Fiber optic sabotage, what is Free’s reaction?

This week, overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, Free fiber lines were sabotaged in coordinated attacks in Strasbourg, Grenoble, Reims, Lyon and other cities in France. The managing director of Free declared that these acts were of a ” extreme gravity “.

The cut lines were restored approximately four to five hours after the incident, a record time given the extent of the damage. The malicious event was labeled ” unprecedented by Free.

Simultaneous acts of sabotage

The criminals acted overnight and severed the Free fiber optic cables. Some network customers were then completely cut off from the Internet by 4 a.m., after which Free quickly deployed technicians.

Around 100,000 people were affected by the outage. The attacks were organized and simultaneous, they targeted three of the four main arteries of the Free network, which uses SFR lines. Those responsible do not seem to have been identified yet.

The continuity plan was quickly activated, allowing the operator to quickly re-establish an Internet connection. The director of Free, Thomas Reynaud, welcomed this rapid reaction and the efficiency of his technicians. He also denounced the nature of these actions as extremely serious.

Serious consequences for those affected

An internet outage may seem like a simple inconvenience: a few hours without access to the Web is nothing unheard of. But, nowadays, such a massive outage can have serious consequences, especially for hospitals, which increasingly rely on a stable connection.

A shutdown can also prevent thousands of users from accessing their data stored in the Cloud, or prevent online payments or the taking of exams over the Internet for students.

It is by virtue of the serious nature of these acts that the Paris public prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal investigation for ” deterioration of property likely to affect the fundamental interests of the Nation », « interference with an automated data processing system ” and ” conspiracy “.

Source : Europe1