Sabotage investigation of fiber cuts in Northwest

JC Dill nanog at vo.cnchost.com
Mon Nov 3 23:52:55 UTC 2003


At 12:30 PM 11/3/2003, Richard Welty wrote:
>how long do you think it'll take anyone to notice the extra locks?

The link I posted showed a *latch* for a door (which could also be used on 
a gate if desired), not a series of locks on a chain to chain shut a 
gate.  With a latch such as this one, you can't sneak an extra lock onto 
the gang, although you can cut and replace one.  However... there are 
similar latches that have a shroud around the locks - which makes it next 
to impossible to get to the padlock's hasp with ordinary bolt cutters.  I 
went thru a gate with one such locking mechanism a few weeks ago, I'll take 
photos the next time I go by.

It's not that hard to design a system that takes more than bolt cutters to 
get in.   You don't even have to make your system impossible to break into, 
just harder to break into than some other place - in most cases the 
miscreants will go break into the easier place instead.  So, we can 
conclude that the most likely reason this network was vandalized was A) the 
miscreant had some reason to go after this network and B) it was much too 
easy to get in.  If we can have airlocks at colos, we can certainly have 
better locks at remote fiber huts.

jc

p.s.  please don't cc me on replies, either send to me (if you want) or to 
the list (if you prefer, I do), but not to both.





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