[Full-disclosure] High Value Target Selection

[Vincent Archer]

On Sun, 2007-12-02 at 06:24 +0100, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:13:31 EST, gmaggro said:
> > Ah yes, I remember an old story not too dissimilar... multiple redundant
> > lines, all severed at the same time with the same backhoe. Idiots.
> 
> To be fair, it's often not "idiots".

Sometimes, it *IS* idiots. In 1987, I was working on a telecoms-based
business (French Minitel). We got about $20,000 per hour revenue tied to
the X25 lines coming in, which meant a service interruption of an hour
was bad, any service that would last a week would be death to the
business (it was also highly competitive - if you were offline for a
week, a lot of customers would find another service).

So we went to our provider France Telecom (there wasn't a choice: there
was one state provider for telco, and that was it), and we said "ok, we
need a set of backup lines in case the current set gets cut". "No
problem, our engineer will be there on Monday to install the modem and
check your connection". "Hmmm? Where does the backup line go thru?"
"Why, the same trunk, we've got plenty of spare capacity in it".

Took us two months of careful negotiation to explain in words of no more
than 5 letters that when we said backup in case of cut lines, we really
meant it.

-- 
Vincent ARCHER
varcher at denyall.com

Tel : +33 (0)1 40 07 47 14
Fax : +33 (0)1 40 07 47 27
Deny All - 23, rue Notre Dame des Victoires - 75002 Paris - France