ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville • Hacker News Board

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#141

Post by mech422 » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 2:59 AM UTC

elmo2you wrote: post #83

tptacek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T says that their services went down along with the gas & power in the area, as a side effect: the gas shutoff cut off their backup generators. That doesn't sound all that targeted.

While I'm only speculating, it could be quite possible that whoever may have wished to damage or destroy the AT&T building, seriously underestimated what these kind of buildings can take (essentially being disguised bunkers). This certainly wasn't a small explosion, from the looks of it. But taking out a bunker .. unless you have access to weapons specially build for that purpose, good luck. That AT&T still went down…

yeah - as I commented elsewhere - mcveigh did a whole lot more damage with presumably less explosive (van vs. rv)

This really sounds like people playing with stuff they have no understanding of.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#142

Post by swirepe » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

joseph_grobbles wrote: post #110

supernova87a wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That voice announcing evacuation sounds very professional, not like a computer synthesized voice... I wonder if they will try to trace that.

Many of the current neural net voice synthesis engines are fantastic and sound extremely real. Amazon Polly for instance. I'd punch in the phrase and do some comparisons, but given the attention those logs will certainly get maybe I won't.

>given the attention those logs will certainly get maybe I won't

Siri, detonate this bomb in incognito mode

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#143

Post by throwaheyy » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #113

outoftheabyss wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically it was on an occasion when a bomb was phoned in that led to the single biggest atrocity during the troubles. 29 people killed by a cat bomb in Omagh. We may not be living in peace today has it not happened

What’s a cat bomb?

Probably a car bomb. The IRA were infamous for those.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#144

Post by SigmundA » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:00 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #118

vinay427 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: In my experience, a small but sizeable number of homes in suburban areas that are still outside the city enough to be affected by weather-related power outages every several months have whole-home generators connected to city natural gas lines. Growing up in one of these areas, there was the occasional power outage (once a year or so at most) but I can't recall any gas line outages. Those who had whole-home…

I'm more surprised that Nashville has city gas. It's not a very cold climate. It almost never even snows there.

A lot of cities in Florida have natural gas including mine. My cook top, hot water, dryer and pool heater run off it. Not used for heating the house as a heat pump is plenty for the mild winter.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#145

Post by bigbubba » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:01 AM UTC

vageli wrote: post #123

bigbubba wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. There are certainly people who believe both or either of those were terrorism.

Terrorism is the use of violence to promote an ideology. Full stop. Nothing precludes a terrorist act from helping people. Even Pablo Escobar set up schools and other institutions in his neighborhood.

I agree that's the coherent prescribed definition of terrorism. In practice, whether somebody admits something was terrorism depends largely on which side they agree with. When they agree with the terrorist, euphemisms like 'freedom fighter' are often used instead.

There are probably some Columbians who were on the receiving side of Escobar's gifting and called him a humanitarian for it.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#146

Post by swirepe » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:03 AM UTC

joseph_grobbles wrote: post #108

optimalsolver wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they do, it will be a case of no good deed going unpunished.

It's a good deed that they broadcast this message? Why a rational human would broadcast this message- a) The penalties if there were deaths would be much, much more severe. The manpower involved in the hunt would be exponentially larger. b) They have some other goal that would be sabotaged if there were deaths. c) They have morality and can rationalize bombing buildings, but not killing people. This isn't a "good dee…

>This isn't a "good deed". It's a presumably rational person playing the situation.

Why not both? A deed can be both good and rational.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#147

Post by cinquemb » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:05 AM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #128

meekmockmook wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cognitive dissonance and total denial is off the charts with telecom and tech leaders who don't realize (or care) that their massive growth has played a large role in global civil unrest. The general public is terrified and angry at the rapidly shifting technological landscape and the changes in social norms that come with it. Trust in technology is at a low, and for good reason. We have titanic businesses with a…

The 2017 game Night In The Woods features this poem: "There's No Reception in Possum Springs" No reception here. I wave my black phone In the air like a flare like a prayer, but no reception. I read on the Internet baby face boy billionaire. Phone app sold made more money in one day than my family over 100 generations. More than my whole world ever has. World where house-buying jobs became rent-paying jobs became liv…

I think Adam Segal's 2016 "The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age" often didn't go far enough to describe the role individuals could play in this…

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#148

Post by ideophobia » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

Considering the FBI recently foiled a plot by a group who was planning to "take out" parts of the energy grid, it seems likely from my experience that this is another set of people executing a similar plan targeting telecoms. I imagine there is a high probability of more incidents like this happening between now and the inauguration, meant to target various infrastructure and "big government" components throughout the country. This attack screams anti-government militia with it's technique, and we will see in the following days online chats emerging with all the planning details that will likely include someone that had some degree of "insider information" about the ATT facility.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#149

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:06 AM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #91

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It rarely hurts. It is certainly unusual in a lot of ways. The warning being probably towards the top. Before it was part of the news, I wondered why the initial police encounter resulted in cops immediately calling for a bomb squad. I will admit that my initial thought was that this building was one of the windowless NSA buildings. I guess I was wrong.

The bomb squad was called because the RV literally had an intercom saying there was a bomb inside and to evacuate the area, the police apparently also briefly inspected it.

Yes. Sorry. I think my initial post wasn't clear on that aspect now that re-read it. That was actually fairly unusual aspect of it.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#150

Post by jcims » Sat, Dec 26, 2020, 3:09 AM UTC

kitteh wrote: post #85

jcims wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could have this wrong but we had offices in Amsterdam and Berlin and ISDN in Europe wasn't nearly as polluted with old standards as it was in the US. I don't even think a 56kbps B channel was an option in Europe. I stood up dial plants in both continents and I distinctly recall it being plug and play over the pond. We also used the ISDN to back up our circuits and Cisco had a pretty cool demand system that would ju…

The most brutal thing I saw was when someone compromised a customer ISDN router (the small Ascend boxes with the curses UI) and changed the creds to login to their ISP and disconnected it and forced it to redial repeatedly. The local telco charged you for every ISDN call if it was a business line and since ISDN call initiaton/setup are instant - they had a several thousand dollar phone bill. I recall seeing the RADIU…

Yep!!! We had to tweak some settings because the router would constantly flap channels during DR tests and we were getting billed for the call setups (international ISDN calls were not cheap lol).

It was cheaper to have stable excess capacity.