8 ms·

The Nashville bombing and threats to critical infrastructure

54 points by longdefeat 6y ago

vorpalhex 6y ago
It's very easy to predict that someone somewhere will attack 5G infrastructure, but it's very hard to predict who and what part of it and it's that latter bit that's really the useful stuff.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  At the very least, local and federal authorities were aware that the perp in this case was making bombs in his RV as long ago as August 2019 [0]. This should've helped predict the who. 0 - https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/29/nashville-explosion-woman-warned-mnpd-warner-building-bomb-2019/4082253001/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/29/nashv...
  - vsareto 6y ago
    Likely because of this: >Officers called their mobile crisis division, and after talking with the woman, she agreed to be transported by ambulance for a psychological evaluation, Aaron said. and being unable to find anything suspicious when visiting, they couldn't do anything about it and so couldn't have predicted it. They're not going to violate rights based on a verbal-only report (I'm assuming) from someone in a mental health crisis.
quasse 6y ago
I wanted to try and understand what the "anti-5G" crowd's concerns actually are so I checked out some of the "Why are people afraid of 5G" posts on Quora. Honestly, the top responses almost read like neural network generated proto-english [1] Some range from level headed [2] to pseudo-scientific babble [3]. [3] is interesting to dissect. It seems to be based on a misinterpretation of how electron spin spectroscopy works along with a healthy dose of hocus-pocus involving "EMF meters". [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-afraid-of-5g https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-afraid-of-5g [2] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-people-are-scared-of-5G-when-visible-light-which-has-a-much-higher-frequency-typically-doesn-t-hurt-us https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-people-are-scared-of-5G... [3] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-so-scared-of-5G-and-make-up-conspiracies-about-it-but-nothing-absolutely-nothing-about-4G-or-even-3G-which-is-the-precursors-to-5G https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-so-scared-of-5G-and-mak... Edit: I've been trying to find a more balanced look at the issue, I liked this one by Larry Desjardin on EDN: https://www.edn.com/does-5g-pose-health-risks-part-2/ https://www.edn.com/does-5g-pose-health-risks-part-2/ The TLDR is that recent IEEE research indicates that the traditional model of sub-THz radiation absorption (1-2mm deep at most in human skin) may not be the whole picture. Whether this indicates harm to humans is still unknown.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- the_only_law 6y ago
  I recall finding this on HN some while back, prior to retraction, for a good laugh: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668870/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668870/. Supposedly a few more far out papers have been published by the authors as well. Kinda makes you wonder what the motive is here. Seems a bit high effort to be simple trolling.
  - patcon 6y ago
    omg, someone could not have designed a better conspiracy machine than this publication's standard retraction process. Missing abstract. no way to find rejected article. People will go absolutely loopy with that
    - the_only_law 6y ago
      Yeah it’s a shame they don’t link the original text. You can find copies pretty easily with a google search of the title, albeit with a big, opaque redacted watermark on the pages. I’m sure if you really want it you could find it with a bit more effort though.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - wtf_srsly 6y ago
      It's actually quite easy to find. Just click on the DOI link for the full paper (https://doi.org/10.23812/20-269-e-4 https://doi.org/10.23812/20-269-e-4).
      - patcon 6y ago
        Thanks. But wow, so it's that easy to be accidentally complicit...
throwawaymanbot 6y ago
critical infrastructure is one thing.. Media outlets that let articles and conspiracy theories circulate, that promotes this sort of infrastructure destruction, should be punished.
neartheplain 6y ago
It has been known for some time that America's critical infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to attack. In 2013, a group of gunmen cut fiber lines and shot out high-voltage transformers at a substation south of San Jose. The perpetrators were never caught [0]. Authorities thought it could be the dry-run for a larger attack. It took weeks to repair the damage to this one substation. The reserve inventory of high-voltage transformers is not large, and it takes time to build replacements from scratch [1]. There is a series of memes and greentexts on sites like 4chan [2][3] which describe how to disrupt, destroy, and damage critical infrastructure in the event of (or in order to provoke) civil conflict. One meme describes how to sabotage phone and fiber lines in ways that are the most difficult to detect and costly to repair. This knowledge has circulated for years. I'm honestly surprised that we haven't seen more attacks until now, especially during this summer's unrest. I take the absence of attacks as a positive indicator of basic human decency, or maybe general technical ignorance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategic%20Transformer%20Reserve%20Report%20-%20FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategi... [2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan [3] https://i.imgur.com/FfjVlRX.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/FfjVlRX.jpeg
- gruez 6y ago
  >There is a series of memes and greentexts on sites like 4chan [2] >[2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan This reads more revolution/apocalypse porn (for lack of a better word) than anything else. 75% desertion rate because of a liberal president? That seems suspiciously high.
  - dmix 6y ago
    You could also read some Tom Clancy back in the 1980s/90s, or countless spy novels, and get some pretty realistic and very scary sounding terrorism scenarios if you really wanted to. There's a lot of smart people who can think these things out, and do so for fun or professionally. I guess we're lucky the amount of smart people who actually pull things off is quite low, almost close to zero percentage points world population wise. At least in the west. I personally think the worse one in recent American history, besides 9/11 was the Las Vegas concert shooting. All that took was a half smart guy who operated alone, had plenty of personal resources, critically didn't tell anyone (OPSEC) mostly because he was already a loner, and also critically didn't have any exit plan. What's interesting about that one too is there was no clear motive either - at least none has come out in the years since the shootings.
walshemj 6y ago
I used to work for British telecom and I remember speculation on how easy it would be to cripple CNI as compared to a jihadi suicide bombing spectacular. Two or 3 two man teams with an angle grinder could have taken down "xxxx" I wont mention the system.
- PoachedSausage 6y ago
  It was suspected that the IRA Docklands bombing[0] was possibly targeting the telecomms infrastructure. I think there were also some attempts at bombing the National Grid which failed. You are correct that a lot of CNI is vulnerable due to its nature (remote locations etc). Thankfully, like with most terrorism, the people capable of doing the most damage are not usually interested in carrying out such acts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing
  - walshemj 6y ago
    I do wonder about the staples corner bombing that did a lot of damage and was next door to the DC that ran Telecom RED the alarm system that alerted police to break-ins as well as Telecom GOLD
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
LinuxBender 6y ago
Strange article. The references to 5G were speculation from the news media and not from the bomber. AFAIK he left no notes. Someone did find that his father worked for AT&T and may have worked in that building, but that may not be related. I think it is way too early to try to understand the motives.
- ABeeSea 6y ago
  He allegedly sent out a manifesto about shape shifting alien lizard people altering human DNA. https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2980KA https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
  - frenchy 6y ago
    Please don't use Google AMP links. Edit: actual URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennessee-blast-packages-idUSKBN2980KA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennessee-blast-packages-...
    - ABeeSea 6y ago
      It’s more work on mobile than just copying the link. If someone really cares, they will come along and de-amp it like you did. I personally don’t get the zealotry on this issue is for news sites. Non-news I understand, but I usually prefer the amp link on pretty much any news site.
      - zinekeller 6y ago
        ... then, at least trim the Google part (the main issue here is Google collecting data, but there are also people here that simply hate AMP). The page will still load as AMP in this instance, and it is as simple as deleting the "www.google.com/amp/s" like this: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2980KA https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2980KA
  - LinuxBender 6y ago
bjt2n3904 6y ago
Ugh. Uuuggghhhh. Another "this is huge, if true" speculation article. So we know nothing about his motives, but "anti-5g" fits the bill, so let's write a long thought provoking piece assuming that is fact. Eventually, it won't matter what his motives were. If we keep writing speculative pieces like these, they simply become fact in the public eye. > ... If true, it shines a light on the longstanding need for [buzzword buzzword blah blah legislation blah] You don't need to understand this guy's motives to shine a light on this. Heck, if his motives were, "I really enjoyed Breaking Bad, and thought it was a cool way to go out", we already have enough justification to shore up infrastructure. Speculating on the motive only serves to spread FUD about "far right extremists". That's really not something we need in today's political atmosphere. Let's investigate, sure, but until then, we don't need to know what it was too build more resilient infrastructure.
- lambda_obrien 6y ago
  This is why journalism is dying, it's not fact based, they write to get eyeballs.
  - millzlane 6y ago
    It's in the commentary category. This isn't considered journalism.
    - InitialLastName 6y ago
      That people (for reasons both educational and presentational) can't tell the difference is why journalism is dying.
      - millzlane 6y ago
        Touché.
- nickff 6y ago
  I think they might be trying to 'get ahead of the story', and write articles which are first, and may turn out to be right. This did not start with the internet (see the 1948 presidential election), but it does seem have gotten fairly extreme.
howmayiannoyyou 6y ago
The US Department of Homeland Security should provide the public a means for reporting potential vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure. Not threats, just perceived/observed vulnerabilities, not much different than bug reports in software. I can think of a few reports I would file in some detail given a secure means to do so.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  Sadly, though your idea is good, current reality I see it as mostly a way to get your name on a list. The government traditionally has ... not been kind ... to those who disclose or report or whistleblow on vulnerabilities, however responsibly or appropriately.
dmix 6y ago
This reads like those overpaid counter-terrorism people after 9/11 for about 1.5 decades who had 'answers'. And they never seem to 'stop' it. All we get are some idiots arrested in some random obviously forced FBI sting operation, where the idiot wouldn't have the resources or motivation otherwise to go through with it.
- awakeasleep 6y ago
  "Idiot" is the wrong word to use here, and not for woke reasons! It's wrong because many of the people the FBI has arrested for these plots have diagnosed mental deficiencies to the point where they aren't capable of living on their own, and rely on caregivers for their day to day needs. "Idiot" implies it's a functional person making bad decisions, not someone with a diagnosed condition.
nosmokewhereiam 6y ago
I was under the impression that the shutting off of the gas lines in reaction to the event was what caused the outage. They were using natural gas generators at the time for some unrelated reason.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
It seems a lot more damage is caused by stupidity, corner-cuttinf, fraud, bad design and poor maintenance, than is caused by deliberate attacks. I feel this is overblown, most people in the society are not suicidal psycos.
jcrawfordor 6y ago
The notion that vital infrastructure is highly vulnerable to attack is not something which is new or even really that related to this particular incident. The damage caused by this incident was relatively limited, mostly to a cable vault, which will require a lengthy and expensive repair but is far less destructive than it potentially could be. A much more interesting incident to look at is the Metcalf attack, which is both more mysterious in terms of the perpetrators and more clearly intended as an attack on vital infrastructure. As a proof of concept, Idaho National Laboratories conducted a somewhat infamous experiment in which they demonstrated it was possible to cause significant permanent damage to a common diesel standby generator via network intrusion. Multiple levels of the federal government and private industry (including industry bodies in electrical and telecom) recognize vital infrastructure as a significant vulnerability. However, very little attention has been paid to the issue. Part of this owes to it being fairly bureaucratic and uninteresting in the details, part of it is because progress is very slow due to the scale of the problem and cost of making significant changes. In the telecom industry, for decades now telephony has moved towards protocols with significantly more flexible routing and recovery options, improving the reliability of long-distance telephone calls to such a degree that you virtually never encounter a failure. Unfortunately, redundant connectivity to individual customer sites remains something which is expensive and so fairly uncommon for even larger businesses. Legacy issues in the design of the 911 system and infrastructure to PSAPs has also repeatedly lead to 911 outages in response to relatively minor issues (single points of failure are very common due to the architecture of the system). So, local service disruptions are easy to achieve by means like this. Nationwide ones are fairly difficult, at least without careful planning and some luck. This is all to say that the concern is very real, but this particular incident doesn't seem like a top example of it. In fact, one wonders why, given the high degree of vulnerability of many infrastructure sites, terrorist attacks on infrastructure are less common. I would guess it's because causing infrastructure disruption which leads to fatalities requires a fairly complex, concerted effort, which could probably still lead to more fatalities if directed at a more conventional form of attack. All in all, it's a return on investment consideration for terrorists.
kelvin0 6y ago
Adding more noise, confusion and fear. I think the socio-economic issues underlying many of these misguided attempts are to blame. Take someone with any type of mental health issue, put them in an unstable financial situation without any support from their family/friends/community and give them plenty of time to gorge themselves by 'researching' on the internet and you get the perfect storm of someone doing these very regrettable actions. Too much fear, not enough love.
aaron695 6y ago
By far the most sophisticated attack on infrastructure in a while. And it did mostly stuff all. Most attacks are a drunk dude shooting stuff and you only hear the times they actually get lucky. e.g. The Alaska pipeline shooting https://missoulian.com/uncategorized/man-shoots-alaska-pipeline-causes-massive-leak/article_55d30af8-c30c-5585-bb81-3d3c074eabda.html https://missoulian.com/uncategorized/man-shoots-alaska-pipel... or the Metcalf sniper attack Compared to the delay we will get to 5G because we won't use Huawei and had no replacement ready. Bad processes do more damage than physical attacks to infrastructure.

54 points by longdefeat 6y ago

It's very easy to predict that someone somewhere will attack 5G infrastructure, but it's very hard to predict who and what part of it and it's that latter bit that's really the useful stuff.

dfxm12 6y ago
At the very least, local and federal authorities were aware that the perp in this case was making bombs in his RV as long ago as August 2019 [0]. This should've helped predict the who. 0 - https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/29/nashville-explosion-woman-warned-mnpd-warner-building-bomb-2019/4082253001/ https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/29/nashv...
- vsareto 6y ago
  Likely because of this: >Officers called their mobile crisis division, and after talking with the woman, she agreed to be transported by ambulance for a psychological evaluation, Aaron said. and being unable to find anything suspicious when visiting, they couldn't do anything about it and so couldn't have predicted it. They're not going to violate rights based on a verbal-only report (I'm assuming) from someone in a mental health crisis.

quasse 6y ago

I wanted to try and understand what the "anti-5G" crowd's concerns actually are so I checked out some of the "Why are people afraid of 5G" posts on Quora. Honestly, the top responses almost read like neural network generated proto-english [1] Some range from level headed [2] to pseudo-scientific babble [3]. [3] is interesting to dissect. It seems to be based on a misinterpretation of how electron spin spectroscopy works along with a healthy dose of hocus-pocus involving "EMF meters". [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-afraid-of-5g https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-afraid-of-5g [2] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-people-are-scared-of-5G-when-visible-light-which-has-a-much-higher-frequency-typically-doesn-t-hurt-us https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-people-are-scared-of-5G... [3] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-so-scared-of-5G-and-make-up-conspiracies-about-it-but-nothing-absolutely-nothing-about-4G-or-even-3G-which-is-the-precursors-to-5G https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-so-scared-of-5G-and-mak... Edit: I've been trying to find a more balanced look at the issue, I liked this one by Larry Desjardin on EDN: https://www.edn.com/does-5g-pose-health-risks-part-2/ https://www.edn.com/does-5g-pose-health-risks-part-2/ The TLDR is that recent IEEE research indicates that the traditional model of sub-THz radiation absorption (1-2mm deep at most in human skin) may not be the whole picture. Whether this indicates harm to humans is still unknown.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
the_only_law 6y ago
I recall finding this on HN some while back, prior to retraction, for a good laugh: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668870/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668870/. Supposedly a few more far out papers have been published by the authors as well. Kinda makes you wonder what the motive is here. Seems a bit high effort to be simple trolling.
- patcon 6y ago
  omg, someone could not have designed a better conspiracy machine than this publication's standard retraction process. Missing abstract. no way to find rejected article. People will go absolutely loopy with that
  - the_only_law 6y ago
    Yeah it’s a shame they don’t link the original text. You can find copies pretty easily with a google search of the title, albeit with a big, opaque redacted watermark on the pages. I’m sure if you really want it you could find it with a bit more effort though.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - wtf_srsly 6y ago
    It's actually quite easy to find. Just click on the DOI link for the full paper (https://doi.org/10.23812/20-269-e-4 https://doi.org/10.23812/20-269-e-4).
    - patcon 6y ago
      Thanks. But wow, so it's that easy to be accidentally complicit...

throwawaymanbot 6y ago

critical infrastructure is one thing.. Media outlets that let articles and conspiracy theories circulate, that promotes this sort of infrastructure destruction, should be punished.

neartheplain 6y ago

It has been known for some time that America's critical infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to attack. In 2013, a group of gunmen cut fiber lines and shot out high-voltage transformers at a substation south of San Jose. The perpetrators were never caught [0]. Authorities thought it could be the dry-run for a larger attack. It took weeks to repair the damage to this one substation. The reserve inventory of high-voltage transformers is not large, and it takes time to build replacements from scratch [1]. There is a series of memes and greentexts on sites like 4chan [2][3] which describe how to disrupt, destroy, and damage critical infrastructure in the event of (or in order to provoke) civil conflict. One meme describes how to sabotage phone and fiber lines in ways that are the most difficult to detect and costly to repair. This knowledge has circulated for years. I'm honestly surprised that we haven't seen more attacks until now, especially during this summer's unrest. I take the absence of attacks as a positive indicator of basic human decency, or maybe general technical ignorance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack [1] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategic%20Transformer%20Reserve%20Report%20-%20FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategi... [2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan [3] https://i.imgur.com/FfjVlRX.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/FfjVlRX.jpeg

gruez 6y ago
>There is a series of memes and greentexts on sites like 4chan [2] >[2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan This reads more revolution/apocalypse porn (for lack of a better word) than anything else. 75% desertion rate because of a liberal president? That seems suspiciously high.
- dmix 6y ago
  You could also read some Tom Clancy back in the 1980s/90s, or countless spy novels, and get some pretty realistic and very scary sounding terrorism scenarios if you really wanted to. There's a lot of smart people who can think these things out, and do so for fun or professionally. I guess we're lucky the amount of smart people who actually pull things off is quite low, almost close to zero percentage points world population wise. At least in the west. I personally think the worse one in recent American history, besides 9/11 was the Las Vegas concert shooting. All that took was a half smart guy who operated alone, had plenty of personal resources, critically didn't tell anyone (OPSEC) mostly because he was already a loner, and also critically didn't have any exit plan. What's interesting about that one too is there was no clear motive either - at least none has come out in the years since the shootings.

walshemj 6y ago

I used to work for British telecom and I remember speculation on how easy it would be to cripple CNI as compared to a jihadi suicide bombing spectacular. Two or 3 two man teams with an angle grinder could have taken down "xxxx" I wont mention the system.

PoachedSausage 6y ago
It was suspected that the IRA Docklands bombing[0] was possibly targeting the telecomms infrastructure. I think there were also some attempts at bombing the National Grid which failed. You are correct that a lot of CNI is vulnerable due to its nature (remote locations etc). Thankfully, like with most terrorism, the people capable of doing the most damage are not usually interested in carrying out such acts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing
- walshemj 6y ago
  I do wonder about the staples corner bombing that did a lot of damage and was next door to the DC that ran Telecom RED the alarm system that alerted police to break-ins as well as Telecom GOLD

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

LinuxBender 6y ago

Strange article. The references to 5G were speculation from the news media and not from the bomber. AFAIK he left no notes. Someone did find that his father worked for AT&T and may have worked in that building, but that may not be related. I think it is way too early to try to understand the motives.

ABeeSea 6y ago
He allegedly sent out a manifesto about shape shifting alien lizard people altering human DNA. https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2980KA https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
- frenchy 6y ago
  Please don't use Google AMP links. Edit: actual URL: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennessee-blast-packages-idUSKBN2980KA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennessee-blast-packages-...
  - ABeeSea 6y ago
    It’s more work on mobile than just copying the link. If someone really cares, they will come along and de-amp it like you did. I personally don’t get the zealotry on this issue is for news sites. Non-news I understand, but I usually prefer the amp link on pretty much any news site.
    - zinekeller 6y ago
      ... then, at least trim the Google part (the main issue here is Google collecting data, but there are also people here that simply hate AMP). The page will still load as AMP in this instance, and it is as simple as deleting the "www.google.com/amp/s" like this: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2980KA https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2980KA
- LinuxBender 6y ago

bjt2n3904 6y ago

Ugh. Uuuggghhhh. Another "this is huge, if true" speculation article. So we know nothing about his motives, but "anti-5g" fits the bill, so let's write a long thought provoking piece assuming that is fact. Eventually, it won't matter what his motives were. If we keep writing speculative pieces like these, they simply become fact in the public eye. > ... If true, it shines a light on the longstanding need for [buzzword buzzword blah blah legislation blah] You don't need to understand this guy's motives to shine a light on this. Heck, if his motives were, "I really enjoyed Breaking Bad, and thought it was a cool way to go out", we already have enough justification to shore up infrastructure. Speculating on the motive only serves to spread FUD about "far right extremists". That's really not something we need in today's political atmosphere. Let's investigate, sure, but until then, we don't need to know what it was too build more resilient infrastructure.

lambda_obrien 6y ago
This is why journalism is dying, it's not fact based, they write to get eyeballs.
- millzlane 6y ago
  It's in the commentary category. This isn't considered journalism.
  - InitialLastName 6y ago
    That people (for reasons both educational and presentational) can't tell the difference is why journalism is dying.
    - millzlane 6y ago
      Touché.
nickff 6y ago
I think they might be trying to 'get ahead of the story', and write articles which are first, and may turn out to be right. This did not start with the internet (see the 1948 presidential election), but it does seem have gotten fairly extreme.

howmayiannoyyou 6y ago

The US Department of Homeland Security should provide the public a means for reporting potential vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure. Not threats, just perceived/observed vulnerabilities, not much different than bug reports in software. I can think of a few reports I would file in some detail given a secure means to do so.

FireBeyond 6y ago
Sadly, though your idea is good, current reality I see it as mostly a way to get your name on a list. The government traditionally has ... not been kind ... to those who disclose or report or whistleblow on vulnerabilities, however responsibly or appropriately.

dmix 6y ago

This reads like those overpaid counter-terrorism people after 9/11 for about 1.5 decades who had 'answers'. And they never seem to 'stop' it. All we get are some idiots arrested in some random obviously forced FBI sting operation, where the idiot wouldn't have the resources or motivation otherwise to go through with it.

awakeasleep 6y ago
"Idiot" is the wrong word to use here, and not for woke reasons! It's wrong because many of the people the FBI has arrested for these plots have diagnosed mental deficiencies to the point where they aren't capable of living on their own, and rely on caregivers for their day to day needs. "Idiot" implies it's a functional person making bad decisions, not someone with a diagnosed condition.

nosmokewhereiam 6y ago

I was under the impression that the shutting off of the gas lines in reaction to the event was what caused the outage. They were using natural gas generators at the time for some unrelated reason.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

It seems a lot more damage is caused by stupidity, corner-cuttinf, fraud, bad design and poor maintenance, than is caused by deliberate attacks. I feel this is overblown, most people in the society are not suicidal psycos.

jcrawfordor 6y ago

The notion that vital infrastructure is highly vulnerable to attack is not something which is new or even really that related to this particular incident. The damage caused by this incident was relatively limited, mostly to a cable vault, which will require a lengthy and expensive repair but is far less destructive than it potentially could be. A much more interesting incident to look at is the Metcalf attack, which is both more mysterious in terms of the perpetrators and more clearly intended as an attack on vital infrastructure. As a proof of concept, Idaho National Laboratories conducted a somewhat infamous experiment in which they demonstrated it was possible to cause significant permanent damage to a common diesel standby generator via network intrusion. Multiple levels of the federal government and private industry (including industry bodies in electrical and telecom) recognize vital infrastructure as a significant vulnerability. However, very little attention has been paid to the issue. Part of this owes to it being fairly bureaucratic and uninteresting in the details, part of it is because progress is very slow due to the scale of the problem and cost of making significant changes. In the telecom industry, for decades now telephony has moved towards protocols with significantly more flexible routing and recovery options, improving the reliability of long-distance telephone calls to such a degree that you virtually never encounter a failure. Unfortunately, redundant connectivity to individual customer sites remains something which is expensive and so fairly uncommon for even larger businesses. Legacy issues in the design of the 911 system and infrastructure to PSAPs has also repeatedly lead to 911 outages in response to relatively minor issues (single points of failure are very common due to the architecture of the system). So, local service disruptions are easy to achieve by means like this. Nationwide ones are fairly difficult, at least without careful planning and some luck. This is all to say that the concern is very real, but this particular incident doesn't seem like a top example of it. In fact, one wonders why, given the high degree of vulnerability of many infrastructure sites, terrorist attacks on infrastructure are less common. I would guess it's because causing infrastructure disruption which leads to fatalities requires a fairly complex, concerted effort, which could probably still lead to more fatalities if directed at a more conventional form of attack. All in all, it's a return on investment consideration for terrorists.

kelvin0 6y ago

Adding more noise, confusion and fear. I think the socio-economic issues underlying many of these misguided attempts are to blame. Take someone with any type of mental health issue, put them in an unstable financial situation without any support from their family/friends/community and give them plenty of time to gorge themselves by 'researching' on the internet and you get the perfect storm of someone doing these very regrettable actions. Too much fear, not enough love.

aaron695 6y ago

By far the most sophisticated attack on infrastructure in a while. And it did mostly stuff all. Most attacks are a drunk dude shooting stuff and you only hear the times they actually get lucky. e.g. The Alaska pipeline shooting https://missoulian.com/uncategorized/man-shoots-alaska-pipeline-causes-massive-leak/article_55d30af8-c30c-5585-bb81-3d3c074eabda.html https://missoulian.com/uncategorized/man-shoots-alaska-pipel... or the Metcalf sniper attack Compared to the delay we will get to 5G because we won't use Huawei and had no replacement ready. Bad processes do more damage than physical attacks to infrastructure.