Coordinated telecoms attacks in France take internet down

[Suff]

At several locations in France between 4am and mid day, fibre trunks for a large section of the telecoms traffic in France were destroyed. They didn't just cut the fibre trunks, they took segments out of them up to 6 feet in length.

It took me several hours to get connected and performance is extremely poor right now. At the moment, in the home, we have no landline and no internet. They both work through the livebox and that can't start because it can't get a fibre signal.

The mobile networks are massively impacted, Orange are down to 2g, others have 3g and 4g services but they are completely hammered and giving almost no performance.

Fortunately I bought a 5g phone last year and there is a brand new (I tested up to the end of the year and nothing), 5G network. Because it is so new very few people have 5g and I'm able to get on and get some bandwidth. Earlier today it was around dial up modem speed. Incredible how impossible it is to use that on modern 21st century services like Office365. However speed is ramping up a bit. Now it is like a second generation ADSL box. Slow, buggy but almost viable for simple stuff.

For now the French have no idea who did it. Only that it was done in 10 minute intervals to cause a gradual drop off in service. Orange claim they were not impacted and Bouygues Telecom said the same. My Orange service is off and my very iffy 5g connection is Bouygues Telecom. I am also 450km from Paris and Far West of it, yet the links from Paris which were attacked were to Lyon and the east.

At this time I have no idea when our service will come back.

[TheOstrich]

That it is co-ordinated physical sabotage is a bit worrying. Right wing groups or Russians?

[Suff]

Further details show that the attacks were coordinated in 10 minute windows to obscure the nature of the attack and also to do the maximum damage before discovery.

I'm finding it hard to explain how a right wing group could gather enough knowledge of cable trunking, locations, specific information on who they belong to, over 3 different telecoms providers, then coordinate and synchronise over several hours using 10 minute windows.

Even if the had the skill and knowledge, that level of coordination is normally only seen in the military.

Willing to understand that the political groups are more organised than we think, but it will be a hard sell.

[cruiser2]

I can remember many years ago-- early 1960 when a road under a railway bridge was being lowered. Found an electric cable which was not shown on
any drawings. There were other cables which had ben identified. Took three days of switching off transformers at substations to find out
where the supply went from and to.
But with modern technology, phone masts are located on many tall buildings and on masts in the countryside. There are also manholes
for access to ducts. So not too difficult to find the route for someone who knows what to look for. I know how to access fibre cable for both BT
and Vrgin on a main road near me.. This is in s small town so would be easy in a large city.

[Suff]

Yes and if the cuts had been indiscriminate, like the 5G tower burnings that went on, I could see that. But in this case the cuts were only in major city interconnect trunks and only where the absolute maximum of damage could be done. Over hundreds of miles of country, synchronised to the second.

My internet and phone are still down. As is the Orange mobile data service. It is up for calls but down for all data services.

Orange is offering 200gb per month for two months on the mobile to "ensure we get internet". Erm, their mobile internet is down....

Fortunately my UK mobile is roaming on a new 5g network which has recovered a fair chunk of it's performance overnight. It is viable to work on right now.

[Suff]

Rather amusingly the French courts just forced the Government to remove SpaceX Starlink approval to operate in France. Stating the grounds for removal was competition related. As far as I can work out the competition grounds are that they don't want competition.

I bet they are looking pretty sick now....

[Workingman]

Any disenfranchised groups or groupings who are a bit tech savvy, can read, have time to plan and can use simple hand tools, inc rechargeable ones, can do a lot of infrastructure damage. They do not need to be military or be able to get their hands on and use guns and explosives.

There are thousands of miles of virtually unprotectable power lines and railway tracks / electricity cables. Plenty of other weak spots that would not need military training to disable, even in a coordinated / synchronised way.

Lots of dangerous hackers are lone-wolf school kids.

[Suff]

Lots of dangerous hackers are lone-wolf school kids.

There are but never with about a thousand miles (cumulative), of physical separation, acting as a unit in each of these locations, with complete precision.

Most disenfranchised groups are dysfunctional or extreme. Neither of which leads to crisp, co-ordinated, timing within a few seconds.

It is not the scale of the attack which leads me to military. It is a campaign which has military hallmarks. I run projects within companies all over the world. I would not expect disconnected resources to work to a sub one minute coordination regimen. Simply they are not used to it. These are people paid to do a job and both informed and controlled.

hackers and lone wolves are exactly that. Lone wolves. This was not carried out by a single person or even a single group of people. The work required to unearth these cables, expose them, cut them and remove the evidence was not carried out by one person. So multiple groups of people.

Then there is the other part. If this was some disaffected group, they would have been trumpeting about their "success" as soon as they were all clear and safe. The other hallmark of a military operation. Complete operational silence. Anyone who went to the effort of collapsing the vast majority of internet services in France, as a protest, would want that protest heard. Would they not?

[Workingman]

Come on. There are dozens of extremely competent hacker groups independent of military or state sponsorship able to do vast damage to industry, airlines, medical facilities, pharma, councils, the media and even government facilities - they have done so. They do not need to be in the same room, city or country to be coordinated. Many, such as Autonomous, work in cells with their members unknown to each other.

And it is not just the Internet and telecoms which can be attacked, physical infrastructure is also vulnerable.

There are plenty of very competent non-mil people out there and not all of them are Russian military, which is what you are obliquely getting at.

[Suff]

And every one of them has trumpeted their success within a short period of time.

Radio silence.