[HN Gopher] The Nashville bombing and threats to critical infras...
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The Nashville bombing and threats to critical infrastructure
Author : longdefeat
Score : 52 points
Date : 2021-01-04 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (warontherocks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (warontherocks.com)
| kelvin0 wrote:
| Adding more noise, confusion and fear. I think the socio-economic
| issues underlying many of these misguided attempts are to blame.
| Take someone with any type of mental health issue, put them in an
| unstable financial situation without any support from their
| family/friends/community and give them plenty of time to gorge
| themselves by 'researching' on the internet and you get the
| perfect storm of someone doing these very regrettable actions.
|
| Too much fear, not enough love.
| [deleted]
| vorpalhex wrote:
| It's very easy to predict that someone somewhere will attack 5G
| infrastructure, but it's very hard to predict who and what part
| of it and it's that latter bit that's really the useful stuff.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| At the very least, local and federal authorities were aware
| that the perp in this case was making bombs in his RV as long
| ago as August 2019 [0]. This should've helped predict the who.
|
| 0 -
| https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2020/12/29/nashv...
| vsareto wrote:
| Likely because of this:
|
| >Officers called their mobile crisis division, and after
| talking with the woman, she agreed to be transported by
| ambulance for a psychological evaluation, Aaron said.
|
| and being unable to find anything suspicious when visiting,
| they couldn't do anything about it and so couldn't have
| predicted it. They're not going to violate rights based on a
| verbal-only report (I'm assuming) from someone in a mental
| health crisis.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Strange article. The references to 5G were speculation from the
| news media and not from the bomber. AFAIK he left no notes.
| Someone did find that his father worked for AT&T and may have
| worked in that building, but that may not be related. I think it
| is way too early to try to understand the motives.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| He allegedly sent out a manifesto about shape shifting alien
| lizard people altering human DNA.
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
| frenchy wrote:
| Please don't use Google AMP links. Edit: actual URL:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tennessee-blast-
| packages-...
| ABeeSea wrote:
| It's more work on mobile than just copying the link. If
| someone really cares, they will come along and de-amp it
| like you did. I personally don't get the zealotry on this
| issue is for news sites. Non-news I understand, but I
| usually prefer the amp link on pretty much any news site.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _While the package did not have a return address, the
| contents of the letter referenced various conspiracy
| theories, including that aliens have launched attacks on
| earth, which indicated it was likely from Warner, News
| Channel 5 said._
|
| It sounds like they are guessing it was from him. Hopefully
| there are more conclusive writings from him that indicate a
| mapping to these beliefs. The agents pulled many grocery bags
| of items from his home, so I am looking forward to what is in
| their report.
| pengaru wrote:
| No, it's not just a guess. The letter in the package is
| signed "Julio", an alias he would apparently sign emails
| with; the name of his dog.
|
| https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/13635429/nashville-bomber-
| pack...
| pixl97 wrote:
| And there are plenty of other non-5g 'conspiracy' reasons why
| someone might be driven to attack ATT. 641a and retroactive
| immunity for example.
|
| Until we see more evidence then everyone is just guessing at
| this point.
| quasse wrote:
| I wanted to try and understand what the "anti-5G" crowd's
| concerns actually are so I checked out some of the "Why are
| people afraid of 5G" posts on Quora.
|
| Honestly, the top responses almost read like neural network
| generated proto-english [1] Some range from level headed [2] to
| pseudo-scientific babble [3].
|
| [3] is interesting to dissect. It seems to be based on a
| misinterpretation of how electron spin spectroscopy works along
| with a healthy dose of hocus-pocus involving "EMF meters".
|
| [1] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-afraid-of-5g
|
| [2] https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-that-people-are-scared-
| of-5G...
|
| [3] https://www.quora.com/Why-are-people-so-scared-of-5G-and-
| mak...
|
| Edit: I've been trying to find a more balanced look at the issue,
| I liked this one by Larry Desjardin on EDN:
| https://www.edn.com/does-5g-pose-health-risks-part-2/
|
| The TLDR is that recent IEEE research indicates that the
| traditional model of sub-THz radiation absorption (1-2mm deep at
| most in human skin) may not be the whole picture. Whether this
| indicates harm to humans is still unknown.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Outside of the concerns of 5G's effect on the human body, I
| have seen issues brought up about possible interference with
| other RF devices that operate close in frequency to the 5G
| bands. These are things that the FCC is supposed to manage but
| some of the critiques have been that the FCC is not doing
| enough. The ones below are about 5G potentially causing
| interference with GPS devices [1] and about the 5G band
| interfering with weather predictions because the 5G band covers
| the passive water vapor emittance bands. [2]
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/05/millions-of-
| gps-...
|
| [2]
| https://geog.umd.edu/sites/geog.umd.edu/files/pubs/Benish%20...
| FineTralfazz wrote:
| > Honestly, the top responses almost read like neural network
| generated proto-english
|
| That's not specific to questions about 5G. Most of what I read
| on Quora would fit that description.
| karlmcguire wrote:
| It seems like with Quora you either get very bad or very good
| answers. The good ones tend to be significantly older, i.e.
| before it got big and people started to gamify the system.
| [deleted]
| the_only_law wrote:
| I recall finding this on HN some while back, prior to
| retraction, for a good laugh:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32668870/.
|
| Supposedly a few more far out papers have been published by the
| authors as well. Kinda makes you wonder what the motive is
| here. Seems a bit high effort to be simple trolling.
| patcon wrote:
| omg, someone could not have designed a better conspiracy
| machine than this publication's standard retraction process.
| Missing abstract. no way to find rejected article. People
| will go absolutely loopy with that
| the_only_law wrote:
| Yeah it's a shame they don't link the original text. You
| can find copies pretty easily with a google search of the
| title, albeit with a big, opaque redacted watermark on the
| pages. I'm sure if you really want it you could find it
| with a bit more effort though.
| [deleted]
| wtf_srsly wrote:
| It's actually quite easy to find. Just click on the DOI
| link for the full paper
| (https://doi.org/10.23812/20-269-e-4).
| patcon wrote:
| Thanks. But wow, so it's _that_ easy to be accidentally
| complicit...
| PeterisP wrote:
| A year or so ago I was looking into a bunch of FB bot accounts
| that were used for commercial spam purposes, and at the time
| many of those fake sockpuppets were also systematically
| forwarding 5G conspiracy theories among multiple other things -
| these things seemed so unrelated that my best guess was that
| this particular network of accounts was just used to boost
| whoever was paying with many unrelated paying customers.
|
| So at least some part of the visible "anti-5G crowd" is not
| actual people but just paid astroturfed propaganda, though I
| struggle to imagine who would be paying for that and why.
| ilkkao wrote:
| I've wondered about this too. 5G is a marketing and umbrella
| term. Is it the new radio protocol, MIMO enhancements, new
| bands, or something else these people are actually afraid of?
| rlt wrote:
| Most likely it's simply a new technology people can point at
| and complain about, amplified by this age of disinformation.
|
| People have been complaining about wireless technologies
| since Marconi.
|
| That said, yes, it's got higher frequencies, beam forming,
| and orders of magnitude higher density of cells.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Tear ducts and sweat glands acting as EM waveguides is a novel
| idea. And indeed quite worrying if true. What would be a
| feasible of testing that?
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| critical infrastructure is one thing.. Media outlets that let
| articles and conspiracy theories circulate, that promotes this
| sort of infrastructure destruction, should be punished.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It seems a lot more damage is caused by stupidity, corner-
| cuttinf, fraud, bad design and poor maintenance, than is caused
| by deliberate attacks.
|
| I feel this is overblown, most people in the society are not
| suicidal psycos.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Ugh. Uuuggghhhh. Another "this is huge, if true" speculation
| article.
|
| So we know nothing about his motives, but "anti-5g" fits the
| bill, so let's write a long thought provoking piece assuming that
| is fact.
|
| Eventually, it won't matter what his motives were. If we keep
| writing speculative pieces like these, they simply become fact in
| the public eye.
|
| > ... If true, it shines a light on the longstanding need for
| [buzzword buzzword blah blah legislation blah]
|
| You don't need to understand this guy's motives to shine a light
| on this. Heck, if his motives were, "I really enjoyed Breaking
| Bad, and thought it was a cool way to go out", we already have
| enough justification to shore up infrastructure.
|
| Speculating on the motive only serves to spread FUD about "far
| right extremists". That's really not something we need in today's
| political atmosphere. Let's investigate, sure, but until then, we
| don't need to know what it was too build more resilient
| infrastructure.
| rlt wrote:
| > "far right extremists"
|
| 5G and vaccine conspiracy theories are not a uniquely "far
| right" phenomenon. See Marin County, for example.
| nickff wrote:
| I think they might be trying to 'get ahead of the story', and
| write articles which are first, and may turn out to be right.
| This did not start with the internet (see the 1948 presidential
| election), but it does seem have gotten fairly extreme.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| This is why journalism is dying, it's not fact based, they
| write to get eyeballs.
| millzlane wrote:
| It's in the commentary category. This isn't considered
| journalism.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| That people (for reasons both educational and
| presentational) can't tell the difference is why journalism
| is dying.
| millzlane wrote:
| Touche.
| dmix wrote:
| This reads like those overpaid counter-terrorism people after
| 9/11 for about 1.5 decades who had 'answers'. And they never seem
| to 'stop' it. All we get are some idiots arrested in some random
| obviously forced FBI sting operation, where the idiot wouldn't
| have the resources or motivation otherwise to go through with it.
| awakeasleep wrote:
| "Idiot" is the wrong word to use here, and not for woke
| reasons!
|
| It's wrong because many of the people the FBI has arrested for
| these plots have diagnosed mental deficiencies to the point
| where they aren't capable of living on their own, and rely on
| caregivers for their day to day needs.
|
| "Idiot" implies it's a functional person making bad decisions,
| not someone with a diagnosed condition.
| aaron695 wrote:
| By far the most sophisticated attack on infrastructure in a
| while. And it did mostly stuff all.
|
| Most _attacks_ are a drunk dude shooting stuff and you only hear
| the times they actually get lucky. e.g. The Alaska pipeline
| shooting https://missoulian.com/uncategorized/man-shoots-alaska-
| pipel... or the Metcalf sniper attack
|
| Compared to the delay we will get to 5G because we won't use
| Huawei and had no replacement ready.
|
| Bad processes do more damage than physical attacks to
| infrastructure.
| neartheplain wrote:
| It has been known for some time that America's critical
| infrastructure is extremely vulnerable to attack.
|
| In 2013, a group of gunmen cut fiber lines and shot out high-
| voltage transformers at a substation south of San Jose. The
| perpetrators were never caught [0]. Authorities thought it could
| be the dry-run for a larger attack. It took weeks to repair the
| damage to this one substation. The reserve inventory of high-
| voltage transformers is not large, and it takes time to build
| replacements from scratch [1].
|
| There is a series of memes and greentexts on sites like 4chan
| [2][3] which describe how to disrupt, destroy, and damage
| critical infrastructure in the event of (or in order to provoke)
| civil conflict. One meme describes how to sabotage phone and
| fiber lines in ways that are the most difficult to detect and
| costly to repair. This knowledge has circulated for years.
|
| I'm honestly surprised that we haven't seen more attacks until
| now, especially during this summer's unrest. I take the absence
| of attacks as a positive indicator of basic human decency, or
| maybe general technical ignorance.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
|
| [1]
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/f34/Strategi...
|
| [2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan
|
| [3] https://i.imgur.com/FfjVlRX.jpeg
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| This is mostly trash and people fapping to some anarchy
| fantasy, almost none of this makes any sence or is realistic.
|
| Even in a civil war you seize infrastructure because you need
| it, not destroy it randomly in a fit of psychotic frevor
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The greatest concern by far is terrorism, not military action
| targeted towards occupation.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Fraud kills more people and costs more every year than any
| terorrism ever could.
|
| More people were rendered hungry and homeless in 2008 than
| by all terrorists combined in the last 50 years.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I think the fact that most people don't seem to want to admit
| as to why attacks like this are uncommon...is that people are
| generally good and want to live normal lives. The looting in
| NYC, etc this summer was gross but eventually citizens began
| stepping up to defend their own communities and to assist law
| enforcement. Our agencies and law enforcement are fairly good
| at thwarting attacks that involve multiple individuals. What we
| struggle with are lone wolf attacks where no intel can be
| gathered.
| gruez wrote:
| >There is a series of memes and greentexts on sites like 4chan
| [2]
|
| >[2] https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1837689-4chan
|
| This reads more revolution/apocalypse porn (for lack of a
| better word) than anything else. 75% desertion rate because of
| a liberal president? That seems suspiciously high.
| dmix wrote:
| You could also read some Tom Clancy back in the 1980s/90s, or
| countless spy novels, and get some pretty realistic and very
| scary sounding terrorism scenarios if you really wanted to.
| There's a lot of smart people who can think these things out,
| and do so for fun or professionally.
|
| I guess we're lucky the amount of smart people who actually
| pull things off is quite low, almost close to zero percentage
| points world population wise. At least in the west.
|
| I personally think the worse one in recent American history,
| besides 9/11 was the Las Vegas concert shooting. All that
| took was a half smart guy who operated alone, had plenty of
| personal resources, critically didn't tell anyone (OPSEC)
| mostly because he was already a loner, and also critically
| didn't have any exit plan. What's interesting about that one
| too is there was no clear motive either - at least none has
| come out in the years since the shootings.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| We're lucky we live in a world where people with the means
| and work ethic can make a better life for themselves doing
| better things.
| neartheplain wrote:
| That post was a poor example, but it was the only one I could
| find on short notice. Here is another that goes into more
| detail [0]. I have added it to my original comment.
|
| [0] https://i.imgur.com/FfjVlRX.jpeg
| trianglem wrote:
| All of that 4chan meme stuff is literal nonsense though if you
| read any of the follow ups to those ideas. The only thing
| they're getting right is the rioting aspect.
| neartheplain wrote:
| Yes, it's mostly nonsense. Unfortunately, the parts about
| America's vulnerable electric grid are accurate.
| s5300 wrote:
| Uhh, no offense, but you do realize that '4chan meme stuff"
| is literally the core of the largest conspiracy shitshow
| we've seen in at least one decade?
| trianglem wrote:
| Yes but this stuff is larping to basically push their
| narrative online. This is pretty much what all Parler posts
| look like now. I don't understand why 4chan is allowed to
| continue unfettered, this is pretty much where all this
| began anyways. Facebook, Twitter etc. just amplified it.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > but one meme describes how to sabotage phone and fiber lines
| in ways that are the most difficult to detect and costly to
| repair
|
| You don't even need a shitty meme. In countries with pole
| fiber, take a chainsaw and a motorcycle. In countries without,
| the telco manhole covers are marked and not secured at all
| against intruders.
| MisterTea wrote:
| We used to have a house in Vermont many years ago. The phone
| and cable lines were down from time to time. If the phones
| worked the usual response from the cable company is "someone
| idiot shot at the wires." So this form of "domestic
| terrorism" is nothing new.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Yeah, in the US things are considered vandalism that would
| be considered a much more significant attack elsewhere.
| Somebody shot up a bunch of telco boxes and took out a
| whole neighbourhood's internet connection. The response
| from the isp was basically "happens all the time, new kit's
| coming"
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| My father used to work in electricity transmission,
| including some very long high-voltage DC lines. He said
| that a big problem they have with lower-voltage lines is
| people shooting at the glass insulators, and a big
| problem they have with the high-voltage lines is people
| shooting at the spacers... and also stealing bolts and
| straps for metal value. It's interesting to think about
| what could have happened if someone unintentionally
| caused serious damage to, say, a transmission line which
| was the largest connection into Los Angeles, but
| ultimately they are built pretty sturdy.
|
| This kind of vandalism is just a huge hassle for just
| about any infrastructure that covers a meaningful amount
| of land.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The response from the isp was basically "happens all
| the time, new kit's coming"
|
| I'm in Germany and worked in construction (digging) as a
| sub's employee for Telekom... they have digging crews on
| standby and spare equipment for the sidewalk boxes and
| cellphone towers spread across the country, as it's
| _routine_ that cars crash into them, other construction
| workers hit underground lines, anarchists
| /nazis/conspiracy nuts committing arson attacks, storm
| damage trips poles or boxes, sometimes lightning hits and
| entire hoods are knocked off the net because the surge
| protection had issues, tree roots or water intrudes in
| below-ground cables, heavy snow takes out poles...
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I think the difference I'm talking about is that if you
| crash a car into one of these things it could conceivably
| be an accident (and my guess is it almost always is
| accidental). Shooting a utility box until the magic blue
| smoke is all gone is deliberate.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| From Unix fortune.
|
| > A good sysadmin always carries around a few feet of fiber.
| If he ever gets lost, he simply drops the fiber on the
| ground, waits ten minutes, then asks the backhoe operator for
| directions.
|
| > -- Bill Bradford <mrbill@mrbill.net>
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| I was under the impression that the shutting off of the gas lines
| in reaction to the event was what caused the outage. They were
| using natural gas generators at the time for some unrelated
| reason.
| walshemj wrote:
| I used to work for British telecom and I remember speculation on
| how easy it would be to cripple CNI as compared to a jihadi
| suicide bombing spectacular.
|
| Two or 3 two man teams with an angle grinder could have taken
| down "xxxx" I wont mention the system.
| PoachedSausage wrote:
| It was suspected that the IRA Docklands bombing[0] was possibly
| targeting the telecomms infrastructure. I think there were also
| some attempts at bombing the National Grid which failed.
|
| You are correct that a lot of CNI is vulnerable due to its
| nature (remote locations etc). Thankfully, like with most
| terrorism, the people capable of doing the most damage are not
| usually interested in carrying out such acts.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| The US Department of Homeland Security should provide the public
| a means for reporting potential vulnerabilities to critical
| infrastructure. Not threats, just perceived/observed
| vulnerabilities, not much different than bug reports in software.
| I can think of a few reports I would file in some detail given a
| secure means to do so.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Sadly, though your idea is good, current reality I see it as
| mostly a way to get your name on a list. The government
| traditionally has ... not been kind ... to those who disclose
| or report or whistleblow on vulnerabilities, however
| responsibly or appropriately.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| The notion that vital infrastructure is highly vulnerable to
| attack is not something which is new or even really that related
| to this particular incident. The damage caused by this incident
| was relatively limited, mostly to a cable vault, which will
| require a lengthy and expensive repair but is far less
| destructive than it potentially could be.
|
| A much more interesting incident to look at is the Metcalf
| attack, which is both more mysterious in terms of the
| perpetrators and more clearly intended as an attack on vital
| infrastructure. As a proof of concept, Idaho National
| Laboratories conducted a somewhat infamous experiment in which
| they demonstrated it was possible to cause significant permanent
| damage to a common diesel standby generator via network
| intrusion.
|
| Multiple levels of the federal government and private industry
| (including industry bodies in electrical and telecom) recognize
| vital infrastructure as a significant vulnerability. However,
| very little attention has been paid to the issue. Part of this
| owes to it being fairly bureaucratic and uninteresting in the
| details, part of it is because progress is very slow due to the
| scale of the problem and cost of making significant changes.
|
| In the telecom industry, for decades now telephony has moved
| towards protocols with significantly more flexible routing and
| recovery options, improving the reliability of long-distance
| telephone calls to such a degree that you virtually never
| encounter a failure. Unfortunately, redundant connectivity to
| individual customer sites remains something which is expensive
| and so fairly uncommon for even larger businesses. Legacy issues
| in the design of the 911 system and infrastructure to PSAPs has
| also repeatedly lead to 911 outages in response to relatively
| minor issues (single points of failure are very common due to the
| architecture of the system). So, local service disruptions are
| easy to achieve by means like this. Nationwide ones are fairly
| difficult, at least without careful planning and some luck.
|
| This is all to say that the concern is very real, but this
| particular incident doesn't seem like a top example of it. In
| fact, one wonders why, given the high degree of vulnerability of
| many infrastructure sites, terrorist attacks on infrastructure
| are less common. I would guess it's because causing
| infrastructure disruption which leads to fatalities requires a
| fairly complex, concerted effort, which could probably still lead
| to more fatalities if directed at a more conventional form of
| attack. All in all, it's a return on investment consideration for
| terrorists.
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(page generated 2021-01-04 23:02 UTC)