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ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

tennessean.com

241–250 of 517 posts

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neural net synth would be even easier to trace. It’s quite hard to set up an aws account via untraceable currency and an untraceable phone. I did it when I was 25 or so, and it took about three weeks of planning and execution just to get the cards and phone. Given the sophistication of the attack, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible they have neural net experience. But as someone who spent a good chunk of time trying to g…

Are you a bot? Because your profile makes me think you're a bot. I mean no disrespect.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#242

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.

Man, imagine being the guy called in to "inspect" that given what the loudspeaker was saying? And on Christmas Day no less, before the bomb squad shows up? Talk about drawing a short straw.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#243
post #133

It’s as though someone watched an action movie and thought, what if we get rid of the need to cut the comms in the building itself, and if we chose a time and day when nobody would show up: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xLcHPsWK5xg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jrA-1cG_wq4 This is a scenario that is in like pretty much every action heist movie ever. Except the movies have super-dramatic bad guys who blow their own co…

Covering for your crime by committing a far more severe crime seems like a pretty bad idea... though I think there is no shortage of criminals with bad ideas, so this seems at least plausible.

Or the "true crime" is more severe than the bombing.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#244
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's BRI ISDN. PRI has a lot more channels. Also, there was dial setup and PPP vs IDSN bonding. So it can be complex.

Yes indeed. I had the pleasure to work for Ascend Communications for 4 years. The bulk of our business was the Ascend Max TNT that could terminate dozens of PRI lines into hundreds of digital modems. They were the bread and butter for early ISPs. For BRI lines, there was the Pipeline 50, remarkable little box with a BRI input and Ethernet output. Good times.

I was a big MaxTNT customer. The cooling on those were interesting. Also worked with the earlier Cascade BSTDX 9000 and CBX 500.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is 0 doubt that they were targeting the hub, they parked right beside that building, not on the side of the street with restaurants. There is a gaping hole in the side of the building, though how much damage was done isn't known. Some services were affected before they had to cut the generators, per some reports. Internet and cellular is still down, and our DirecTV local channels went black right when they cut…

They also had an announcement warning people to evacuate, so they clearly weren't optimizing for casualties. I don't think "which side of the street" tells us anything.

How does it not? You are going to park closest to what you want to suffer the most damage. They parked right next to the AT&T building. They wanted to damage that building, if they had parked on the side with all the restaurants it probably would have destroyed that entire side of the street, those buildings are very old, some are pre-civil war facades. The AT&T building had to have a close high impact bomb to even make a dent, it's so obvious that was the target.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#246

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 th…

I'm not sure if it's only anti government militia. Another possibility could be a heist/digital raid and that this bombing was there to prevent offsite backups of a secure data facility.

Nonetheless this seems too coordinated and well executed to be some random hate group, so I agree with you there. Especially with the evacuation messages.

Anybody know if e.g. the Nexus group or similar SSAE data centers had some issues?

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#247

Reports that most of Tennessee is without 9-1-1 service right now: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32982150-AT-T-Suffers-outa... And AT&T mobile is down across Kentucky: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r32981927-Services-Suspicio... Also reports above that calls into Tennessee aren't working.

It is pretty nuts that a single physical location can bring down a state's worth of 911, and cellular. It is either institutional incompetence, or malice, or laziness.

> institutional incompetence, or malice, or laziness.

AT&T in TN is an epic example of all 3 and then some. The most recent unbelievably stupid thing I've personally observed was the construction of 15 miles of new fiber on county power poles; right beside a Verizon fiber line that had been there for a decade. They put no slack loops in theirs, VZW's run has many.

that line went up this year, and has been torn down and out of service 3 times, so far, that I know of. Oddly I hear the VZW line keeps failing shortly after the ATT trucks are seen, where I dont recall hearing much about failures on the VZW before this year. So perhaps there was a design consideration that suggested the construction method.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#248

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 th…

I'm not sure if it's only anti government militia. Another possibility could be a heist/digital raid and that this bombing was there to prevent offsite backups of a secure data facility. Nonetheless this seems too coordinated and well executed to be some random hate group, so I agree with you there. Especially with the evacuation messages. Anybody know if e.g. the Nexus group or similar SSAE data centers had some iss…

Militias are not (all) hate groups.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#249
post #132
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference is war has rules, terrorism doesn't. Deliberately targeting civilians in war is usually considered a war crime, while deliberately targeting civilians in a terrorist attack is considered ... a standard terrorist attack.

> One difference is war has rules, terrorism doesn't. Citation needed? Unless every party to a war ever signed the Geneva Convention or something (and even then, war crimes exist which are arguably acts of terrorism). See: the use of agent orange, the bombing of Dresden, etc.

Lol yeah, Total warfare[0] has no rules:

"A war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#250
post #234
post #90

I am overcome with curiosity about who did this and why. The fact that nobody has claimed responsibility makes no sense. If this were a politically motivated attack, domestic or otherwise, it would almost defeat the point to have the name of your cause omitted from those initial headlines. And sparing the lives of the bystanders also doesn’t make sense for a political attack. I heard the NRA gave warnings but the rea…

> The fact that nobody has claimed responsibility makes no sense. It could be an enemy country probing for weakness. The goal would simply be intel / seeing what will happen.

At the risk of triggering a war with the most powerful military in the world?
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