French Internet Lines Cut In Latest Attack During Olympics

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A number of fiber optic cables carrying broadband service across France were cut overnight in the latest attack on the country's infrastructure during the Olympic Games. Connections serving Paris, which is hosting the Olympic Games this week, and the games themselves weren't affected, a spokesman for Olympics telecom partner, Orange SA, said. Still, this is the second sabotage of French infrastructure in the past few days as the world converges on the capital. Coordinated fires on French rail lines disrupted trains ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday. The fiber cables were cut in nine departments overall including: Ardeche, Aude, Bouches-du-Rhone, Drome, Herault, Vaucluse, Marne, Meuse and Oise, the French Telecom Federation said. SFR said its network was vandalized between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Paris time, and teams are working on repairs, a spokesman for the French phone company said. The carrier is using alternative routes to serve customers, though redirecting the traffic might lead to slower speeds. Other carriers, including Iliad SA's Free and Netalis, also said they were impacted in social media posts. Netalis Chief Executive Officer Nicolas Guillaume said that the telecom company had successfully moved traffic to backup networks early on Monday. French cloud provider OVHcloud is also working to reroute traffic after the incident, which had caused slower performance on connections between Europe and Asia Pacific, a spokesman said. "We advocate for France reinforcing criminal sanctions for vandalism on telecom infrastructure, which should be put at the same level as vandalism on energy infrastructure," said Romain Bonenfant, head of the French Telecom Federation industry group, in an interview. "Telecom infrastructure, like the railways, covers kilometers across the whole territory -- you can't put surveillance on every part of it."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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