I work as a telecom engineer troubleshooting/programming the Ciena 5164 optical router used for Verizon and At&t. These companies and many of my colleagues know exactly what it was but the more interesting part that raised some eyebrows was the fact that cc payment processing and emergency services/SOS/911 calls WERE possible for most of the affected customers. This is key. (This all runs on the same fiber optic network and should have been ‘down’ also.)
I cannot overstate how anomalous the above fact pattern is because when our networks go down, they don’t go down in this piecemeal way.
Here’s the takeaway: The goal of a ‘cyber weapon’ is maximum disruption. Whoever deployed (tested) this ‘cyber tool’ went to great lengths to pause communication ONLY. This surgeon scalpel approach we saw was a MUCH more difficult task than to just ‘nuke’ the whole system so to speak. A tool like this would need to be tested a few times to ensure a reliable partitioning of the ‘Target’ [calls/data] and the ‘Not Target’ [911/cc processing].
I'm a patriot who loves their country so I will not say what 'it' was/is, but if you reread the above a few times, and ask yourself the right questions, logical deduction should provide the answer.
What could impact the digital frequencies more so than the network that carries them.Besides a solar flare. I'd like to know what your thoughts are . and thanks for your input fren
At a very high level this is what cell tower transport looks like… a local provider might have a 10G+ handoff. This could be represented in one physical switch, many or a virtual router. There is then physical links leaving the local provider to the cell site. These connect up to a NID. So up until this point you’re fiber. The NID is a handoff point between the local provider and the cellular provider. (You might have every major carrier on a tower, using this setup). Service leaves the NID to customer managed equipment. (Generally a switch the cellular carrier has access to over the previously mentioned link). From this equipment a line connects up to the radio equipment that provides the signal to your phone.
I no longer work on the provisioning/transport side of things but if I did and were troubleshooting this outage, I’d have suggested a tech test the connection from the customer side equipment behind the providers NID. (Can be done remotely or by a tech onsite).
This would allow you to determine if the issues were some type of cellular interference or the network. (If all tests run fine behind the NID you could then suspect it’s interference with the signal).
I don’t know enough about current cellular technologies to suggest what could be the issue. But no matter what is going through the air, there are registered wavelengths. I have nothing to base this on but I could imagine a scenario where a type of jammer could be used to attack certain frequencies. It’s not a reach to thing this could be coordinated in a massive scale. Also not that such jammers are relatively easy to locate should someone use one. Messing with these channels is a federal offense as far as I know.
Right now I’m not really convinced whatever happened was intentional, but am most curious about why we haven’t seen an explanation for it.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this fren. And yes the waiting on the explanation is strange. Either they don't know or they are trying to run cover for it. The smell of alphabet agencies ( ours or elsewhere) .but once again thanks
I got a few theories.
CC processing used satellite or landline comms. Likewise emergency calls can go through any available network. Which would have been T-Mobile. Are most businesses really using cellular networks for their CC processing? Not too long ago I know that satellite links were popular for that application. And there are MVNOs that can operate on multiple carriers. That sounds like a good idea for a high reliability service like CC processing.
GPS disruption. Modern cellular networks require precise time synchronization, which is typically provided by a GPS disciplined oscillator. These oscillators have a holdover specification, a time period for which it can maintain accurate enough time for the system to fully function without a GPS signal. Now, potentially the networks should be designed to operate without such precise synchronization. But in this case the network capacity would be greatly reduced. If that happened, it would make sense to only serve the most important applications.
There was some need to shut stuff down. Such as interrupting NC voting machines. Or reducing RF signal levels for health, to receive a weak signal somewhere, or many other reasons.