
Nearly two centuries ago, France was first hit by a data network attack (2017) - startupflix
https://www.1843magazine.com/technology/rewind/the-crooked-timber-of-humanity
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ForHackernews
Previously on HN
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15410531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15410531)

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acqq
It was not “an attack on the network” as such (the goal was never to disrupt
the network's primary functions, so "the France" was really never "hit") but
it was actually a “side-channel exploit” (and effectively a kind of
"phreaking"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking)
). And it was really brilliant!

[https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990915/13554.html](https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990915/13554.html)

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andmarios
Interesting story, though I'd argue this wasn't a network attack, rather an
attempt to lower latency.

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acqq
No. Nobody was interested in lowering latency in the network. The goal was
using the communication line by the actors who weren’t officially allowed to
use it at all. And they succeeded by “implanting” a real “man in the middle”
(using bribing). Then a “side-channel” was used to let other nodes
automatically retransmit their own plaintext, undetectable when the
information was processed by the original protocol by all the nodes. It was
really brilliant.

[https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990915/13554.html](https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990915/13554.html)

"Of course, the bribed operator could not simply be asked to transmit a few
extra messages, since that would be immediately detected. Instead, the
brothers instructed him to make a specific and highly unlikely series of
errors in the transmissions to signal dramatic rises or falls in the Paris
market. Normally, operators who had innocently made an error would encode a
correction in a subsequent transmission. Both the error and its correction
would then be duplicated from station to station. It was not until the
message-plus-correction reached the end of the line that a telegraph official
would step in to translate the transmission and remove the error. The Blancs
were prepared: an accomplice who lived close to the last station on the line
to Bordeaux took note of the "errors" before they were deleted and then
relayed the news to the Blancs."

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shoo
> > rather an attempt to lower latency.

> No. Nobody was interested in lowering latency in the network

i think it was indeed an attempt to lower latency, but not within the context
of "the" network. sending market information by semaphore is lower latency
than sending a messenger.

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walrus01
For those interested, there is a good wikipedia page covering the concept of
mechanical hilltop line of sight telegraphs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line)

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Swizec
Wait, the clacks are real!? That’s so cool!

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laurentl
Not only that, but in The Count of Monte-Cristo, the hero subverts a Chappe
telegraph to send a fake message to Paris to undo his nemesis. Sound familiar
?

(although in the original story, the fake message causes a run on the stock
exchange, thereby ruining his enemy. And the operator is bribed. Less romantic
and much more prosaic than Terry Pratchett's version)

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akritimahajan
thanks

