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Cable Sabotage?

rynner2

rynner2

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New cable cut compounds net woes

A submarine cable in the Middle East has been snapped, adding to global net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean on Wednesday.
The Falcon cable, owned by a firm that operates one of the previously damaged cables, was snapped on Friday morning.

The cause of the latest break has not been confirmed but a repair ship has been deployed, said owner Flag Telecom.

Following the earlier break internet services were severely disrupted in Egypt, the Middle East and India.

There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide internet network in Egypt on Wednesday, while India suffered up to 60% disruption.

Flag Telecom said a repair ship was expected to arrive at the site of the first break - 8.3km from Alexandria in Egypt - on 5 February, with repair work expected to take a week.

A repair ship deployed to the second break - 56km from Dubai - was expected to arrive at the site in the "next few days", the firm said.

Web returns

The first cable - the Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) - was cut at 0800 on 30 January, the firm said.

A second cable thought to lie alongside it - SEA-ME-WE 4, or the South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable - was also split.

FLAG is a 28,000km (17,400 mile) long submarine communications cable that links Australia and Japan with Europe via India and the Middle East.

SEA-ME-WE 4 is a submarine cable linking South East Asia to Europe via the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

The two cable cuts meant that the only cable in service connecting Europe to the Middle East via Egypt was the older Sea-M-We 3 system, according to research firm TeleGeography.

The firm said the cuts reduced the amount of available capacity on the stretch of network between India and Europe by 75% percent.

As a result, carriers in Egypt and the Middle East re-routed their European traffic around the globe, through South East Asia and across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The cause of the break has still not been confirmed. The third break is unlikely to disrupt commerce in the region as many business are closed on Fridays.

Initial reports suggested that it could have been snapped by a ship's anchor.

Internet service providers said they expected India's to be back to about 80% of its usual speed by the end of Friday.

In Egypt Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said he expected to be at the same capacity within two days.

"However, it's not before ten days until the internet service returns to its normal performance," Kamil told the state Al-Ahram newspaper.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7222536.stm

Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; three times is enemy action...
 
You beat me to it Rynner! Now I am not one for conspiracy theories at all, of all forteana they are the thing I have the least time for but this seems quite unusual.

If it was intentional and not some freaky coincidence I doubt it would be an attack on it's own. Possibly just a preliminary attack to see how much disruption can be cause by cutting one or two cables.

Just and idea...
 
yeh like the fuel fiasco that disabled soo many cars ,mostly in southern england,not so long ago
 
a selection of articles from various viewpoints:


Internet problems continue with fourth cable break
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/510132-internet-problems-continue-with-fourth-cable-break?ln=en

Third Internet Cable Cut in Middle East
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0%2C2933%2 ... %2C00.html

FIBER-OPTIC CABLES NOT EASY TO BREAK?? ***pic***
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/fo ... ead=118041

*Iran Oil Bourse to deal blow to dollar * http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=37 ... =351020103
*MK/JG/RE/HAR, Iran Press TV*
The long-awaited Iranian Oil Bourse, a place for trading oil, petrochemicals and gas in various non-dollar currencies, will soon open.

Iran's Finance Minister Davoud Danesh-Jafari told reporters the bourse will be inaugurated during the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution (February 1-11) at the latest.

"All preparations have been made to launch the bourse; it will open during the Ten-Day Dawn (the ceremonies marking the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran)," he said.

The Minister had earlier stated that the Oil Bourse is located on the Persian Gulf island of Kish.

Some expert opinions hold inauguration of the bourse could significantly devalue the greenback.
(4 January 2008)
/Also reported at IranMania http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=56789&NewsKind=Current Affairs and mentioned in a report from Global Research http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... a&aid=7877 (Jan 23, 2008). Otherwise, no reports seem to appear in the media.

*Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez* http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/t ... story.aspx
*Tahani Karrar, Dow Jones Newswires*
A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.

Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged Wednesday leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.

"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.

The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.

"It may take sometime to fix the cut but we are rerouting the traffic to another cable in the U.K. and U.S., the bandwidth utilization will go down," the official said.

There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while du, the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors.
(1 February 2008)

/According to the Internet Traffic Report http://www.internettrafficreport.com/asia.htm site, the router located in Iran (router1.iust.ac.ir <http://router1.iust.ac.ir>) is out of commission. Looking at other reports on the site, however, one sees that several other routers are out of commission (in Africa, Florida and Columbia).

Several posts have appeared on the Internet, claiming that Iran may have been targeted.

A Reuters report on the outage http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/i ... 2520080202
doesn't mention Iran.

the Energy Bulletin archives has more than 40 items

http://energybulletin.net/news.php

on the proposed *Iranian Oil Bourse*. A few articles of special interest are listed below. As you can see, some writers think that the proposed bourse will damage the U.S. dollar, while others are skeptical.

Some articles by Chris Cook, archived at EB:
The Iran oil bourse - a new direction?
http://energybulletin.net/23458.html (Dec 10, 2006)
Interview with Chris Cook, originator of the Iranian oil bourse http://energybulletin.net/19237.html (Aug 13, 2006 at TOD)
Iran - Perception and Reality
http://energybulletin.net/12269.html (Jan 27, 2006)


*Damage to the U.S. Dollar?*

* The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html by Krassimir Petrov.

* Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil
Bourse http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html by William Clark.

By the same author: The Real Reasons Why Iran is the Next Target
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA410A.html


*Skeptics*

* Let me kill off once and for all the Iranian oil bourse story"
http://energybulletin.net/13192.html by Jerome a Paris
* Strange ideas about the Iranian oil bourse
http://energybulletin.net/12255.html by James D. Hamilton
(Econbrowser)

(adapted from an e-mail i received)


Edit: Links resized. P_M
 
3rd cable break

If it was indeed a calculated move to disrupt internet traffic, I can only remark that it didnt have much of an effect in Dubai. My service was probably affected by not much more than 3 hours. This might, I suppose be deemed a success by the Bush neo con nutters, depending on what devious scheme they may be contemplating. Today, Iran launched a satellite capable rocket, thats not going to make them any more popular with the U.S. Interesting times indeed!
 
Just spoke to a contact in the IT industry.

He seemed to think it was a little odd. He speculated it could have been probing - seeing what disruption would result and what responses would ensue. That said, neither of us had a clue as to who or why.

As i say, speculation.
 
He speculated it could have been probing - seeing what disruption would result and what responses would ensue. That said, neither of us had a clue as to who or why.
Click to expand...

purely speculative, but perhaps certain interests are looking at the feasibility of an internet blackout on say, iran, for if/when the sabre rattling turns to action.
 
According to Rense.Com (perhaps not the most reliable of sources) there have been FOUR recent cable breaks.

If that's in fact the case, there would seem to be two main possibilities:

1, Somebody's sabotaging the cables, or,

2. There's a considerable amount of unrecorded (or at the very least unpublicized!) tectonic activity going on in the area.
 
OldTimeRadio said:
According to Rense.Com (perhaps not the most reliable of sources) there have been FOUR recent cable breaks.

If that's in fact the case, there would seem to be two main possibilities:

1, Somebody's sabotaging the cables, or,

2. There's a considerable amount of unrecorded (or at the very least unpublicized!) tectonic activity going on in the area.
Click to expand...

Why only the two possibilities? I'm no expert on undersea cables but it would seem there are more options than that.
 
Agreed. But I did say "main" possibilities, which I considered a qualifier.
 
There were major earthquakes in the African Great Lakes area at about this time, although that is some distance away from the cable breaks...

Is it the same fault system, though?
 
OldTimeRadio said:
Agreed. But I did say "main" possibilities, which I considered a qualifier.
Click to expand...

It's just that all the reports seem to state that anchor damage was the main possibility and one source said that a tropical storm may have been responsible. Plus it seems that the fault with the fourth cable was due to a problem with its power supply and not damage to the cable itself. I wondered why you came to the conclusion you did?
 
I just read an article in the Fortean Times Breaking News section which held that the Egyptian authorities have confirmed that, contrary to popular speculation, as there were no ships in the area where the cable was cut, it was not a ships anchor.

Somebody else in the article suggested the US cut the cables to cut Irans internet in preparation for direct action.

I don't think so, the direct action was not scheduled to happen for another few months yet; although I wonder if it was indeed done on purpose for some reason.

Also, would they have done it directly or would they be more likely to use friends nearer the sites of the cables?
 
From what I was reading on another forum it can often be the case that militaries will cut certain lines of communication to force an "Enemy" to use another route, one that has been compromised thus allowing eavesdropping.
This whole thing does now seem to have gotten to the "Beyond a coincidence" level of oddness.
 
Mal_Adjusted said:
http://www.rense.com/general80/cable.htm

(it's a long article so I won't paste it here)
Click to expand...
But it's well worth a read.

(Glad I'm not the only one with suspicions along these lines. 8) )
 
This led me to speculate about the capabilities of the repeaters used in these cables.

Could somebody have developed a virus to turn them off without having to physically cut the cables?
 
The truth is that the internet is now so complex, that it's achieved consciousness. These breaks are the authorities' attempt to perform a lobotomy before the public at large realises that we're sharing the world with an artifical intellegnce, that can pretend to be anyone it wants to be on the internet... :nonplus:
 
Is this the culprit?

sea_devil.jpg
 
Zilch5 said:
"The Economist" isn't buying into the theory:

http://tinyurl.com/2ffm2j
Click to expand...
The drift of their argument seems to be that, as so many different people are considering this from a conspiracy viewpoint, it can't be a conspiracy!

The world's economy is in a bad enough state as it is, so you'd expect an organ like the Economist to try to play down any angle that might panic the markets further... :twisted:
 
rynner said:
Zilch5 said:
"The Economist" isn't buying into the theory:

http://tinyurl.com/2ffm2j
Click to expand...
The drift of their argument seems to be that, as so many different people are considering this from a conspiracy viewpoint, it can't be a conspiracy!

The world's economy is in a bad enough state as it is, so you'd expect an organ like the Economist to try to play down any angle that might panic the markets further... :twisted:
Click to expand...

Sorry - I am into all things Japanese!

That includes rusty Datsuns and Godzilla - so I stand by my theory. :D
 
Abandoned anchor cut Gulf Internet cable

By KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 8, 2:24 PM ET

CAIRO, Egypt - An abandoned anchor was responsible for cutting one of the undersea Internet cables severed last week, causing disruptions across the Middle East and parts of Asia, the cable's owner said Friday.

A FLAG Telecom repair crew discovered the anchor near where the fiber-optic cable was severed Feb. 1 in the Persian Gulf, 35 miles north of Dubai, between the Emirates and Oman.

Weighing more than 5.5 tons, the anchor has been pulled to the surface. The company did not immediately explain whether the anchor moved and snapped the cable or whether the cable itself was drifting when it was sliced.

It remains unclear exactly how any of the cuts occurred.

It also was unclear whether FLAG knew what vessel the anchor belonged to. Rough weather was reported nearby at the time of the cut, but conditions have improved since.

Meanwhile, a second FLAG repair ship continued work on two undersea cables that were cut Jan. 30. They are about 5 miles off the north coast of Egypt, near the port city of Alexandria, and run between Egypt and Palermo, on the Italian island of Sicily.

Repairs at both locations are expected to be done by Sunday.

One of the two Mediterranean cables was owned by FLAG. The other, identified as SEA-ME-WE 4, or South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 cable, was owned by a consortium of 16 international telecommunication companies.

Egypt's telecommunication ministry said no ships were registered near the location at the time.

The cuts slowed businesses, hampered personal Internet usage and caused a flurry of Internet blogger speculation, including mentions of sabotage. Government authorities and FLAG, which stands for Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe, have refused to comment on the speculation.

Reports of additional cuts in Middle East Internet cables could not be confirmed.

FLAG, in a statement posted on the company Web site, said it has surveyed the cable cut off Egypt with remotely operated robots.

The FLAG spokesman said this week that it was laying a new cable underwater between Egypt and France that would be "fully resilient" against cuts such as last week's and "provide a diversity in routes."

He did not say what that resilience entailed, but said it would take months to set up the new cable.

"It is difficult to comment right now on this," said a FLAG spokesman, reached over the telephone. "We are doing our own investigation."

He spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with company policy.

Ovum analyst Matt Walker said undersea cable networks are highly vulnerable to deliberate attack and need enhanced security.

"If ports, railways, gas pipelines and other types of networks are being secured against possible sabotage, we must similarly increase the security of undersea optical highways," Walker said.

The cuts also underlined the threats that Internet disruptions could pose to organizations and businesses worldwide. Large-scale Internet disruptions are rare, but East Asia suffered nearly two months of outages and slow service after an earthquake damaged undersea cables near Taiwan in December 2006.

"The economic cost of losing, or even just slowing down, international communications is extremely high," said Walker. "This risk has to be factored into the calculations behind the investment level and design of undersea optical networks."

FLAG said it has fully restored circuits to some customers and switched others to alternative routes.

State Telecom Egypt said it sealed a $125 million contract Jan. 31 with French-American telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, for a new 1,900-mile-long undersea cable between Egypt and France.

Named TE North, it will link Sidi Kerir on Egypt's northern coast to the French port of Marseilles.

It will have multiple times the bandwidth capacity of existing cables and enable Telecom Egypt to "expand international connectivity, providing diversity from existing cable routes." Egyptian media have said the new Telecom cable would take more than 18 months to complete.

___
Click to expand...


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080208/ap_ ... net_outage
 
here we go again:

Severed cable disrupts web access

Internet and phone communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have been seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed.

It is thought the FLAG FEA, SMW4, and SMW3 lines, near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt, have all been cut.

A fault was also reported on the GO submarine cable 130km off Sicily.

Experts warned that it may be days before the fault is fixed and said the knock on effect could have serious repercussions on regional economies.

Jonathan Wright - director of wholesale products at Interoute which manages part of the optical fibre network - told the BBC that the effects of the break would be felt for many days.

"This will grind economies to a halt for a short space of time," he said "If you look at, say, local financial markets who trade with European and US markets, the speed at which they get live data will be compromised."

"If you think how quickly trades can be placed, if they are suffering from bad latency times, then by the time a trade is placed, the market may well have moved on."

The cause of the break is as yet unknown, although some seismic activity was reported near Malta shortly before the cut was detected.
A second subsea cable to Malta is currently being laid

In a statement released in relation to one of the breaks, France Telecom said: "The causes of the cut, which is located in the Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia, on sections linking Sicily to Egypt, remain unclear."

The French firm said it was sending a ship out to fix the line between Italy and Egypt, although it could take until 31 December to fully repair the line.

The main damage through is to the four submarine cables running across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal.

It is thought that 65% of traffic to India was down, while services to Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan have also been severely affected.

Earlier this year, the same line was damaged in the same area - off the Egyptian coast - although only two lines were snapped then.

"We've lost three out of four lines. If the fourth cable breaks, we're looking at a total blackout in the Middle East," said Mr Wright.

"These three circuits account for 90% of the traffic and we're going to see more international phone calls dropping and a huge degradation in the quality of local internet," he added.

"Normally you would expect to see one major break per cable per year. With four you should have an insurance policy. For this to happen twice in one year, on the same cable, is a serious cause for concern."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7792688.stm
 
I just saw the story on the bbc web site. I bet myself it would appear here!
In the bbc story it says that hours before the cables were cut by TRAWLER NETS !?!? the cable that connects Malta to the internet was damaged by volcanic activity. Co incidentally of course.
Does this happen often? I certainly do not remember seeing articles about it and I do scan the bbc news often, day to day, and catch television & radio news during most days.

I think there is much much more to this story.
 
Just found this somewhat opinionated article on Ars Technica. Surprisingly sparse on technical details, though. I've pruned the in-jokes.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/law.ars ... cables-out


Julian Sanchez

Speaking of wacky conspiracies, Wired's Kim Zetter reports that the four massive undersea fiber optic cables that were recently severed are going to be out of commission for another week or so. ... As with this year's previous severing of multiple major data conduits serving Middle Eastern countries, there's a gentle hum of speculation—largely limited to blogs in the West—about whether the U.S. government might have had a hand in it. And as before, if the respectable press deigns to mention these notions, it's with a condescending chuckle about conspiracy theories and tinfoil hats. ... Now, I have no idea why there have been so many overlapping problems with the fat glass this year, but I find this dismissive attitude pretty weird: Speculation about government action seems at least as reasonable and realistic as speculation about seismic activity or ship anchors.

Just as a general point—obvious but maybe worth making anyway—"conspiracy" is, by definition, what intelligence agencies do. A group of people with lots of resources, colluding in secret to infiltrate other organizations and influence world events—that's not a paranoid theory, that's their job description. If nothing of geostrategic consequence is attributable to conspiracy, we are wasting a lot of tax money.

More specifically, it's also not a wacky theory that the joint NSA/CIA Special Collection Service would very much like to tap these undersea fiber cables. We know this is true, because they've said so. It's in, like, books and newspapers and other information sources not published on an old mimeograph machine in some dude's parents' basement. We know they've found it tremendously difficult—though not impossible—to do so thus far, in part because it's very hard to splice the fiber without at least briefly creating a detectable service interruption. So while, again, I dont know what the source of the current trouble is, we do know that if SCS were ever able to do this thing they've repeatedly stated their urgent desire to do, it would entail a disruption of data flow along these pipes, and a corresponding need to cover that disruption. I'll save everyone the modus ponens: Our intelligence agencies have told us they are hoping to create a temporary disruption just like this. So I'm perplexed that anyone would find it daffy to then suggest that a temporary disruption just like this could be the work of our intelligence services.

Installing a tap wouldn't even be the only good intelligence motive for doing a cut. We ended up joining World War I as the result of a similar disruption by the British, who severed Germany's transatlantic cables. The point was not to cut off German communications, but to force them to resort to either interceptable radio transmissions, or to other underwater telegraph cables that the British already had access to. That's how the British (and eventually the American press) ended up in possession of the Zimmermann Telegram, in which the Kaiser offered to support a Mexican invasion of the U.S. in the event that Wilson entered the war.

So to recap: We know governments have cut undersea cables for intelligence purposes in the past. We know that a goal our own government has acknowledged to be at the top of its intelligence agenda would probably require cutting undersea cables. But only paranoid kooks think "covert government action" is among the plausible explanations for a series of a series of severed cables. Who's out of touch wtih reality here?
Click to expand...
 
Probably nothing in it, but it's an interesting coincidence that this break happened just before the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.
 
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