Coordinated telecoms attacks in France take internet down

[Suff]

Correct. But what if one side's leader suffers "Cornered rat syndrome" and lashes out?

We have to be very careful on this and hawkish sentiments do not help. Talk FFS.

The only reason the cornered rat will lash out is in the mistaken belief that it will actually achieve something and survive it. He may be cornered but even at his worst he is more cognizant of cause and effect than a rat.

We need to keep him aware that lashing out will only kill him.

Talking. They did that. Russia came in and said "We own you and we're going to tell you what you are going to do and what we are going to TAKE".

So called talks failed. Russia got it's ass handed to it. Now they are talking about Talks again. For what good? I reiterate what I said earlier. If it was France invading in southern England, Macron would be told how and when he was exiting and how much it was going to cost him. If he threatened Nukes he'd be told which cinders he could keep after we'd finished totally devastating his country. Not for one second would we put up with an invasion force taking one inch of our country, or the channel islands for that.

Why would Ukraine be forced to accept any less? Because we're scared of a Bully?

These sorts of things are still available today - no (Russian) military training needed.

Yes they are, very low tech and very simple to do. But that is not what happened here. This was Extreme tech knowledge applied with extreme precision. Hardly a few groups roaming the country, isolated from the others, carrying out random acts of sabotage.

If we had had dozens of general fibre junctions ripped out in 20 or 30 places in France, in a few hours with no coordination, I'd say in country interest groups. But that is not what happened. This was carefully planned to take out the vast majority of a whole country's internet, both mobile and landline. Orange may have said it was not impacted, but we lost Orange services here because they piggy back on SFR. SFR was very carefully chosen.

[Workingman]

This was Extreme tech knowledge applied with extreme precision.

Of course it was, how could it have been otherwise?



Crowbar and a pair of snips? Very high and extreme tech! Precision!? Russian military - prolly not.

The kids down my street could have done that and got mates in Brum, Bristol, Headinbum and Landarn to do similar at ten minutes intervals.

Burner phones from the charity shop, cash paid PAYG SIMs, Google maps... easy-peasy.

[Suff]

The kids down your street would also know which trunking to dig up to kill the primary interconnect nexus for BT, O2 and Vodafone?? In each of the three cities??

No, they won't. It is as I said, the information required to "know" what to damage is far, far, beyond the capabilities of nuisance attacks. You don't just go and download a map of where the fibre nexus trunks are. These documents are held inside the companies and on secure servers. Whilst the government has planning for the cables, it does not have the specific access trunk layout plan.

It is not just the precision of the timing of the attack. It is what was attacked and the knowledge required do carry out that attack. This exceeds any but the most organised and informed groups.

I would know where to go look for it, should I have access to the company networks and an account which allowed me to reach the document stores. Few people outside of a very specialist set of roles would. I know of specific hacks which gather this kind of data. One was tracked to a large Asian country, the other was tracked to a large eastern European country. State agencies in both cases. These state agencies gather data and then use it at a time which is most to their benefit. The data lost to the one tracked to Asia was correlated to lost business deals. The other one, so far as I know, has not been used yet.

[Workingman]

Snips £1. 29, crowbar, pennies, at Screwfix. Job done.

No officy-wafficy I'm a network ex mil hard man superstar needed.

Boo.... ex RAF.

[Suff]

I didn't know cheap crowbars came with network maps. You live and learn.