FBI investigating vandalism of fiberoptic cables at Livermore | Hacker News Reader

FBI investigating vandalism of fiberoptic cables at Livermore

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Something really interesting I noticed, according to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/270207251/Severed-Fiber-Optic-Cabl...

There were cuts in Alamo @ 11pm, and then in Fremont at 11:40pm.

It takes almost exactly that long to drive between these locations.

Either there are multiple parties at work here, or these cuts are planned very well and executed flawlessly.

Indeed, this dual-pronged approach seems to happen three times total.

On 7/6 Berkeley to Fremont, 7/7 Walnut Creek to Fremont then San Jose (though I think it would be hard to get from WC to Fremont in 25 minutes... basically impossible), and 6/8 Alamo to Fremont.

Actually, it seems almost certain that multiple people are either doing this independently or working together.

Since the disparate cuts happen on the same day, it seems very much like multiple people are working together.

It would be interesting to learn what high profile clients are getting their connectivity and how it affects their business either by a) severed or no connectivity or b) that a splitter device is running somewhere near the cut and doing MITM.

If you're wondering whether this is related to the sniper attacks on electrical transformers in 2013, don't worry - despite having apparently no idea who did either, the FBI is pretty sure there's no connection.

"On April 16, 2013, suspects clipped fiber-optic cables outside San Jose before snipers opened fire on electrical transformers at PG&E's Metcalf Transmission Substation, causing more than $15 million in damage.

According to the FBI, the recent spate of fiber cuts are unconnected to the sniper attack on the Metcalf substation. No one has been arrested in connection with that attack."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sacramento-cable...

One has to question how they can be so certain they are totally unrelated given they have no clues about either incidents. Seems more like wishful thinking than sound facts at this point.

No public information about a crime doesn't mean no clues.

I wonder how long it will be until the authorities start getting cell site records showing everyone who was near each of these locations and then analyzing them to find people who just happened to be in/around several of these locations when each of the cuts occurred.

Or who's cell phone shut off 1 or 2 cells over then turned back on 1 or 2 cells over in the time frame of the crime. This is the kind of FBI sleuthing I'd support, assuming they got a warrant.

Until they make THAT (switching off your phone for 1 or 2 cells and turning back on 1 or 2 cells over) a crime. And start compelling cellphone companies to provide them with the records of everyone who does that. And start targeting those people. Like structuring [0].

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-acco...

A warrant to query everyone's geotagged cell phone records? That's a long way from traditional warrants to obtain a suspect's call log or to tap a suspect's phone...

I don't have a link handy or even recall what the situation was, but I recall reading of at least instance where law enforcement acquired cell site "dumps" of every connected phone. What I mentioned isn't too far off from that.

You might be referring to this story from Lebanon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-hezbollah-con...

Why would you shut off your phone? Just leave it behind.

Anyone doing a operation like theorized here would probably know to use burners.

A tracking device is a tracking device. Burners tend to be anomalies when it comes to activation/deactivation locations/times, payment methods, contacts communicated with and the locations/times that they're used.

If they're smart they'd want to minimize the electronic trail they'd leave behind and ditch the phone completely.

I'd love to be the lucky person who fits the profile of being in the right place at the wrong time.

My immediate thoughts were that these incidents were committed by anti-technology folks, looking to disrupt the tech focused population. In my mind, these folks don't even own cell phones.

I believe it was my 2010 article that was the first to highlight law enforcement obtaining cell site dumps:

http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-push-for-tracking-cell-phones/ "When the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves. FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists..."

I'd be surprised if the FBI didn't do the same thing today, as a very bare minimum.

No, even in my very small country with generally pretty tech-impaired police department, this was common before 2010. There was a big issue I think around 2006 because the police requested the list of IMEIs present near a particular rural transmitter to help investigate a murder, their court order was rejected as the transmitter was serving a huge area and it was deemed too large a privacy violation for too many people.

I'm sure it was done many times before that, and I'm also sure we were not the first.

It wasn't by a long shot. This very practice was a major plot point of season two of The Wire, which was aired in 2003.

Logs which showed which towers a specific cellphone was connected to was important evidence in the 1999 murder case covered by the SERIAL podcast.

It very well may have been. I can remember reading that article.

If this was a professional "hit", then it would be incredibly dumb to even carry a cellphone with you on such op. If you need real-time communication, just get VHF/UHF radio; Baofengs are pretty cheap these days.

Even better than cell records would be this: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

And I think I'd actually be ok with this method if our military/police/political leaders had a better track record of respecting rules for using the data.

This has probably already been done. Criminals these days know not to carry cell phones.

Do they? In Toronto, we just had an alleged hitman do the deed with a disguise and stolen getaway vehicle use the same vehicle to scope out the scene the day before in broad daylight without a disguise...

Link? I found this http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/13/slaying_of_hit... .. your thoughts? Are the mafia still active overtly in Canada?

There have been a few high profile mob killings in Toronto in the past few years. Most notably was John Raposo[0], who was gunned down in broad daylight in little italy during a world cup game.[0]

Talk about brazen...

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/man-slain-in-little-it...

Here's the best one I could find: http://www.cp24.com/news/watch-new-video-of-woodbridge-murde...

I acknowledge my own paranoia, but is there any chance this wasn't vandalism, but is a cover story for the NSA installing equipment on the fiber?

Why wouldn't they just drop their equipment and leave? Cutting cables causes a noticeable outage and requires people to physically visit the point of modification, which ruins the covert potential for such equipment.

Possibly there's no way to install the equipment in a way that won't interrupt service.

Also, such an approach would give the fiber company plausible deniability if they were ever called out for supporting NSA data collection.

unless you your install is downstream of the cut and action of the cable cutting is both to interrupt service and to cause a distraction...

Or, going down the rabbit hole, the government sabotaging fiber lines to stir up public support for "protecting" the internet, more surveillance, etc.

The quote keeps getting kicked around on most media outlets: "Our internet infrastructure stands practically unprotected".

I've never heard anyone use that in terms of physical infrastructure. I've heard our other physical infrastructure is unprotected (which is true) and our internet isn't protected against cyberattacks (which I guess is vaguely true?)

It sounds crazy, but at this point, why not.

"Who can protect your internet better than the federal government of the USA?"

GCHQ :)

I vote for this being fully private operation - someone trying to sabotage their competition, or some HFT shenanigans.

Is this vandalism or a terrorist attack? Interfering with communication structures..

Probably just failed cable theft. Petty criminals who steal metals for scrap aren't particularly bright.

http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/workspace/thousands-sky-cust...

How much scrap metal is there in a fiber optic cable?

This cable might actually have quite a bit of metal armour on it to protect the cable from damage. Here's a picture that came up earlier today, showing rigid metal "caterpillar" armour that goes on the outside of the cable to protect it near shorelines: https://plus.google.com/+UrsH%C3%B6lzle/posts/Gwz3TFyvCAf?pi...

I'm sure there are professional grade outfits, but many illicit metal scrappers I know are desperate and might take anything they perceive to have value.

They say 11th case in the last year, this is terrorism. Probably some kind of luddite version of the ALF/ELF. I'm going to call them the Information Liberation Front, ILF.

I really don't like the overloading of the term "terrorism" here. Nobody was killed, injured, attacked, or threatened.

Yeah, I think the term organized or orchestrated attacks/crimes masks more sense. This isn't inciting terror, it's a planned disruption in violation of the law.

It's about as "terrorism" as the hacking of Sony... as-in, it's not terrorism. It's vandalism and theft from a private company, and it inconvenienced customers. Nothing more.

Organized political disruption of markets and business is terrorism. These attacks have caused financial losses and will continue to do so. Everyone was attacked, injured, and threatened.

This is hyperbolic nonsense. If terrorism is everything we don't like, then it's just a pejorative. Whoever is doing this is doing a very poor job at instilling fear in anybody.

In Canada, section 83.01 of the Criminal Code[1] defines terrorism as an act committed "in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause" with the intention of intimidating the public "…with regard to its security, including its economic security, or compelling a person, a government or a domestic or an international organization to do or to refrain from doing any act."

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/victim/rr09_6/p3.ht...

Note "economic security". If you block the flow of the economy, you can be considered a terrorist under this definition in the Canadian criminal code. This is not hyperbolic nonsense. This is the law.

This is California, not Canada, so Canadian legal definitions aren't relevant. Even if it was relevant, there's a saying that "the law is an ass." A legislature could decree that apple pie is terrorism, but it simply does not make it so. Like I said, if you stretch the definition of terrorism to mean anything you don't like, you're just making a farce of language.

We've seen no evidence that this was carried out in furtherance of a "{political, religious, ideological} {purposes, objective, cause}". We've seen no evidence to suggest that this was done to intimidate the public. Yes, it's a lousy, criminal, needlessly destructive thing to do. That doesn't make it terrorism.

Maybe it's a bunch of bored teenagers. Maybe a disgruntled employee has it in for Level 3. Maybe the guy who shot up the PG&E substation has a delusional fear of electricity. These are all plausible, non-terroristic explanations. Until the FBI nabs the perpetrator, or someone makes a credible claim of responsibility, I'm not going to jump to conclusions.

>Maybe it's a bunch of bored teenagers.

When bored teenagers make death threats against the president, it's terrorism... and if teenagers are systematically disrupting commerce, even just with the intent to "have lulz", that is terrorism.

>Maybe a disgruntled employee has it in for Level 3. Maybe the guy who shot up the PG&E substation has a delusional fear of electricity

Lone wolf terrorists.

>These are all plausible, non-terroristic explanations

They are plausible, but not non-terroristic. All of the things you listed are instances of terrorism.

>A legislature could decree that apple pie is terrorism, but it simply does not make it so

Since terrorism is primarily a legal concept, that would indeed make apple pies terroristic.

>We've seen no evidence that this was carried out in furtherance of a "{political, religious, ideological} {purposes, objective, cause}". We've seen no evidence to suggest that this was done to intimidate the public. Yes, it's a lousy, criminal, needlessly destructive thing to do. That doesn't make it terrorism.

This is the best argument against calling it terrorism, but I agree with the comment parent that this is probably the work of neo-luddites. California is certainly known for being a hotbed of radical ideologies and this is just a few logical steps past the bus protests. Considering it is possible to cause massive network damage by taking out a few choke points, expect these attacks to become more widespread in the coming years, probably causing a severe shortage of connectivity at times and significantly disrupting commerce.

By labeling everything under the sun as terrorism, you are terrorizing polite political discourse. I therefore propose that you be water-boarded.

(You'll have to excuse me for being so brash; your harsh rhetoric caused me great emotional distress, making me feel attacked, injured, and threatened.)

Is it terrorism to abuse words like terrorism so badly?

>>Organized political disruption of markets and business is terrorism.

By that logic, employees protesting in front of supermarket entrances are terrorists. Yes, I know technically protesters shouldn't be blocking the entrance to the business.... but to call them terrorists would completely dilute the impact of the word "terrorism" into basically what has become of the word "epic" in tech-circles. Almost meaningless.

"I got free pancakes at iHop today, epic!"

"The store closed 10mins early today because the clerk had to catch the last bus that would get to the voting booths across town on time, terrorist!"

>By that logic, employees protesting in front of supermarket entrances are terrorists.

For many classes of business, this would be terrorism. Read up on the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.

This is not a "by your logic" sort of thing; that is the definition of terrorism. When Al-Qaeda in Iraq blows up oil pipeline, is that not terrorism?

Isn't terrorism the use or threat of violence and destruction to achieve a political goal?

What goal are these guys trying to achieve? Is there even a "these guys"?

> Isn't terrorism the use or threat of violence and destruction to achieve a political goal?

No, it isn't. It is the act of instilling terror. It seems like a small nuance, but it's different. Sadly, the the ambiguity in the definition lends itself to politicians, and modern use seems to be shifting to be more in-line with your definition of it, as you can see in the link I provided.

Interestingly, the first use of it was in context to a government terrorizing citizens during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution.[0]

[0]:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/terrorism

> No, it isn't [use or threat of violence to achieve a political goal]. It's the act of instilling terror.

I think it is, but those two definitions are connected.

When you make the people afraid, that tends to have an implied political goal. Fear will drive the voters to put political pressure on government to do something.

That definition literally says "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes."

Not about instilling terror, but about accomplishing a goal.

You're really conflating minor financial losses with mass murder and actual violence? Or is this a 'whoosh' moment and did I just miss the sarcasm? Please let that be the case.

Oh yes. If this doesn't feel like terrorism now, check back with me when you can't get to websites because exchange points keep having their power stations destroyed or their fiber lines cut.

This has been happening in places like Iraq and the Niger River Delta for a long time; we're just starting to see it in the US now because it takes time for tactics like that to migrate from very serious asymmetric warfare groups to lone wolves in the US.

Raise your hands if you feel "terror" at this news.

Yeah, this isn't "terrorism"...

Oh for God's sake.

> Interfering with communication structures..

So? That terrifies you?

a little bit, yeah

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