Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: TWO UNUSUAL WAYS TO BREAK THE INTERNET

by Hazed

I read two stories recently about how criminals can affect internet connections. The first was about crooks in Las Vegas who have been stealing cable and selling it for its copper content. The price of the metal has increased drastically, which makes it worth the thieves' time to dig up the cables.

A company which offers communications services in 18 states, Embarq, has offered a $5,000 bounty for information leading to the prosecution of people who half-inch its cables in Las Vegas. They've already spent almost half a million dollars this year in replacing stolen lines in that city alone, and more than 60 individuals have been arrested for copper theft in Las Vegas.

The thieves often drive vans, don hard hats, and scale telephone poles, in an attempt to blend in with legitimate telephone workers. But instead of fixing broken lines, they are taking the fiber used to connect ATMs, emergency 911 call centers and phone services. Mind you, it's not a very safe activity: there have also been news reports of crooks who have been electrocuted while attempting to steal live wires. Ouch!

And so to the other crims-break-the-net story. ISPs in the US were forced to reroute traffic last week after a stretch of fibre-optic cable was shot up. The northern branch of the US network owned by TeliaSonera was taken out by this sabotage, which damaged a cable about two thirds of a mile long. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," a spokesman for the company said.

As a result, ISPs on the East side of the country suffered from lag until such time as technicians could replace the cables. The technicians were shocked to discover that what they assumed to be ordinary breaks in the cables, were actually numerous bullet holes!

So now we don't just have to worry about some idiot with a backhoe digging through a cable: now maniacs with guns are trying to cut us off from the net, too.

Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page