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Crime The Internet

FBI Investigating Series of Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Bay Area 168

Posted by samzenpus from the cutting-the-line dept.
jfruh writes: Ten times over four separate nights in the past year, telecom cables have been mysteriously cut in various locations around the San Francisco Bay Area. Now the FBI is investigating the incidents as potential sabotage. ITWorld reports: "In the past year, there were 10 instances on four separate nights when telecom cables were intentionally cut in Fremont, Walnut Creek, Alamo, Berkeley and San Jose, the agency said Monday. FBI Special Agent Greg Wuthrich said it's unclear if the incidents are unrelated or the work of a single person or group, but the FBI is keen to hear from anyone who may have witnessed anything suspicious."
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FBI Investigating Series of Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Bay Area More

FBI Investigating Series of Fiber Cuts In San Francisco Bay Area

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  • Fiber Cuts (Score:5, Funny)

    by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @06:29AM (#49920289) Homepage Journal
    Fiber cuts?
    Listen, putz:
    Keep it smooth,
    Or door she shuts.
    Burma Shave

  • Remember that remote substation that was attacked? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @06:39AM (#49920327)

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08... [nytimes.com]

    I guess it was a power substation, not a fiber optic link, but it was kind of in the same area.

    • That was a year too early - 2013 instead of 2014.
    • The substation attack is mentioned in TFA, but then - this is /.

    • Re:Remember that remote substation that was attack (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @09:08AM (#49921069) Homepage

      Infrastructure is incredibly vulnerable.

      Some big problems:

      1. It is distributed all over the place, often just hanging on poles or with little protection beyond a fence.
      2. Cost-efficiency often results in minimal redundancy.
      3. Cost-efficiency often results in minimal inventory of spares and capacity to make repairs.

      Take out a couple of big transformers with a rifle and you could cut power over a very large area with a very lengthy repair time. Take out a fair number of them and you'll exhaust the supply of spares and now you could be talking months of problems (perhaps cannibalizing from other sites at reduced capacity across the grid, and if you take out enough you might just have to leave large areas blacked/browned-out).

      Fiber is also difficult to repair. If you had a determined attack you could probably rapidly outpace the ability to locate and repair cuts.

      Of course any kind of serious or sustained attack would draw attention and you'd find security improved. However, you could probably do a lot of damage before that happened.

      I think the best solution is to build more redundancy into infrastructure, and more capacity for repair. That also makes infrastructure more robust against other kinds of failure. It does cost money, and when you have privatization it requires some kind of way to pay those costs. The government could just buy capacity that it can make available in the event of a disaster. Of course, that would need to be real capacity, and not something that just gets oversubscribed (government buys 1GW of power but doesn't use it, utility just under-provisions by 1GW and sends the government the bill).

      • Re:Remember that remote substation that was attack (Score:4, Informative)

        by Fnord666 ( 889225 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @11:42AM (#49922281) Journal

        Take out a couple of big transformers with a rifle and you could cut power over a very large area with a very lengthy repair time.

        Friend's dad worked for the power company back in the day. Need some overtime? He and his coworkers would disappear with their 30-30s for a couple of hours. Next thing you knew there were transformers down after the coolant drained from mysterious new holes.

        • Re:Remember that remote substation that was attack (Score:5, Informative)

          by Shoten ( 260439 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @02:39PM (#49923869)

          Take out a couple of big transformers with a rifle and you could cut power over a very large area with a very lengthy repair time.

          Friend's dad worked for the power company back in the day. Need some overtime? He and his coworkers would disappear with their 30-30s for a couple of hours. Next thing you knew there were transformers down after the coolant drained from mysterious new holes.

          I call bullshit.

          Transformer cooling oil isn't just cooling liquid. It's non-conductive, because the inside of a transformer is full of bare copper, all of which is energized when the transformer is in use. If you shoot a transformer, it doesn't just drain out...it's a whole lot worse than that. When a transformer develops an air gap, you get an arc inside the transformer, which ignites the oil in the event that sufficient pressure cannot build to cause a BLEVE, but causes a BLEVE...even if there's a hole in it, sometimes, based on where and how big the whole is...if the pressure is enough. It takes fractions of a second for this to happen, because you can have a massive flash of heat and concordant pressure spike. Things like this have been responsible for loss of life at substations. And it's not something you just fix like a hole in a radiator...you have to replace the whole transformer, and often a good part of the lines leading up to them as well. In the meanwhile, you end up with a sabotage report and law enforcement involvement, and reporting to the local PSC/PUC.

          Transformers detonate. They do it because the oil loses its dielectric property, or because an air space forms inside the transformer. The idea that linemen, who eventually would have seen an event like this take place as well as the injury/death that resulted (it's not all that rare, and used to be even more common, "back in the day") would cause such events just to get some overtime, sounds preposterous to me. It'd be like cops getting themselves shot at so that they could do the extra paperwork and get overtime, especially ones who had seen a colleague killed in the line of duty. I work in the power industry, today, and I've never heard of anything like this, nor have I met anyone who I believe would do this.

          • Transformers detonate. They do it because the oil loses its dielectric property, or because an air space forms inside the transformer. The idea that linemen, who eventually would have seen an event like this take place as well as the injury/death that resulted (it's not all that rare, and used to be even more common, "back in the day") would cause such events just to get some overtime, sounds preposterous to me.

            Not all psychopaths manage to make it to management. Some of them are going to be stuck at blue

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Shoten ( 260439 )

              Transformers detonate. They do it because the oil loses its dielectric property, or because an air space forms inside the transformer. The idea that linemen, who eventually would have seen an event like this take place as well as the injury/death that resulted (it's not all that rare, and used to be even more common, "back in the day") would cause such events just to get some overtime, sounds preposterous to me.

              Not all psychopaths manage to make it to management. Some of them are going to be stuck at blue collar jobs. And I suppose not having underlings to torment would cause them more likely to act out their pathology in illegal ways.

              Of course it's anyone's guess if grandparent's "friend's dad" actually was a psychopath (and dumb enough to let a couple of kids know what he was up to), or if it's yet another piece of propaganda for the ongoing War on Workers.

              But the poster isn't just speaking about a couple of psychopaths. He's describing a situation where people do this, do it often, and do it openly. Without even fear of consequences. And that nothing happened to them, when lots of people knew about it. And even more to the point, that this was a widespread thing.

              I say again: bullshit.

      • If you want to do it properly, make cuts in the fiber and multiple breaks or blocks in the conduits. It's one thing to repair a break, another to pull a new section of fiber, but if you have to dig up and replace conduits the job just got a whole lot bigger. Do it out in the bush and you disconnect whole cities or states.

  • And now for the bad news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @06:42AM (#49920339)

    Do people really remember things like "oh, yeah, I saw some telecom workers in San Jose late at night on July 17 of last year"?

    Thinking back on last year, I can't actually pin ANYTHING down to that specific date. Sure, I remember seeing and doing things last year, but I couldn't tell you what I did on July 17 specifically beyond "get out of bed, eat three meals, go to bed" - don't even remember whether it was a workday or weekend, much less whether I saw any workmen doing stuff....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DanJ_UK ( 980165 ) *
      I was probably wasted.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by TheCarp ( 96830 )

      Depends, sometimes there is someone who can. While any given day is unmemorable, each day and some of its details may be notable to someone. There are a number of random events I have been able to work out pretty exact dates for just because they happened in relation to something else that places the event in time...like where I was going that day.

      A couple of years back a girl at a local store asked my wife and I if we lived near the neighborhood we did because of where she saw us walking. Of course we do,

      • Copper theft has become a massive problem in the Bay Area so I really wonder if these cuts had anything to do with it. It could be that the people who did it were stupid and had no idea it was fiber cable until they cut it.

    • Re:And now for the bad news... (Score:5, Funny)

      by PPH ( 736903 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @09:53AM (#49921389)

      Oh, I don't know. If I saw a Comcast worker actually fixing something, that would be pretty memorable.

    • Can you imagine crime in Alaska: "what were you doing in the night from november 1st to february 15th ?"

    • I don't see why anyone would *not* remember something as potentially conspicuous as someone or ones with equipment digging into the ground somewhere. I'm guessing that the cables are not just sitting up in the air, but under the ground and probably in some type of conduit which would need to be accessed.

      Then again, they dug my street up something like 5 separate times over the past couple years for various water and electric upgrades, so people can become inured to such work going on also.

  • In related news NSA builds data center in San Fran (Score:5, Interesting)

    by waldozer ( 1204634 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @06:50AM (#49920373)
    Could it be to hide placing fiber taps in the trunk? Not normally a tin foil hat guy. But, you have to wonder.

  • I expect these cuts to be decoys (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you wanted to splice cables without anyone knowing, wouldn't you cut the cable someplace else to evade detection?

  • Degenerates (Score:5, Insightful)

    by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @07:39AM (#49920599) Journal

    Jesus. Good, hard-working, honest Americans are sitting at home, fapping to online porn, pirating movies and music, trolling n00bs, and some sick, twisted psychopath cuts their fiber. Some things...some things are just beyond the pale.

    Nail 'em, FBI. Nail 'em to the fucking wall.

  • This is something I arguably care about, and will not find myself apologizing to others for the FBI's behaviour.

  • Somebody's lost (Score:4, Funny)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @08:01AM (#49920703)

    and is using the reverse of the tried-and-true (when you're lost: bury a length of fiber, wait for the inevitable backhoe to show up).

  • NSA removing PRISM taps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spacepimp ( 664856 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @08:04AM (#49920721)

    In the wake of Snowden, they are preventing the most obvious proof they were spying on their own country from within it's own borders.

    • Re:NSA removing PRISM taps (Score:5, Interesting)

      by coofercat ( 719737 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @09:06AM (#49921063) Homepage Journal

      Not removing - adding.

      They'll break a fibre in two places - one 'obvious' and the other not so much. It depends what detection the owner can do as to where 'obvious' might be. While the owner is detecting the problem, isolating where it is on the fibre and sending out crews to fix it, the tap is applied in the second location, along with suitable repairs and whatnot.

      When the 'obvious' break is repaired, the owner just sees the light going down the fibre once again - they're not aware there's a tap. Indeed, if the tap consumes a little bit of light, forcing a recalibration at either end, it'll be attributed to the repair made at the 'obvious' break, and not the addition of the tap.

      Sadly, I'm pretty sure we'll never know which one of us is right about this particular point though.

      • Re:NSA removing PRISM taps (Score:5, Informative)

        by hankwang ( 413283 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @11:29AM (#49922181) Homepage

        While the owner is detecting the problem, isolating where it is on the fibre and sending out crews to fix it, the tap is applied in the second location, along with suitable repairs and whatnot.

        I'd say that finding out where it is on the fiber is done by measuring the time it takes for a light pulse to reflect off the disturbance and converting that to distance. If the distances measured from both ends of the fiber do not add up to the length of the fiber, the owner of the fiber should get very suspicious. Would the eavesdropper take that risk?

        According to a friend of mine who's into fiber optics, tapping a fiber can be done without interrupting the fiber. If you bend a single-mode fiber, it will leak light, which is relatively easy to capture. The resulting signal loss of a few dB is likely to go unnoticed.

        • What you are describing is called an OTDR. Optical Time Domain Reflector IIRC.

          There is not much risk if you know what you are doing since the OTDR is only used at the most "convenient" end rather than both ends. Just make your secondary cut further away from where the repair crews will do the initial measuring.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's a cute story, but you don't need to cut fiber to tap it. People have been bending fiber which lets enough light escape to tap it for a very long time.
  • ...Terry Childs is going back to jail again.

  • Suppose you have suborned a switching point for a company you wished to access. Suppose that you could reduce switching options for traffic to that destination by taking out one (or more) of those trunks at a particular time, to force traffic through your captured switching center.
    Know anyone who might want to run some man in the middle attacks on the valley?

  • whose job was replaced by an H1B worker? There must be thousands of them in silicon valley, all with motive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PRMan ( 959735 )
      Or any AT&T customer. The way they run their business that's millions that would want to hurt them...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jopsen ( 885607 )

      whose job was replaced by an H1B worker? There must be thousands of them in silicon valley, all with motive.

      Because H1Bs are replacing people who lay/maintain cables? I think not...

      • whose job was replaced by an H1B worker? There must be thousands of them in silicon valley, all with motive.

        Because H1Bs are replacing people who lay/maintain cables? I think not...

        Why not? If they are cheaper than hiring locally, then it is easy enough to make a job requirement that excludes local cable maintenance techs.

      • No. Because the former employer in silicon valley probably depends on their internet connection for their business and cutting that connection will cause them a big problem and cost them a lot of money.

        Why would it have anything to do with cable workers?

  • Strange things are brewing.

    The Metcalf sniper attack was a "sophisticated" assault on PG&E Corp's Metcalf Transmission Substation located outside of San Jose, California on April 16, 2013, in which gunmen fired on 17 electrical transformers. The attack resulted in over $15 million worth of damage.[1][2]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08... [nytimes.com]
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • but it was ISIS.

    This is Rand Paul's fault.

  • This article shows that there's a major problem, because: how do you find the fiber to cut? And how do you cut it?

    It's not like a backhoe, that cuts the fiber "by accident." You have to go into a manhole, find the line you're looking for, then cut it. That takes work, planning, and intelligence. You can't just wander around in a manhole, looking for stuff...can you?

    • It depends, not all of it is down in a manhole. Much of it is retrofitted into neighborhoods using a Ditch Witch that augers under roadways and sidewalks. My neighborhood has a bunch of circular patches from when Verizon put in FIOS.

      At work there are a bunch of warning signs in the grass next to the sidewalks telling you in bold letters where the fiber is buried going to the Comcast building.

      It won't easily tell you where all the fiber is, or necessarily where the really important stuff is, but all the "C

  • I expect the result will be camera's splaced at critical points to capture someone cutting.

  • FBI? Did they do it? (Score:3)

    by TheCarp ( 96830 ) <sjc AT carpanet DOT net> on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @12:00PM (#49922435) Homepage

    Seems any time we hear the FBI is investigating anything, it turns out they are partly to blame, if not fully.

    How many "terrorists" have been mentally ill men setup for profit by CIs like Robert Childs ( http://fcir.org/2014/12/26/fbi... [fcir.org] ). How many incidents have been FBI made plans, using FBI made contacts, with FBI made devices?

    I would just about bet that somewhere, at the root of this, there is an FBI paid informant who helped make it happen.

  • Not really new news (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The last set of cuts the repair was delayed 8 hours while the FBI investigated. They would not let techs in to repair the damage. I know I was on a conference line waiting for updates and several big companies were also on the line apple for one.

  • Although the OP is about a rather crude way to deal with conditions in Silicon Valley, it does indicate that SV has its discontents and they are probably due to the lopsided economic benefits of SV and the large number of other people being disadvantaged by SV. I am surprised that there has not been more attacks on SV, rather than less.

    So, infrastructure is the Achilles Heel of the boom in SV, in the bostering plans of all the politicians and investment managers, of the VCs and the banks that back them.

  • I wonder how often fibers are cut by a backhoe to lay other utilities but didn't do proper homework prior to digging a trench. Or if some of these intentional cuts were actually accidental (or removing old fibers but mistakenly took out the ones still in service). Kind of like the old phrase of stupidity over malicious the likely cause or something like that.

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