DENVER – Internet providers suffered disruptions Tuesday in what a West Coast internet provider said appeared to be a coordinated physical attack on three high-capacity “backbone” lines in California.
Wave Broadband said three major fiber-optic cables in the Sacramento area were “physically severed in what appears to be a coordinated attack on multiple internet carriers.”
Wave spokesman Mark Peterson said the company’s subscribers in the suburban Sacramento area were suffering outages, and crews were working to restore the connections, which were severed at 4:20 a.m. local time. Peterson said Wave itself is a customer of the two backbone companies apparently targeted, Level 3 and Zayo. Both backbone companies are based in Colorado.
Read more at: http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2015/06/30/coordinated-attack-downs-services-with-cut-lines/29527161/
ALSO RELATED: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/30/california-internet-outage/29521335/
Another source:
USA Today: FBI investigating 11 attacks on San Francisco-area Internet lines
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/06/30/california-internet-outage/29521335/
Been waiting for this to occur for the past 25 years. Thankfully the number of rings has increased substantially during that period, distributing the risk. Folks don’t realize that these fiber trunks pass through thousands of miles of the ‘middle of nowhere’ with periodic regen facilities that are easy targets. A couple of resources:
Network maps from the major US and international carriers:
http://www.telecomramblings.com/network-maps/usa-fiber-backbone-map-resources/
And Level3 does a great job of portraying physical routes, which highlights aggregation and crossover points, which would be key targets, albeit very hardened ones.
http://maps.level3.com/default/#.VZMtRUbfDkg
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