
The Cyberthreat Under the Street - dctoedt
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/sunday-review/the-cyberthreat-under-the-street.html
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lsc
The interesting thing is that researchers complain that nobody knows about
what fiber is where... Which is absolutely true, and it's also at least sort-
of a defense.

Mostly, though, it's a profit-maximization strategy. If you've ever tried to
rent fiber, there are middlemen upon middlemen... it's pretty miserably crazy
if you are a price sensitive sort.

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quanticle
It's a misnomer to call this a "cyber-threat". Criminals have been cutting
telephone and telegraph wires since telephones and telegraphs have been
invented. Cutting telegraph wires was a trademark of the James Younger gang in
1876. This is hardly a new phenomenon.

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jamescun
I used to cycle past Telehouse Docklands (in East London, part of LINX IXP) as
part of my daily commute. I was always struck by the lack of physical
security; all that was visible was a typical warehouse fence and a couple of
cameras. However what was most troubling was the sheer density of unguarded
under-pavement communication cabinets surrounding the site (of course I am
only speculating that they are associated with Telehouse).

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rdl
Telehouse Docklands has a pretty high level of physical security for the
building itself for an urban carrier hotel and especially in both a first
world highly safe city and the U.K. specifically.

They had special police with MP5s and stuff after a targeted attack.

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aaron695
Meh, it's been cut 16 times and what happened.....

Even if it killed a few people, so..... terrorism only works because everyone
runs around after like their heads been cut off.

This doesn't seem to be working that way.

Life spans / productivity might have been increased with people having to go
outside and leave the everyday normal.

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tomcam
I'm torn. If it were my family member who died I would feel different, but
your logic about people not panicking is compelling.

However, these feel like probes for a long term project in which an attack on
multiple fronts is coordinated after the softest parts of the underbelly have
been precisely determined.

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tomcam

       Surprisingly, there isn’t even a good map of the Internet’s highways and byways
    

From a security perspective, that may be a feature.

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tatterdemalion
> Notably, his research was partly funded by the Department of Homeland
> Security and can be accessed only by D.H.S.-approved researchers.

Glad to see the NY Times is uncritically supportive of denying to the public
knowledge of our information infrastructure.

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wtbob
I posit that there need to be some secrets. Would it make sense to broadcast
to everyone in the world, 'I had surgery on my head years ago, and if you hit
me right here, I'll die'? Of course not.

Communications maps, I think, are legitimately one of those secrets, for so
long as they offer a significant advantage to an adversary.

