Attack on the internet in France

[Suff]

Something you are not hearing about right now is what happened in France over the last 24 hours. There news about the visit of Macron that Russian cyberattack there. But we lost a huge swathe of France from just after Lunch yesterday to about 4pm today. Internet, mobiles, landlines (which are mostly on the internet now), all basically gone for 24 hours.

There were some basic 2g services, phone calls only. But I had to travel 50km to the nearest city to get a poor 5g signal so I could connect to work and we had a major issue at work over the weekend and yours truly was missing in action.

So now I'm back online but my order for a second Starlink system, home based this time, is in. €430 for the dish and router, €40 a month for home based services. I hope it will arrive in the next 10 days (it is already dispatched), so I can get it fitted to the wall before I head for the UK.

Just had to be the one time I left the Starlink in the UK in storage didn't it.

We're back up now but twice in less than 2 years is once too many when I'm working from home.

[cromwell]

Was it a cyberattack Suff?
You are right, when you are wfh you need a reliable connection.

The news of the ge has pushed a lot of news off the front page; some of it intentionally.

[Kaz]

Russia or China, Suff? There were plenty of those when Mick was working for BT

[Workingman]

This is a problem when everything is inter-connected and not segmented. It is not how I was taught to do things. It might be fine and super convenient for us all when everything is running smoothly, but throw in a spanner... oops!

[saundra]

The internet controls our lives
A few weeks ago I had to lose my electric supply for. about one hour
my care alarm went manic until i kept saying to whoever it was of for an hour
I had no tv no phone iv,only got a land line
I felt completely isolated and people want a cashless
Society wait till it happens 10 minutes no internet chaos

[Workingman]

Saundra, a lot of it is done for speed and we are now infatuated by speed, well those running the systems are.

Milliseconds of lag are seen as disastrous - the sky will fall in - and the nerds have sold their speed paranoia on to the average Joe and Jane. If things do not happen the instant a button is pushed J&J now go all wobbly like Homer Simpson.

Nobody now buys a computer, laptop or phone because it is rock-solid and well made - it has to be fast. Nobody wants broadband at 1Mbps, it absolutely has to be 100Mbps or faster. The Internet HAS to be fast.

Mbps = megabits per second

[saundra]

Try living with BT digital it's terrible here

[Workingman]

Saundra, I come from the days of dial-up on the phone line through a US Robotics modem. Articles loaded slower than you could read them. Then came Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) over the PSTN (public switched telephone network) the phone line again, and that was better, but expensive. Then we got the Digital subscriber line (DSL) that we now have and the Internet really took off with not just text but images, sound and video.

There was a need for throughput speed to cope with all that, but then it got silly. It's a bit like cars that can do 0-60 in 2.7 seconds and with a top speed of 170 MPH when the roads are full of other cars and the national sped limit it 70 MPH.

[Suff]

For those who asked, it appears to have been synched with the New Caledonia attack which happened when Macron visited.

As far as I can determine, because they are hiding it pretty well, there was a massive concerted Cyberattack (ddos, distributed denial of service), from both Russia and China. No clear statement as to whether it was state sponsored or group sponsored but with China in the loop, that kind of stuff doesn't go on without the government knowing.

Hard to tell whether the attack fell off or protocols were engaged to block out the attacking servers (the latter I suspect).

My Starlink is ordered and has been dispatched. I forgot to order the Ethernet adaptor and that is now also ordered. I didn't bother talking to Mrs S about this. This is not a time to explain, I need this for work and that's the end of it.

If the speed of Starlink ever reaches the initial goal Elon set (1gbit), then I'll consider switching off the Orange service to the house and only going with Starlink. I'll have to do something about IpPhones if I do that but at least it will be in my control.

[Workingman]

Forget St Elon FFS and ask why did this happen in France? New Caledonia my back end.

Was it a bloke in Chelmsford with a Vodafone router or a PRC unit in Changdou?

When everything is inter-connected and one part fails, everything fails.

The nerds know it but they won't segment - it's slow, you see.