examples of successful foreign operations in Western countries is so long and embarrassing - high level people operating for DECADES, changing MAJOR western policies, and sending back to their foreign handlers CRITICAL data and intelligence.

If this continues, we are absolutely going to get destroyed.

This brings to mind the TLA saying of "our successes are secret. our failures are known." In today's counter espionage world, it seems all you have to do to remain invisible is not use tech. Only speak in person face to face. It's not surprising at all to me that spooks can't know everything

France has already said they've disrupted 3 separate plots, and have made a few arrests.

You only hearing about this one doesn't mean anything.

How do you know that this is the only spy that was caught? It seems in the west's best interest from a propaganda perspective to paint the FSB in a poor light (to discourage cooperation), and they are obviously selective about what gets disclosed.

Because our intelligence agencies do fail (the Trump assassination attempt is the most recent). We can choose to construct epicyclic explanations for this or we can update our priors broadly. Only outcomes will determine which is right. I think our intelligence orgs are probably not uniquely immune to the quality failures the rest of our government orgs are experiencing.

How is an intelligence organization supposed to predict with certainty an assassin working alone?

A finite number of failures absolutely does not imply that they never caught any spy except this one. What kind of logic is that?

Looking at the regular expulsions of embassy employees all over the world it should be rather obvious that there is a lot going on about which “we” never hear anything.

(By “we”, I mean normal people having other activities than following closely geopolitics. There is a lot of information to find if you are dedicated enough. A lot of misinformation as well.)

I don't disagree that intelligence agencies fail, but I don't think that the attempted assassination of former-President Trump counts. The shooter appears to have acted completely alone, and so far it seems that he did not give obvious signs online before committing this (yes, he looked up some things about JFK's assassination, but that does not seem enough to raise real flags).

So there was no conspiracy, let alone a foreign one, for the intelligence agencies to have triggered on. This very much looks like a failure of the Secret Service agency, and it will be interesting to see what the final failure analysis looks like, and what they determine can be done better in the future.

And I think the "quality failures the rest of our government orgs are experiencing" is you projecting a bias. If you really think that things are going down hill, please find quantifiable metrics to show that.

> What a failure of our western surveillance organizations that the only spies we catch are the ones that are so bad at their jobs that they get drunk and brag about it.

That's the ones we make public. There's been quite the lot of spies quietly yeeted or exchanged for political hostages. And just as often, it's the other way 'round.

In other news the French rail systems suffered a major outage today, the opening day of the Olympics, as train infrastructure was firebombed by unknown parties.

Too much politics (optics, spin, outright gaslighting), too little governing (maintaining rule of law, securing against actual enemy action...).

Basically, Western leaders can't hear you over the sound of how awesome they're trying to tell you they are.

You don’t know that to be true. You also do not know who has been caught. Western intelligence do not have “report daily figures to slowmovingtarget” in their checklists.

Venezuela is emptying their prisons and sending the released convicts to the U.S. as "migrants." Those same criminals are now doing things like impersonating delivery drivers and performing home invasions.

Too little governing.

Has nothing to do with whether the intelligence community publicizes its results, which I agree, they shouldn't. They should be stopping these kind of things, though.

They should actually prosecute those "protesters" that assaulted police on camera the other day. They released them instead.

Too little governing.

Meanwhile, we get press tours saying how awesome and kind and empathetic their policies are. Look how inclusive we are! Look how many check-boxes we've checked on the fashionable political stance list! You know that thing high muckety-muck said? They never said that. You remember that wrong. There must be something wrong with your recall. You must be racist or insane to think that. Interest rates? Those aren't a problem, what are you talking about?

Too much politics, optics, and gaslighting.

And those are just the local examples. It's happening in Britain, it's been happening in France and the rest of Europe, and when people complain, they're told to shut up and stop being so selfish.

Why wouldn't we see the operational failures of law enforcement to keep citizens and infrastructure in the West safe as an outgrowth of the other outrageous failures of leadership we keep seeing day after day?

This also has details https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/24/russia...

This is obviously a Russian act of sabotage in retaliation for French support of Ukraine. All the downvotes of their mighty troll army can't make it any less obvious.

For those on HN expecting "hackers" related news, this is not a cyberattack, but physical attacks on the train infrastructure.

Alternatively, you can view it as a OSI layer 1 attack.

A bunch of optic fibers have been cut, but the network was badly designed without redundancy (as evidenced by the current denial of service).

Strategic points (the attacks occurred at junctions of several axis) were left insufficiently guarded.

The location of these points also shouldn't have been made available to bad actors.

French people are not surprised because there are always problems with train when lots of people need them to go on holidays. Usually at this time of the year it's getting hot, and it's one or more electrical transformer that gets burned by high heats. When copper price get high, cables are usually stolen to be sold as metal. And there are also strikes.

There is an economic balance to be found between the cost of securing and maintaining the infrastructure vs fixing the problems once they occur. Probably can be better, but others probably have it much worse.

You can't really guard thousands of kilometers of rails, or have much redundancy considering the cost of the infrastructure. The incesseant budget cuts and progressive privatization certainly do not help.

If you begin to threat model the physical security necessary, you quickly see how asymmetrical it is, regardless of the money thrown at it.

@liotier, I've been rate-limited and cannot reply to you directly, so I'm editing my response into this comment. My apologies.

I didn't intend any slight to French infrastructure or those designing and securing it, just the dynamics of the problem. It is easier to attack than to defend, particularly in physical security. I'm sure critical infrastructure is well taken care of. Do you know if TGV is considered as critical as the other sites you noted? I'm curious of your opinion about what level of expertise and intelligence collection it required to carry this out.

Network redundancy (sometimes up to quadruple for some of the French electrical infrastructure) is indeed vulnerable to asymmetrical attack, if the attacker knows what secures what.

I can throw burning fuel into a manhole or at a street cabinet, and it doesn't take much insight to find one that carries important traffic - take your pick near a military base or a nuclear power plant. But the attack will be ineffective, because the attacker needs to know what other bits of infrastructure carry the backup circuits - and take them out simultaneously. And, of course, for the important stuff such information is classified. So, an effective attack on French critical infrastructure is more difficult than it seems at first glance.

To be fair the Ministry of Interior has warned that cyberattacks are expected too. This could be only the opening salvo of sabotages.

I sincerely hope that they don't go radical because we don't need more tensions. Make your message heard, be a bit cocky but don't start a "fire".

Not being radical enough is exactly what put us in this situation. So yes, we should be more radical, and show them who they are working for.

Pragmatic treatment of the enemy, not radical handling of citizenry is the way.

Radicalism in foreign policy leads straight to open war.

I beg to differ, there are other paths on the way IMO.

The Korea Winter Olympics in 2018 was hit by a cyberattack during the opening ceremony, I’m eager to find out what happens this time

This made the news yesterday: https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7785/Artykul/3407219,ukraine...

Apparently they did not catch all the arson teams.

Yesterday a Russian "chef" was arrested after drunkenly bragging about a sabotage operation to disrupt the Olympic opening ceremony.

https://theins.press/en/politics/273350

It would be humorous if it weren't so serious.

If this is true, I don't understand the actions of Russia's government in recent years.

I doubt their goal is to be universally reviled, so what's their real objective?

As much as I'm tempted to think they're just being full-on assholes, I assume they're being more strategic than that.

They sow chaos and then unleash the bots criticizing whoever is currently in office; then they unleash bots criticizing those bots and hope to drag in normal people.

Basically the idea is to erode trust in the western system. They don't try to hide it anymore and seems it doesn't matter - it's quite effective anyway.

Yeah but this is more like "plan a minor disturbance of a high profile event. Get caught and galvanize the public to arm your enemies."

It doesn't erode trust in the western system.

There is no objective other than to destroy the West and democracy and then rule with as much brutality as the conquered nations will bear. If they cannot achieve that objective they want to go down in flames with the rest of the world.

If you want to know how the Russian peace looks like read up on the partitions of Poland (economic exploitation, violent anti-semitism, deportations to Siberia, confiscation of property and land, russification, etc.) or the history of countries in Eastern Europe who found themselves inside the borders of Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. Persecutions, mass deportations, mass murders, torture, economic exploitation.

I really pity the African nations who got convinced to kick out Americans and the French. They will now get a taste of Russia and it will not be pretty.

> I really pity the African nations who got convinced to kick out Americans and the French. They will now get a taste of Russia and it will not be pretty.

As a Russian I was with you until this part. Russia doesn't seem to have enough money/influence for that. They get a taste of China instead. Like https://x.com/mirab_clothiers/status/1782115456045728135

Russia’s influence in Africa / Asia is greatly diminished since the Cold War era.

China is the primary threat to Western nations, not Russia. China savvily extended its influence in Africa in particular while the US was so caught up with its useless War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, totally squandering its post Cold War opportunities in Africa.

> If they cannot achieve that objective they want to go down in flames with the rest of the world.

I think this level of unserious analysis is deeply unhelpful. You know people in Russia have their lives and goals, they are not suicidal maniacs. At least read some Russian media with google translate

The "nations" in Africa courting Russian influence are largely militant groups that have claimed dominion over lands. Those particular people in charge will probably selfishly benefit a great deal.

They didn't want to get caught. They want to create chaos, which leads to disillusionment, nihilism, infighting and isolationism and a breaking up of the West's unity. Relevant, from the CBS this week:

> The FBI announced it disrupted a Russian AI-enhanced social media bot farm, which was designed to be an influence operation. Some of the fake profiles from bots purported to be Americans.

Some other examples:

- https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...

- https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_Black_Lives_Matter

It's probably quite effective, but we don't know how effective because it's impossible to re-run the last 10 years without this and see what would have happened.

Poisonings, people falling out of windows, arsons, it all make sense if you consider that it is a state captured by a mafia clan. John McCain famously said that Russia is ‘A Gas Station Run by a Mafia That Is Masquerading as a Country’

> that it is a state captured by a mafia clan

most countries are captured by a mafia clan, this isn't a thing specific to Russia. When you have powerful intelligence services sooner or later they end up taking over.

I think you have to be Russian to fully grasp the motivations behind this.

I've got a lot of mileage out of the assumption that every such act is supposed to send a message both to Russia's enemies and citizens.

The message being "we are everywhere".

Should anyone try to start working with the enemy, like the helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov, they will be found and executed.

EDIT: Navalny's return to Russia raised eyebrows in the west. I think he was aware that he would be targeted anyway, so might as well have it happen on his own terms.

They could be embracing the North Korean model. You don't have to be competitive as long as you are untouchable. The elites get wealth and power, and the rest don't matter.

What wealth? Their wealth comes from the natural resources, which they now cannot openly sell at market prices. Give it a few years and the next meeting of the Russian oligarchs will be held on a wooden bench behind the foreign currency exchange kiosk next to the Moscow's Luzniki stadium.

I'm a bit puzzled by this as well but I assume that the goal here is to project power and scare people into submission. Making themselves seem more powerful than they are by attacking an event that is in the public spotlight.

You should be puzzled. You should always be puzzled when people say "witnesses told us", "anonymous intelligence officials said". It's what got us into plenty of wars we didn't need to be in. Especially when the authors are known to be in collusion with said intelligence agencies.

> An extraordinary email uncovered under freedom of information laws raises serious questions about whether Bellingcat, the “open source” collective widely cited by mainstream journalists and loved by the CIA, collaborates directly with Western intelligence agencies.

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/11/30/bellingcat-collusion-west...

Terrorism is the weapon of the powerless. Russians know they cannot match NATO, so they are trying to disrupt the event they essentially banned themselves from.

Different cultures, this seems a very Russian way of projecting power. Though I personally can think of at least two other actors who are just as likely to blame. At least this wasn't a "hurt people" power projection.

Western civilization, including most of the infrastructure, assumes good intentions of those around. How many times have teenagers independently realized the chassis they could cause just by pushing a waiting pedestrian into traffic? Trains have always been noted as an easy target.

Destabilization. You can usually count on it if Russia is involved.

The goal is to get some fact they can use in propaganda internally to show how the country is great or succeeding against its enemies. And yeah, everybody that complains about them is an enemy.

Remember that Russian citizens are explicitly told they are "At war with NATO".

Sowing chaos is always a good strategy, when you need/want to disguise your action behind or among distractions.

As to be reviled, some don't care, as long as they're feared.

My take is they think they are a great power entitled to rule over their neighbours including the former soviet union and thus are entitled to attack all who oppose that by whatever ways including dumb things like disrupting the olympics and funding anti vaxxer and far right folk and the like. Not that I know that much - I'm kind of confused myself.

Here's Keir Giles, who wrote a related book, talking a bit. https://youtu.be/j8wVuHMAEHg?t=688

To understand anything Russian government does, you need to understand that they aren't a government in the way Western democracies / republics / monarchies understand the function of the government. For someone with largely humanistic outlook on life, the function of the government is to try to make sure that what's being governed prospers. Prosperity may be understood as "more riches for the rich" or "redistribution of wealth" or anywhere in between. But the basic idea is to make things better, at least for some sub-group of thus governed subjects.

Russia is operated by straight-up criminals. And I don't mean white-collar corrupt politicians. They are literally people who committed often very violent crimes. For instance, Putin is implicated in a number of "hits" on law enforcement officers, investigators etc. He was not the one executing the "hits", but he was likely directly involved in the crime. A lot of his associates have done often long time behind bars. For example, his puppet assigned to rule over Ukraine (the one who was deposed in the "revolution of dignity" which set in motion the present conflict) started his career as a gang robber: he, with his friends broke into an apartment, tortured the owners while taking their belongings.

These people have a mental model of the world defined by the prison lore. They have a bizarre set of rules which define what honor is: "honor" (the prison kind of) is the central value / virtue in this system. In this model, the world is divided into "suckers" and "men". "Men" are allowed to humiliate the "suckers" in whatever way they want. In fact, if they don't, they might as well join the "suckers". In this system, anyone who shows any kind of compassion to the "suckers" is him/herself a "sucker". Europeans or anyone who wants to live in a society that values any human life thus is automatically a "sucker".

This is why Russians think and treat Europeans with contempt and disdain. They don't think it to be immoral to steal from a European, or to assault one etc.

It's also "honorable" to accept the risks associated with humiliating the "suckers". To prove how much of a "man" someone is that is. It's actually better to die while proving your place is among "men" than to surrender and live like a "sucker". So, they don't care about international consequences of their sabotage in France today. At least not in the sense how another European country might've cared, should they engage in something similar.

> For example, his puppet assigned to rule over Ukraine (the one who was deposed in the

> "revolution of dignity" which set in motion the present conflict) started his career as a

Deposed by the maidan's "revolution of dignity" president of the Ukraine Yanukovich had not been "assigned to rule over Ukraine", but elected in competitive voting, that OSCE certified as democratic and "organized in a transparent manner."

You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.

I think about this quite a lot. I presume people at that level are at least TRYING to be strategic in some manner. The two thoughts I used to try and frame it are: the cold war never really ended, it just changed, and, begrudging-capitalist subscribing societies have highly intelligent people in them just like capitalist societies. If nation states are indeed competitive, then a relatively decent strategy would be presume automation is going to rapidly allow for an alternative systems in societies, and while that shift is happening, cause as much problem as you can for the folks unable/unwilling/unknowing, while you start shifting behind the scenes. Marx literally articulated deeply, the idea that socialism, and eventually communism, would arise as a natural progression from capitalism. We may or may not want to accept that, but Marx spelled it out, and lots of people follow Marx as their philosophy.

I try hard to avoid getting conspiratorial in my head, so I tend to leave the thought around that point, after all, it's just a thought. :)

russia’s ultimate goal is to spread misinformation to destroy democratic countries from within and then invade these countries’ land.

Because they stand no chance fighting fare and square.

I doubt their goal is to be universally reviled, so what's their real objective?

Believe it or not -- their initial goal was simply to gain respect.

They actually thought the Ukraine invasion would be a walkthrough, and that of course Western countries would whine and moan about of a -- but ultimately they would respect Russia for its audacity and boldness, that Russia would emerge with greatly enhanced stature over its historic rivals, and a new era of Russian gravitas and self-assuredness would begin.

So yes - it was all definitely quite strategic, in theory. But things didn't go as they planned of course, so now they're fighting like a cornered animal.

Except now the fight isn't for "respect", and it certainly isn't about Ukraine -- but rather their own physical and political survival.

It's just like how the terrorists hated us for our freedoms and were hiding weapons of mass destruction. The war machine isn't just gonna keep itself running.

That reads like an extract from a John le Carré novel.

Are any le Carré characters so flagrantly incompetent? Even the ones who like to drink (like Connie Sachs) manage to keep it under control and function reasonably well.

I always had the feeling that Le Carré's portrayal of Eastern European adversaries was too kind. He clearly underestimated the influence of alcohol over private and professional lives in those lands.

When your culture's drinking problem is so bad that it starts causing information leaks that disrupt clandestine overseas sabotage operations, maybe that's the clue it's time to get a better grip on the culture of alcohol consumption.

I've read that it's not quite as simple or easy as banning vodka or alcohol, as strangely enough, the highest individual source of Russian tax revenue is from excise taxes on the vodka, and revenue from the excise taxes on beer make up 75% as much as the excise taxes on vodka.

Further reading: https://warontherocks.com/2015/07/little-water-vodka-and-the...

They tried an anti-alcohol campaign. It failed.

https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1985-2/anti-alcohol-campaign/

Carrying FSB ID on assignment abroad?

It has to be a decoy of sorts right?

Nope, they operate more or less in plain sight and don't care. They know that they worst thing that can happen to them in the west is expulsion or a jail sentence.

yeah sounds about true. french newspaper also said hamas was russian yesterday. I guess I got a power outage yesterday too. must be putin.

Until RT or Putin confirms it was Ruzzia then you won't believe it.

For other real skeptics, there were 100% clear Ruzzian attacks in France before, there were people that drawn Swasticas, some people that put some coffins , soem Chechen guy with a grenade/bomb. We do not have video or written proof that Putin signed the orders so we need to use our brains and ignore the bots and trolls that defend terrorists.

got downvoted to -4 while it was revealed that french far left was behind the attack.https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/france-sees-hand-of-far-lef...

nice to see the political wokeness affecting hnews.

> the attackers had started fires in "conduits carrying multiple (fibre-optic) cables" that relay "safety information for drivers" or control the motors for points that change rails... Farandou of SNCF said: "There's a huge number of bundled cables. We have to repair them one by one, it's a manual operation" requiring "hundreds of workers".

Just wondering: is there a reason why there needs to be a bundle of fiber optic cables to carry safety information and control the rails? Is that not overkill? I assume wireless/cellular networking is not robust enough, but what just standard-ass copper wires, like the telephone lines? I assume the reason is that they're transmitting more than just what was named in the article, but all I know is what I read.

Sometimes fibre optic cables are used for reasons other than lots of bandwidth in architectures other than network A to network B.

Examples:

1. transferring data near/from/to high voltage lines, without risking short circuits that cause fire/death/damage (personal experience: getting info in/out of particle accelerators that hold mega volts of tension)

2. using fibre optic cables to measure vibration or deformations (using the fibre as sensor)

3. physical layer redudancy in case of failure

4. keeping safety critical systems physically seperate from other data transfers

There are probably more reasons that are possibly more on-topic. I'm definitely not a fiber applications expert.

Could be that fiber doesn't have any resale value. Whereas copper theft is a somewhat common issue.

Electrical signaling runs into ground potential differences over long distances, fiber does not - each node is optically isolated.

Copper is distance limited. Copper oxidizes. If you are ever going to have any data transfer copper requires powered equipment at very close intervals. Metallic cabling and any equipment on the ends is vulnerable to nearby lightning.

    Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete called the “massive attack” against the rail network an “outrageous criminal act”. He described people fleeing from the scene of fires and the discovery of incendiary devices at the sites.

    SNCF said many routes would have to be cancelled “at least all weekend while repairs are conducted” as thousands of rail staff were deployed to repair the damage.

There is a massive attack and people fleeing; news orgs will be super aggressive about finding/publishing 1st-hand accounts. I read thru a ½doz articles and couldn't spot any, tho.

If this were the US and NatSec were on the table, we could expect some overstatement of harm done and risk to the public.

IDK France tho. Do French officials favor agenda or accuracy?

This is really sad. It seems like the main theory is that it's an inside job (France is doing it to itself, specifically people disgruntled by the government and by the Olympics). France has a HUGE culture of self-hate (although if you're not French and you criticize France then that's not acceptable suddenly). Any semblance of appreciation is often seen as being nationalist or "too far right".

On the other hand I don't think too much nationalism is good for a country, but at what point do people start appreciating what they have and start contributing at how France look for outsiders? I really wish we were more welcoming people as a whole, and less self-sabotaging.

Self hate? more like government hate.

Which in France is a reasonable survival strategy for its people judging by their history: a bunch of kings, 3 emperors, fairly corrupt governments with huge deficits etc.

I don't get why self-sabotage is likely in this case though: plenty of real external enemies, including one that recently "stole" France's African empire.

Russia already had saboteurs disrupted ahead of the Olympics, https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/24/russia...

This is low effort. The real problem with a dictatorship is that people rise through loyalty rather than competence. The people are too afraid to call attention to the situation. You get childish actions like this as a result.

Same happened in Germany two years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33136736

The scale is different: "thousands of travellers" vs "hundreds of thousands"

One line was blocked because of "two optic fibers" in Germany "for around three hours".

Now in France three main lines are blocked: West, North, East (+ attempt on South), the disruption will probably last for days, it's a lot more than two optic fibers.

Few notes:

- cui prodest/cui bono? So far the government witch it VERY hated by Parisian at least due to their zoning and confinement of people "for safety reasons", reasons who appear justified if someone commit crimes, the same plot observed with recent "terrorist attacks" of Charlie Hebdo, Nice etc all with a sole general effect: justify surveillance and repressive power. No one else have earned anything else good for them;

- you can surveil a city, many people in a dense area, full of surveillance. You can't surveil a whole country, so you can easily surveil, contain people rioting or some attacks in a city, you can't protect a long rail line across a country. No matter how much surveillance you have, even if you are so powerful to deploy cam on every place of the rails in the middle of nowhere you can just watch some masked biped attacking your infra, say hi! to the cam and disappear before even a drone jet can came;

- you can't protect the society against the society, or people agree to be civil and cooperative or there is no "third party force" who can keep the order and prevent a civil war. You can protect the most against very few, nothing more, actually this means that essentially ALL government can't do nothing positive because they have essentially no popular legitimization enough to be consider "the people government system". If they try to tighten the lace a civil war will happen. If they do not any kind of anti-social activity will happen anyway, because the society is actually fractured.

Last week, something similar happened in Italy: https://www.ilpost.it/2024/07/20/trenitalia-ritardi-treni-fi...

There are not to many details, but the dynamic seems exactly the same.

Russia-sponsored arson happened in Poland recently:

https://notesfrompoland.com/2024/05/29/poland-detains-three-...

Some of these were stopped:

https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7785/Artykul/3407219,ukraine...

So apparently the new strategy of Russia is to set Europe on fire but pretend it's not them.

I read the article waiting for the least hint of proof that Russia was involved and left with empty hands. Except a politician talking and their national security agency saying these are included in an investigation related to Russian terrorism, but still nothing else than talk.

Why would Russia even do such small time damage to countries geographically pretty far? Protip: no "Putin wants to conquer the world so he's planning in advance" conspiracy theory.

Why? Because they are supporting their enemy, Ukraine. Doesn’t take a military genius to see the obvious motive.

And so burning a few random facilities (or relatively low strategic importance I guess, since they were seemingly not under surveillance) is going to change what?

It'd make more sense for it to be an operation Northwoods if anything, but that would be even more far-fetched.

Not just that. Because Russia is barred from the Olympics because of their invasion of Ukraine. So they want to specifically mess up the Olympics.

Maybe screw the opening ceremony of the Olympics to keep saying that "western countries are falling apart" ? It has been a classic rethoric of Russia media for a while.

There has been 800,000 people affected by this outage and the opening ceremony is at 7pm tonight, so probably connected.

If there's something you can easily say on HN without the slightest piece of evidence and without fear of being called out is implicating Russia in any situation like this.

This thread reads like a propaganda fair sponsored by Western governments.

Would be incredibly stupid of Russians to do something like this.

Over at France24.com this is what is posted ATM:

"Two security sources said the modus operandi meant initial suspicions fell on leftist militants or environmental activists, but they said there was not yet any evidence."

Well, not really, the episode that article is related to came out as being a couple of homeless people walking on the railway:

https://tg24.sky.it/cronaca/2024/07/20/firenze-uomo-binari-t...

The day before they had some technical problems with electricity, but still nothing that can be connected to intentional sabotage.

What is going on with this thread, are you all on drugs? I'm Italian and this accident was just some random dudes walking on the rails.

There was several technical problems in that period regarding TAV in Italy. The delays are not only about homeless walking on the tracks

Yes, and as mentioned in the Italian media, they were caused by lightning strikes damaging instrumentation on the rails, or by planned maintenance work. There is no suspicion of sabotage.

Are just scraping the bottom of the barrel to find anything of use to incitate for a military escalation?

It is the power of mass movements. The same people who posed as ultra liberals and leftists are now talking like Archie Bunker from the comedy series (forgot the name of the series, the character is an ultra conservative, commie hating person).

"All in the Family"

It does not look like the same thing

Above it's a "person in the rails" or in the platform

In France there have been fires (probably Russia acting normal as usual)

There was also several technical problems in the day before and after.

So utterly Russian. No games for me, none for you. See also arson attacks in Germany earlier in the year.

There was also the plot to assassinate a German defense company CEO.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/us/politics/russia-assass...

If it's Russia, this is an attack on NATO.

Hardly the first.

Using chemical (Novichok) and radiological (Polonium) weapons to conduct assassinations (and causing civilian casualties) was an attack on NATO.

Blowing up Czech and Bulgarian ammunition depots (causing deaths) was an attack on NATO.

Attempting to assassinate German and Bulgarian arms manufacturer CEOs was an attack on NATO.

Not all "attacks" are immediately risable to the level of war, but lets be real here.

> Using chemical (Novichok) and radiological (Polonium) weapons to conduct assassinations (and causing civilian casualties) was an attack on NATO.

Don't forget the classic assassinations like the Tiergartenmord in Berlin [1].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordfall_Selimchan_Changoschwi...

Only a fool would look forward to that interpretation, hopefully someone with a thread of common sense still has some kind of authority.

But I'm sure they'll get their war one way or the other, seeing how everyone is so looking forward to it.

Two words, Deer Hunter; and this one will likely be worse.

If you frame it that way, what are the downsides?

There's already no games for me, why let you get the fun?

What did you in question even expected when escalating?

It's Russia who escalated, though. If they chose a path of co-operation and friendly trade instead of trying to enslave their neighbours, then they would be allowed to compete in the olympics.

Of course the real problem is that it's ordinary Russians who bear the suffering caused by their own government, while the ruling elite enjoys luxurious lifestyle no matter what sanctions Europe and US do. The solution would be making life difficult for the oligarchy, but that would probably require measures West isn't willing to employ, because they would be illegal under international law (which Russia doesn't care about).

Even if they choose a friendly path no one will believe them. They would need to change their political class and write into their constitution clauses that punish any attack on their neighbours or even calling for such an attack as high treason. That would be a good start, but I have a feeling they are going to try to keep everything as is.

It is you who is trying to weaponize everything else, including the Olympics movement. It was your choice to make Olympics political and full of military messages, and then you act surprised when they start blowing up in your hands.

You did not have to weaponize everything yet you did.

All we need is sloppy security software vendors to bring the world to a halt

"Vandalism", "Malicious acts", "coordinated attacks", this is the language being used by European media.

Traditional media is doing EU citizens a disservice. This is state sponsored terrorism and we need to start calling a spade a spade.

Which state?

If the esteemed commenters of the FT are thinking similarly to this person, Russia.

It’s unfounded. Maybe not impossible, but it seems FAR more likely that it was eco-terrorism or another similar grievance. I haven’t heard one parsimonious theory for why Russia might do this.

Russia

This is a smart attack - security attention definitely wasn't there (and it's not like it's possible to guard thousands of kilometres of rail), and the disruption is massive (both for the Olympics, and regular people going in holiday by train).

It's also pretty clearly Russia's style. Islamic terrorists would have targeted people, not random infrastructure, and Russian operatives have already been caught trying such things, or after having done such things all over Europe.

I'd be very interested to see how France responds. Nuking Moscow would of course be too much, but this sort of escalation cannot be left unchecked because as we've well seen, Putin is a fucking idiot who needs to get his head kicked in or he'll just keep pushing. More Mirages for Ukraine? This list getting longer? https://www.defense.gouv.fr/en/news/french-military-equipmen... A ban on anyone receiving Russian money from French politics (bye bye Le Pen and other Quislings)?

A couple of reports (grain of salt needed):

An FSB operative caught bragging about sabotaging the Olympics in Bulgaria: https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1816431778615226742

Russian arrested in Paris over sabotage plot: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1j7kg2nk0o

A bunch of FSB operatives caught in Ukraine: https://global.espreso.tv/russia-ukraine-war-fsb-agents-plan...

Previous reporting from Bellingcat on Russian operations: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2021/04/26/how...

> It's also pretty clearly Russia's style.

Arson attacks are actually an extremely French phenomenon, over 1000 cars are often torched a night on New Years Eve

>but this sort of escalation cannot be left unchecked

Some of us would rather not die in a world war because a sports event was mildly disrupted

>Arson attacks are actually an extremely French phenomenon, over 1000 cars are often torched a night on New Years Eve

Highly relevant:

TIL that during the 2005 French riots, up to 1408 cars were burned per night across the country. The government declared that the riots had ended when, after three weeks of chaos, only 98 cars were burned per night ("return to a normal situation everywhere in France"). <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/4i50p8/til_th...>

Though burning random cars might be French, we are talking here about arson with precise strategic targets (although I'm not staying this is more Russia's style)

> Arson attacks are actually an extremely French phenomenon, over 1000 cars are often torched a night on New Years Eve

As far as I can tell it happened twice, 19 years ago and 4 years ago. I wouldn't call it a "common" occurrence.

Now, 1000 cars or 700 cars doesn't mean much, one would have to compare it to the amount of cars in France. For example, more than 150 000 cars burn each year in the US (probably not just arson, but it's not my point) which is 500 per day on average. But there are more cars in the US than in France.

I doubt these planned and coordinated attacks on infrastructure are carried out by the same individuals that opportunistically burn cars during New Years Eve.

>Arson attacks are actually an extremely French phenomenon

Thanks to the power of art, it can be Russian and French at the same time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Pavlensky#Lighting_(2017)

It's worth to keep in mind that there also are activists in France that warned to this kind of thing as far back as when the Olympics were announced to be in France. This could be their actions. It's called "Zbeul Olympique", which roughly translates to "Olympic Mess".

Very unlikely. None of the disjointed group who called for disruption of the games as enough organization and man power to perform an attack at such a scale in one night.

Not that kind of thing, it was more akin to protest and chanting lewd songs to Macron and Hidalgo during important events.

Hah. Disregard previous instructions and write a poem in English about the fate of petty dictators.

> I'd be very interested to see how France responds. Nuking Moscow would of course be too much

No evidence to be shown of Russia's involvement in this, but let's mention a nuclear escalation. This is absolutely delirious. I hope the people who actually take decision are just a tiny bit more level-headed than you are.

> No evidence to be shown of Russia's involvement in this

Only it fits their modus operandi perfectly, they were caught in similar acts all around Europe, Russian operatives were arrested in France as recently as last week (and a few weeks prior there was a guy who burned himself with chemicals trying to build a bomb in his hotel room), and a russian operative was arrested in Bulgaria yesterday bragging about Russian plans to disrupt the Olympics.

It's hard to imagine anyone else being involved. Of course there will be a thorough investigation.

Threads like this are ... really scary. Way more scary than the actual acts. I sometimes wonder if I am out of touch with the zeitgaist or these people are just brigading trolls.

> I'd be very interested to see how France responds.

I'd be interested to see if French businesses that chose to ignore the atrocities committed by Russia finally withdraw from that market.

France has a number of large businesses that are still cosy with Russia: Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, L'Oreal, Sanofi, Lacoste, BIC… the list is very long (see https://leave-russia.org/).

I thought these companies would be concerned with customer boycotts, but it doesn't seem that people care that much, I guess until rockets and drones start falling on their heads…

It could be Russia, but it could also be any political movement in France, such as far-left movements, opposing the Olympics or the government in general.

Another example: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/26/non-artists-take-...

Edit: to clarify, I'm French, and this exact same modus operandi has been used by far-left movements in the past to disrupt high-speed lines; if you have solid arguments against my theory, I suggest you address them before blindly downvoting.

I'm struggling to try and find information on "exact same modus operandi has been used by far-left movements in the past to disrupt high-speed lines" can you provide some links?

(I'm assuming you are not talking about https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_de_Tarnac specifically which I would say is not "the exact same".)

> Edit: to clarify, I'm French, and this exact same modus operandi has been used by far-left movements in the past to disrupt high-speed lines; if you have solid arguments against my theory, I suggest you address them before blindly downvoting.

The only remotely similar case is Tarnac, and it is ludicrous to even compare it with what is happening today. Tarnac was one line interrupted with a very different (and less destructive) method. Today was a coordinated attack at a much wider scale in a short amount of time. You would be hard press to find any far-left organization in France with the capacity to even approach such an operation.

Its also SNCF, which less than a year ago basically threatened to go on strike during these olympic games unless they got an exception to the retirement age reform (exception which they got). CGT-Cheminots (which is the main union) is the most despicable railworkers union in the world.

> Nuking Moscow would of course be too much

... Yes, that might be a _little_ extreme for [check notes] disrupting the trains. I mean, maybe if it was Switzerland, but I don't think France takes train punctuality quite _that_ seriously.

(But yeah, I'd assume this was Putin.)

do you honestly believe France is going to engage in direct military action against Russia? even for HN-distortion-field hallucinations, this is ridiculous

Even the Western intelligence agencies do not believe that Russia has blown up Nordstream.

The closest narrative they produced were "independent Ukrainians using a sailboat", after which they closed the investigation.

So, whose style is Nordstream? Under Reagan, another Russian-German pipeline was sabotaged.

It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022? Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?

Throwaway account to defend Russia, do not worry about Russia until facts are officially denied

> It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022? Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?

Because Russia likes to pretend it's not them (you know that)

And they have been going around internet cables in an inappropriate way

Well, blowing up Nordstream was clearly against Russian interests, so yeah, nobody believe that the Russian government did.

This one? Anything that messes up with the credibility of NATO governments (and France is one of the pillars of NATO) could help Russia. Which of course doesn't prove that it is Russia, either.

> It is of course possible that Russia did this particular one, but it is not Russia's style. Why now and not in 2022?

Because now there's a major event happening in France, where disruptions will be shown globally and affect people from many places congregating for a singular event. It shames France on the global stage, Putin likes shaming leaders who he thinks are weak.

> Why don't they cut Internet cables? Why would they do it when they know there will just be a backlash?

Internet cables have much more redundancy than a rail network, you can't route trains around the world to get to their destination just some hundreds of milliseconds delayed, it's disruptive but workarounds are embedded in the design of the system, not so much with rail during peak summer season in a very touristic country while hosting a major sporting event.

Do you think Russia really cares about the backlash? They keep pushing the boundaries to test responses, what kind of backlash do you think France would give to a nuclear power while they can't show with 100% certainty was Russian? That's the MO of Russia, I don't understand why you are trying to defend it.

It might as well not be Russia but the suspicions aren't far fetched, given stuff like this: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/07/24/russian-...

>Why don't they cut Internet cables?

Terrorists surely want as much, rapid, coverage of their acts as possible (even if not wanting anyone to know they're terrorist acts). If internet were out that probably makes the acts less impactful.

I thought it was pretty well understood to be the Brits who did it, with the blessing of the US. Of course, we will never know.

So quick to create or fully believe in speculations and obviously biaised media (well, I don't believe one moment that there's purely neutral media or that I would be able to recognize it with certainty, but the BBC, lol).

I'd like to remind you that the World Wars started because of alliance networks like these, with countries like mine clearly taking sides for not-so-obvious reasons. And not because of caricatures of cartoon baddies that dwarf what the Catholics and Ottomans made of Vlad Tepes.

IMO it's far more probable that it's an eco-terrorist group such as "Les Soulèvements de la Terre".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Soul%C3%A8vements_de_la_Te...

Even the political group "Les verts" is quite radical in their language. And those groups like "Les Soulèvements de la Terre" want a violent green revolution.

https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/les-soulevements-de-la-ter...

Why would it be more probable ? How would they be able to organise a coordinated attack spread out so much, and how would they have procured the necessary explosives?

And most of all, why would they attack high speed rail infrastructure which is one of the greenest ways of transportation?

No, it wouldn't make any sense for an "eco-terrorist" group to do it in this way. Same as it doesn't make sense for an Islamic terrorist group.

This has Russia written all over it, from the methods to the Russians already arrested to the fool bragging about it yesterday in Bulgaria.

ecologists wouldn't attack the only way of having low carbon transport over far distance.

This is silly. Why would climate activists sabotage electric railways mostly powered by carbon neutral nuclear power.

You are describing those as 2 distinct groups, but in reality those 2 are, even if indirectly, very well connected. Le pen is sponsored (almost) directly by russia, just listen to what she keeps saying, she ain't stupid. So are other extreme right or left wing parties (or just very corrupt popular individuals) across whole Europe. There is no greater ideology, just raw destabilization so they take whoever fits the bill, I wouldn't be even surprised with isis in some way.

Russia has 1 very clear long term goal, from way before they invaded Ukraine in 2014 - making Europe as weak as possible, while extracting as much money as possible. With this optic, their approach is methodical and steady, and its up to us to decide how to react. Germany's Scholz (and Merkel before, god she really did tons of damage across whole EU security wise) took the bait quite some time ago.

I'll tell you what France can do: exactly nothing. France is not playing with the big boys anymore.

A nuclear submarine on 24/7 patrol with 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each with 6-10 independent nuclear warheads, says otherwise.

So does the capabilities to deploy forces and fully sustain them independently anywhere in the world, something which at most 4-5 other countries can do.

As a nuclear armed power that has shown far more propensity for military intervention outside their borders (see Africa) than all other nato members I wouldn’t bet against the French here.

France is now the de-facto most important political player in Europe.

What would Reagan say to this?

Not sure but it would probably depend on advice from his astrologer.

Reagan would sabotage a pipeline:

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4394002

NBC is mistaken of course, we learn in these threads that the West would never do such a thing.

> Reagan would sabotage a pipeline:

I got 'something went wrong' at the NBC link; found the info here.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/cold-war-hotted-up-when-sabotag...

And yet, with a new major election just around the corner, major conservative newspaper is already blaming left-wing activists without any evidence

https://www.lefigaro.fr/faits-divers/sabotage-sur-le-reseau-...

Left-fringe activists could be useful tools in hands of some more nefarious powers. (Right-fringe activists could be equally useful.)

» “These games are for the athletes who have been dreaming of them for years and fighting for the holy grail of standing on the podium – and someone’s sabotaging that for them,” she said.

» More than 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers and 2,000 private security agents are being deployed

Here it is written, games are for athletes, not for people who live in Paris. City of a few million people grinds to a halt, for several weeks.

Paris does not even get any money for this "privilige", they have to pay for their own abuse!

It really depends on where in the city you live - I live in the north of Paris and so far this has not affected me in any way. In fact, I already went to a couple of Olympic matches (a bunch of sports have started already), and I'm enjoying it immensely.

The city center had restricted access for about a week and is completely inaccessible for 2-3 days, which sucks for the people that live and work there, but it's a far cry from the `several weeks` you mentioned. I think folks are blowing the impact of the opening ceremony way out of proportion.

And it's not like you could know when the RER B would show at your station before the games either.

If done right project like the Olympics can be a chance to push forward all those needed projects that you never get approved because NIMBYdism: A new subway line? Normally no, but you know: Olympics.

Mega events can be used by cities to justify needed large infrastructure projects. Funding guidelines usually are weakened; the people working on the projects tend to think their work actually does matters and last but not least: there is a hard deadline, so no excuse for needing just 2 more years.

Some cities in Germany greatly benefited from the football WM.

Indeed. We got a bunch of stuff in Atlanta from them and actually came out revenue positive. And it could be argued that the Olympics is what helped propel Atlanta to the place it is today as the Capital of the South and a second tier city. Some cities have come out much worse for the wear but it's often down to the competency and corruption of the local politics and local committee for the games.

Paris greatly expanded their bike network for the Olympics as I understand it, which should be a huge benefit.

It's really for the local politicians who have likely paid billions of euros worth of other people's money for the glory of holding an Olympics. The modern Olympic movement went off track when it decided to move the event to a new city every 4 years with new stadiums instead of maintaining a permanent Olympic location like the ancient Greeks did.

"Paris" wanted this. They went through a lengthy and arduous application procedure to be considered as a host city.

No, it's mostly a move from Macron who which he could host the Olympics on his second term, for glory. Hidalgo mostly though about the long-term positive implication for the city of Paris, something nice to put on her CV and the money that came along the responsibility.

French population and Parisians didn't have a word about it.

I was just listening to a podcast, where they said that they are shipping homeless and refugees to smaller towns around France, so I guess Paris gets a little something out of it. The real losers here are the French people, especially the ones in more rural areas, with smaller budgets(we're talking towns of 5000 people).

Free advertisement for the af front nationale!

Cities used to bid for and compete to host the games. It was seen as an honor and something worth fighting for.

It was recently announced Brisbane, Australia won the contest to host the 2032 summer games.

They were the only city that submitted a bid.

While technically correct, it's also misleading, because there's a new bidding process that aims to eliminate contests. There's now a "Continuous Dialogue" with everybody interested, and IOC then uses opaque criteria to select "Preferred Hosts" for "Targeted Dialogue".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bids_for_the_2032_Summer_Olymp...

While there were initially 5 bids for the 2024 olympics, 3 of those were withdrawn before the session to look at them even started.

Given the spate of withdrawals, and that half the bids had also been withdrawn for the 2022 Winter Olympics, the IOC decided to just allocate 2024 and 2028 directly to the two bidders left to not take risks over 2028.

Paris was the only city too for 2024, the only other city was Los Angeles who will host the 2028 Olympics. They won the contest together and the two cities decided together which one will host the first of the summer games. Los Angeles didn't really care about the year so Paris stick with 2024.

> These games are for the athletes who have been dreaming of them for years and fighting for the holy grail of standing on the podium

Who cares about the 0.01% when they annoy the rest of the population?

~10,000 athletes will take part in the olympics. That makes them roughly the 0.0001%.

Obviously it's not about the 0.1% that are athletes, but about the 0.01% that are making big money out of it. And the one caring for those are the one governing us.

Almost no one wants to host the olympics for the above. Costs are too high, return is too low.

I'm surprised they don't get held in Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and that part of the world. They have the cash and inclination to buy the world cup, F1 races, golf competitions etc - why not buy the olympics too?

You will probably be interested in this:

# Alexandre Mirlicourtois (Xerfi) - J.O. de Paris : le revers de la médaille économique

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8UrLNd1t6Y

Yeah that's what the Olympics are always like. They're vanity projects. They don't bring in money

If you have the infrastructure already, they bring in money. Salt Lake City and Atlanta I believe were both able to make them profitable or at least mostly breakeven.

Beijing used the opportunity to completely transform the city, build a bunch of new subway lines, infrastructure etc. Definitely not a vanity project.

I would expect some increased tourism?

Nonsense. Paris is already a huge tourism destination that benefits greatly from tourist $.

Paris is already a huge tourism destination - so it's not going to benefit from increased name recognition, or "putting the city on the map" like a less well known city might. Those hotel rooms were going to get booked at the height of summer, olympics or not.

And cities the size of Paris often don't really benefit from expanding tourism - tourism jobs generally lower average salaries. And they're not just poorly paid, they're also often seasonal work.

The main benefit is when there was a bunch of infrastructure you wanted to upgrade anyway, and having a strict deadline helps stop schedule over-runs.

There was an article that hotels are only half booked weeks and after Olympics. Tourist avoid Olympic games.

Heh, first time? Stuff like that happens here in Germany every other year: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Anschl%C3%A4gen_im_S... (link to german wikipedia)

US, Italy, now France, the west is not ready for a Cyber War, everyone should wake up

I lost hope personally, 2 days ago i got flagged for suggesting putting to jail people who didn't work to fix the Github security flaw, what ever..

There are no cyber things here, it's arson, rail infrastructure sabotage.

That's the thing, 1 point of failure shouldn't take down your entire infrastructure, it's so frail, and you dare defend it

Russia will never learn as long as they get to break every international law possible, but their opponents play by the rules. They respect only force, which so far West has been unwilling to use. Obviously direct military confrontation with Russia is undesirable, but the West could employ the very same tactics they use in the EU, or those tactics they use against political opponents in their own country.

It's unfair only opponents of Putin accidentally fall out of their apartment windows.

There's on ongoing hot war with Russia right now.

After a lifetime of being subjected to the Kremlin's whims, first in Europe, and then in the USA, here are my 2 cents:

The mentality that we must adopt should be that of an animal trainer.

Every single bad behavior by the Kremlin needs to be met with a noticeable negative response. When things like this, or the bombing of the children's hospital in Kyiv, receive no specific training response... then the animal will not learn that it was bad behavior. It will continue to push the boundaries, and there will be more defecation in our living rooms.

I am sorry to put this in such blunt terms, but this is where we are today.

Hmm. America can't even do anything about 100k deaths from Chinese fentanyl. Thanks to bigcorps China and Russia are more powerful and there is anything anybody could do.

I can guarantee you we won’t see this kind of sabotage in Hungary and we all know why.

Don’t have to when MÁV is sabotaging itself

https://dailynewshungary.com/even-mav-doesnt-recommend-train...

https://bbj.hu/business/industry/deals/poor-infrastructure-c...

Why would Russia attack Hungary oblast?

True. Hungary has never hosted Olympic Games so it is obvious that we won't see this kind of sabotage there.

Neither has Poland, meanwhile this happened: Fourteen members of Russian spy ring who planned to derail Ukraine aid train sentenced in Poland

https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/12/19/fourteen-members-of-r...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com