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The Internet Communications IT

French Police Probe Multiple Cuts of Major Internet Cables (apnews.com) 44

French police said Friday they're investigating multiple cuts to fiber-optic cables in France's second-largest city. Operators said the cables link Marseille to other cities in France and Europe and that internet and phone services were severely disrupted. From a report: The disruptions in Marseille were a taste of what analysts warn could be far larger problems in other cases if cables are systematically attacked. The vulnerability of fiber-optic cables, especially those underwater, and other key infrastructure was highlighted by the sabotage last month in the Baltic Sea of natural gas pipelines from Russia. The damage in the city in southern France also appeared to resemble suspected acts of sabotage to other cables in the country earlier this year. French cable operator and internet service provider Free said its repair teams were mobilized before dawn Wednesday to deal with "an act of vandalism on our fiber infrastructure." It said the attacks were simultaneous and on multiple spots of its fiber network near Marseille. Photos that Free published on Twitter showed multiple cables completely severed in their concrete housings buried in the ground. It said the cuts led to major disruptions to its network and phone services in the Marseille area.
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French Police Probe Multiple Cuts of Major Internet Cables

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  • the Russians are coming!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by fabriciom ( 916565 )
      Coming? I would say they are already here....
    • by q4Fry ( 1322209 ) on Friday October 21, 2022 @04:00PM (#62986905)

      Nothing to see here. These were just a passing fisherman, like the one in the two separate cable cuttings in Shetland within a week of each other. In France, a fisherman just dragged his boat through the concrete housing containing the cables and accidentally cut the fibre optics.

      Meanwhile, Norway is arresting Russians [washingtonpost.com] for flying drones over Svalbard, an island that had its own cable mysteriously cut 10 months ago. Putin's crony's kid probably wanted to do some Arctic "fishing."

      Authorities also disclosed the arrest of a dual Russian-British national who stands accused of flying a drone over Svalbard, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, allegedly violating a rule that bars Russian citizens from flying drones in the country.

      The man, Andrey Yakunin, 47, is the son of Vladimir Yakunin, a former president of Russian Railways and a confidant of Putin. The elder Yakunin was sanctioned by the United States in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea.

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > Nothing to see here...fisherman just dragged his boat...accidentally cut the fibre optics.

        But he was wearing Russian-made boots when it happened!

    • French people always seem to be on the edge of protesting, ready to riot at any moment. I'd guess this is some kind of civil disobedience. Next up burning cars in the middle of town and trucks clogging the streets.

    • the Russians are coming!

      Open your mouth!

  • Time to fine American high tech companies, for not preventing these cables from being cut!!

  • by AlanObject ( 3603453 ) on Friday October 21, 2022 @04:04PM (#62986917)

    Far from any (declared) war zone, this was happening to us in Fremont, CA. (tesla-land). Twice in a month my Internet, Phone, and TV service went full dark, as it did for a few thousand other customers of Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. Down for about 14 hours starting from somewhere around 4AM.

    A short walk away and found about 15 utility repair vehicles centered around the damage. Turns out it takes about 30 seconds to take out 300-600 fibers going up a utility pole. About 12 hours to splice them all back, then a couple of hours to reconfigure all the network gear.

    The local P.D. caught the guy after the second event. Turns out to have more than a few screws loose. He was trying to deactivate the nanobots that Comcast had put in his body to control him.

    The moral of the story is that we are a lot more vulnerable than we think we are due to this type of attack. A nut job is bad enough but a professional team could have done enough damage that it would take months to repair. Your business over the Internet might not recover. 911 service can't be reached when you need it.

    Serious stuff.

    P.S. 5G service through your mobile device doesn't cut it. The cell towers can be taken down too (although weren't in this case). You are actually more secure with a Starlink node.

  • Article 5 (Score:2, Interesting)

    This might trigger Article 5 and get NATO to attack Russia. It's not all that likely, but it wouldn't be all that surprising either.
  • now France, i think those pesky Russians have saboteurs doing this,
  • Has the French gov't raised cable-tv or Internet rates or forced carriers to do so? Asking for a friend.

  • ... but it quickly succumbs to the combination of (infrastructure-)cost-cutters and cable-cutters.
  • Harden up, relearn the only logical way to view Russia (as existential enemy of freedom, not people "just like us" with a temporarily dysfunctional government), and take out their terrorists with force not weakling law.

    Russia is an enemy society whose of millions of murdered victims are irrefutable proof the empire should be freed from the Kremlin yoke. Everyone advocating for Russia is an enemy. Russian subversion never stopped (and works on simple normals, if you're intelligent you are far from normal and

  • Don't ascribe to malice what can otherwise be attributed to Comcast's incompetence.

MS-DOS must die!

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