Digital Destruction Was Worst Imaginable

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: William Knowles <wk () c4i org>

http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/stories/0,1199,NAV47-68-84-91_STO68762,00.html

By DAN VERTON 
March 04, 2002

Washington - For several tense hours on Sept. 11, the nation was deaf,
dumb and blind due to the "absolutely massive" loss of communications
infrastructure resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center,
a senior government official said last week.

While those losses pale in comparison to the human tragedy, federal
and industry officials for the first time painted a frightening
picture of what the terrorist attacks did to the U.S.  
telecommunications infrastructure that fateful day and revealed just
how fragile the nation's economic digital backbone can be.

According to officials at the homeland security conference here last
week, sponsored by the Fairfax, Va.-based Armed Forces Communications
and Electronics Association, the collapse of the World Trade Center
towers in New York inflicted severe damage on one of the most critical
telecommunications nodes in the country: the main regional switching
center operated by Verizon Communications at 140 West St., adjacent to
World Trade Center 7, which collapsed.

The resulting devastation was "the most significant challenge that the
National Communications System had ever seen," said Brenton Greene,
deputy manager at the National Communications System (NCS), which is
responsible for all the major telecommunications networks that have
national security significance.

In addition to the immediate wireless circuit overload, the collapse
of the towers sent a massive steel beam slicing through a bundle of
critical fiber cables buried eight feet below ground, destroying more
than 4 million high-speed access lines and rupturing water lines that
filled underground switching vaults with more than 10 million gallons
of water.

The damage knocked out 1.5 million circuits that served the financial
district, threatening the country's economic stability, said Greene.

The Verizon facility housed enough equipment to make it the "most
communications- intensive area in the U.S.," said Bruce Fleming,
divisional technology officer at New York-based Verizon.

Virtual Army Fights Back

That fact wasn't lost on the Bush administration, Greene said. Once
emergency response and rescue efforts were given the support they
required, the White House ordered Greene to make restoring Wall Street
connectivity the next priority.

Restoring the Verizon backbone, however, would require a virtual army
of federal and industry technicians. Primary power had been lost, and
backup power, which was running on diesel fuel generators, began to
fade quickly.

Lucent Technologies Inc. in Murray Hill, N.J., one of Verizon's main
systems providers, rushed a 100,000-line switch to the scene to
replace another massive switch that had been sent crashing through the
window of the Verizon building. The company also put all of its
customer requirements on hold and made its entire inventory available
to rescue services, said Greg Butler, a Verizon vice president who
coordinated incident response efforts.

In addition to the damage incurred by Verizon, at least 139 fiber
rings in surrounding buildings and 26 building-specific fiber rings
failed, said Dick Price, vice president of field operations at
WorldCom Inc.

"From a macro level, our national security should be a major part of
our telecommunications policy," said Fleming. "If it can happen, it
hasn't happened yet."


 
*==============================================================*
"Communications without intelligence is noise;  Intelligence
without communications is irrelevant." Gen Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
================================================================
C4I.org - Computer Security, & Intelligence - http://www.c4i.org
*==============================================================*



-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org

To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY
of the mail.