Scotland Yard foils Al-Qaeda plot to blow up Internet

The Telehouse plot was quite well advanced, with the key to the operation being an inside job to infiltrate the hub and blow it up from within. But would the consequences of such an attack, were it successful, be catastrophic? I have to say I am unconvinced that it would. Disruptive, costly, annoying and hugely problematical for sure, but catastrophic as in bringing the Internet to its knees in the UK and parts of Europe? Not a chance. The trouble is that this particular Telehouse facility has been well known throughout the UK Internet industry as something of a bandwidth choking point, leading many of those with critical infrastructure needs to adopt a distributed approach across multiple collocation sites. For example, the major UK Internet peering point, LINX, does exactly this.