The security of the U.S. communications network, II

of these incidents are accidents. Someone might be landscaping a yard and a back-hoe severs a cable. Or another utility worker accidentally damages a cable while working in the same manhole where communication cables are located.

“Fiber cuts happen more often than people realize,” said Crystal Davis, a spokeswoman for Sprint Nextel. “It happens by accident all the time when someone is drilling or digging up a street. Or they’re doing regular maintenance. We know this, and that’s why traffic can be quickly rerouted.”

This is also why Greenholtz believes that the AT&T fibers were likely cut by someone who knew the network and its potential weaknesses. “If there was an ongoing maintenance issue on one side of the fiber ring that hadn’t been addressed,” he said. “And then the other side is cut, it would cause a major outage like the one AT&T experienced. But in order to cause that much damage, someone would have to know that. Otherwise, it was just a very lucky vandal.”

This line of thinking has caused some bloggers to suspect that the vandal was a disgruntled former or current AT&T employee. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the perpetrator could be an unhappy union worker. AT&T is currently in contract negotiations with its largest union the Communications Workers of America, which represents some 80,000 workers at AT&T. Workers have already voted to strike if a new contract can’t be agreed upon. So far, no date has been set for a strike, and Candice Johnson, a spokeswoman for the union said that the two sides are still negotiating.

Johnson also told Reardon that the union was not involved in the vandalism and that claims that its members might be involved are unfounded. “There is no basis for speculation that our members were involved in this act of vandalism,” she said. “We are cooperating with authorities. We are currently at the bargaining table with AT&T management, and our workers are on the job. Our goal is to get a contract renewed.”

Sgt. Lopez from the San Jose Police Department said that it is too early in the investigation to talk about suspects or motives.

“Regardless of whether the cables were cut by disgruntled employees or random vandals,” Reardon writes, “the recent incident highlights the potential for such an attack to be undertaken on a broader scale by foreign terrorists, who may infiltrate our nation’s telephone companies or gain access to information about the country’s communications network.” Greenholtz and other experts, however, say that because these networks have always been built with redundancy in mind, it would take a massive coordinated effort to target individual manholes and to cut fibers.

“If you really want to take down the communications network and cause damage, you’d probably target a central office,” Greenholtz said.

A central office is the nerve center of a telecommunications network. It houses all the switching equipment and billing data for a particular region of the network. As an example, Greenholtz said that if a terrorist was able to damage Verizon’s central office on 38th Street in Manhattan, communications services on Wall Street could be wiped out not just for a few hours, but likely for days, weeks, or even a month. Because these facilities are so critical, he said all the major phone companies have tight security. “Those places have tons of security,” he said. “You’d probably need Jack Bauer (of the TV show ‘24’) to help you get in there.”