Telecom Security: An Oxymoron?
January 4, 2021
Two ideas: First, an unanticipated suggestion for bad actors and a reminder that the telco pros at AT&T are more like the New York Jets than the A team at the old AT&T IBM facility in Piscataway.
I read “Nashville Bombing Froze Wireless Communications, Exposed Achilles’ Heel’ in Regional Network.” USA Today is not my go to source for high technology information. One of my research team was a technology columnist, and I recall his comments about those who reviewed his write ups. Those mentioned at lunch were different from the topics my team and I discussed. Remember those Dummy books from some rolling-in-dough dead tree publisher. My recollection is that the technology write ups were simpler, edited by the estimable Gannett to TV Digest readability. It seems that USA Today pushed its content barriers with this USA Today write up about the Nashville incident included some information of use to bad actors. Here are a couple of examples:
- An injury to one’s Achilles’ heel means crippling. To a pro football player like AT&T, that’s not good.
- Single-point-of-failure. For a professional telecom like AT&T, this means zero effective redundancy, fail over, or smart route arounds. (Was the pre Judge Green AT&T built this way?)
- Three feet of water pooled where the back up generators lived. Water and generators, water and batteries – quite a one-two combo like an ailing quarterback and an ineffective but expensive offensive line.
Okay, enough already.
What do these factoids say to a person struggling for an idea to impair a major US telco? Maybe six RVs at regional centers conveniently located near fiber rich interstates? What about pulling a Quinn in front of Nashville-type facilities simultaneously with a half dozen cheap RVs?
Sound like a working idea?
The USA Today makes the idea more appealing with the statement from an AT&T professional:
Our systems are not redundant enough.
No kidding. Is it necessary, dear Gannett, to provide a roadmap for bad actors? Let’s hope the write ups in USA Today are not crafted with an eye toward readers who are looking for info between the lines. That takes more thought than making something simple.
And for the pros at the AT&T practice field, why not up your game. Less direct marketing of a failing TV venture and more of the old fashioned Ma Bell?
Stephen E Arnold, January 4, 2020
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