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  Sleuth's corner - Case 6 This Phone is disconnected... It remains one of the World's worst attacks on a communications network. And ten years later, the people who did it remain at large. On November 20, 1987 a saboteur or saboteurs began carving through a wad of cables in a Telecom tunnel under Sydney's Martin Place. Police estimate the saboteur took less than four minutes to cut through a bundle of lines using an electric grinder plugged into a power point. He then sliced through more vital cables as he moved southwards through Sydney's underground tunnel labyrinth. Within half an hour he cut cables near Broadway, the last of ten areas he destroyed. It plunged Sydney's entire CBD into turmoil. More than 35,000 circuits were sliced, affecting 40 suburbs. It also disconnected many automatic teller machines, halted betting in country TABs and crippled electronic store registers. Police failed to catch the saboteur. But they and Telecom (now Telstra) believe the offender must have been someone with an intimate knowledge of Telecom's subterranean communications system. The attackers knew exactly how to cut the cables to cause maximum damage. To add to the intrigue, a year later in 1988 there was a similar attack in Melbourne when someone broke into a manhole and cut through fibre optic cables, disconnecting 20,000 phones. That crime also remains unsolved. One story that won't go away has it that this was part of an elaborate heist - that Sydney's CBD was disconnected from the rest of Australia so that a computer could be isolated and accessed without transmitting any telltale alarm to the HQ of the institution involved. The story has it that, because of the importance of the perception of security to the institution involved, the heist was never reported to the authorities. We were even given a name... But then....that's only a theory...isn't it?! Have you heard about this one? Know anything about it? You know who to contact! email me or send me an Anonymous email. The safest way to contact me if you have some really hot info is via snail mail. Address it to: Ross Coulthart, Reporter |
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