It seems a terrorist would benefit from obtaining fiber map information from the source, rather than googling for outages, and trying to find needles in haystacks. How well are the internal databases with fiber path details protected? How hard would it be for Al-Qaeda to social-engineer it's way into obtaining this stuff? Though personally, I don't think terrorists would target telecom infrastructure. A hundred simultaneous intentional fiber cuts could be fixed in a day. That's something that is forgotten within a year. Bombings are not. Fiber cuts resulting in phone and internet connectivity loss aren't going to have the whole world turning to CNN. Just us... Just my .02 though, Chuck -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of Martin Hannigan Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 8:28 AM To: Wallace Keith Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: The Backhoe: A Real Cyberthreat?

I for one have spoken in the past in favor of making the FCC

Outage Reports public again. If you want to deliberatley destroy fiber infrastructure, you can gain more knowledge quicker by stepping outside your door and gazing upon clearly marked routes, than by reading outage reports. Want to find a bldg where multiple carriers are housed? Read the carrier hotel advertisements on the internet and in print or read NANOG. Any idiot terrorist can walk up to a CO or colo and find the entrance facilities (facility in more cases) and walk down the block looking for manhole covers with company names or logo's. It doesn't matter if you cut it 10 miles or at the CO, it still takes the same amount of time to resplice it all. If it were at the CO it would probably be done half-assed i.e. they throw a cable out the window and splice that as a temporary fix not understanding just that, that it does not matter where it's cut in most cases. There are methods and methods and techniques to use to make the mitigation harder which I won't get into here, but anybody can knock out comm links with not a lot of thought. FCC outages reports should be public because it keeps carriers competing. We want that. I don't know where this whole nonsense about not being able to find metro loop fiber routes came from, but if a carrier refuses to at least show you the redundancy on a map then they probably don't have it. It's pretty simple. Ask to see the DLR, the metro loop map, and ask where your cross connects are going to be made, if any. If you're going to a carrier hotel, you are likely aggregating closer than you think and you want to know. If you are single homed, don't bother asking those questions. -M<