A Cyber-Attack on an American City

[Sabre]

Full article

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

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

I'm fairly shocked we didn't hear more about this...

[complacent]

There are soooo many possible explanations for this... Personally I'm hoping it was directed at the ISP and not the city.

[Mr Kleen]

the city was in contentious negotiations with the union when this happened. the article I read said there was a lot of speculation that it was angry union workers who knew exactly what to cut, where to cut, and when to cut it. scary, but not as scary as an outsider attack.

[WRXWagon2112]

Both CrankyGeeks and TWiT have talked about this as well as the lack of MSM coverage. It's shocking that these cuts can occur and no one seems to be that concerned.

BTW, it's not just that one city. There have been cuts in South Carolina and other cities / states. They're usually confined to local news reports, though.

--Alan

[schvin]

interesting. some severe lack of dr/bc planning and testing, as usual.

[complacent]

interesting. some severe lack of dr/bc planning and testing, as usual.

qft