Business Crime: copper scavenging granny crashes entire country's internet
All crime should be viewed with seriousness. But sometimes a story comes along that is so funny on so many levels that it is impossible not to laugh. This is hacking at its most basic.
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An un-named 75 year old grandmother in Georgia it to appear in court after she brought down the entire internet for the country of Armenia with nothing more technical than a spade.
For the woman is not technical whizz-kid, she's a scavenger who decided that she could dig up a communications cable and sell the copper.
That she is kind of clueless is demonstrated by the fact that it's a fibre-optic cable.
Even so, she located the cable - much to the surprise of the Georgian Railway Telecom Company which owns it. Then she dug down far enough to find it and then she damaged it. None of those things are easy - especially given the protective wrapper that comms cables have to make sure they are not harmed by, amongst other things, rats.
The internet is supposed to be designed to make sure that, if any part of it is cut, another part takes over.
Not, it appears, if you are in Armenia and the three cables she damaged are the only route into the country resulting in Armenia being cut off from the internet for some three hours on 28th March.
And no, it's not an April Fool's joke.
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