Cable Sabotage?

[rynner2]

Probably nothing in it, but it's an interesting coincidence that this break happened just before the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip.

Don't Mention The War!!!

(But I have a horrible feeling you may be on to something.... )

 

[rynner2]

Very long article here on undersea fibre-optic cables (internet, for the use of):
Web in trouble? The hidden cables under a Cornish beach feeding the world's internet
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive ... ernet.html

But it's rather over-hyped:

Most people think the internet is beamed around the planet by satellites. In fact, 90 per cent of global internet traffic is carried by a vast cable network, thousands of miles of which snake under the oceans.

The two busiest internet hubs are New York and London, and nine cables link them. But the one pictured above is the Atlantic's newest and most advanced submarine cable system. It is so powerful that it could carry the entire internet content in both directions even if the other eight lines failed simultaneously.

It travels 3,800 miles along the seabed from New York and reaches land at this north Cornish beach, making this remote footnote on Britain's coastline one of the most important and powerful telecommunications hubs in the world.

The precise location is secret for fear of terrorist sabotage, hence the grainy nature of our pictures - they were snapped by one of the cabling team and have never been published before. Live was given this one only when all interested parties agreed the beach is unidentifiable; we know where it is, but we're not telling, for obvious reasons.

This cable may be the best so far, but there are dozens of undersea cables that come ashore in Cornwall, on many beaches in the west of the county. (And we have Goonhilly to cover the satellite stuff too.)

Anyway, for the benefit of any terrorists reading this, here's how to find these cables: go to your local chandlers and buy nautical charts of the coast - all undersea cables are clearly marked! (This is so that ships can avoid them when anchoring...)

No doubt within five minutes of my posting this top secret information, MI5 will break down my door and carry me off to the Tower of London... :shock:

 

[OneWingedBird]

The NWO has finally figured out how to deal with internet 419 scammers? Accident? Natural ocurrence? Who knows?

Cable fault cuts off West Africa

It is not clear what has caused the new disruption.

Large parts of West Africa are struggling to get back online following damage to an undersea cable.

The fault has caused severe problems in Benin, Togo, Niger and Nigeria.

The blackout is thought to have been caused by damage to the SAT-3 cable which runs from Portugal and Spain to South Africa, via West Africa.

Around 70% of Nigeria's bandwidth was cut, causing severe problems for its banking sector, government and mobile phone networks.

"SAT-3 is currently the only fibre optic cable serving West Africa," explained Ladi Okuneye, chief marketing officer of Suburban Telecoms, which provides the majority of Nigeria's bandwidth.

"So all West African countries have to use it."

Companies were being forced to use alternatives - such as using satellite links - to maintain connections to the rest of the world, he said.

Telkom South Africa, one of the shareholders of SAT-3, has not said what caused the problems but said it was aware of "a cable fault on the Benin branch that is being investigated".

The 15,000km (9,300mile) SAT-3 cable lands in eight West African countries as it winds its way between Europe and South Africa.

"The rest of the system is unaffected by this fault," a Telkom South Africa representative said.

Nigeria has been badly hit because around 70% of its bandwidth is routed through neighbouring Benin.

The network, run by Suburban Telecom, was set up to bypass Nigeria's principal telecoms operator Nitel which runs the SAT-3 branch cable which lands in Nigeria.

The SAT-3 consortium is in the process of sending a ship from Cape Town in South Africa to the area to investigate the fault.

Mr Okuneye said that by the time the relevant paperwork was done, it was likely to be "two weeks" before the ship arrived off the coast.

Meanwhile, Benin has been able to reroute its net traffic through neighbouring countries to get back online.

Mr Okuneye said his company was hoping to do the same but said the process would be slower because its bandwidth requirements were so much larger than those of the small republic.

Togo and Niger, which are not part of the SAT-3 consortium, remain offline.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8176014.stm

 

[rynner2]

Ship's anchor slows down East African web connection

East Africa's high-speed internet access has been severely disrupted after a ship dropped its anchor onto fibre-optic cables off Kenya's coast.
The ship was waiting to enter Mombasa - one of Africa's busiest ports - when it anchored in a restricted area.
It could take up to 14 days to repair, cable owners The East African Marine Systems (Teams) told the BBC.
This is one of three undersea cables to have arrived in the region since 2009, delivering faster internet access.

Cables run by Teams, which is partly owned by the Kenyan government, and Eassy - a consortium of telecoms companies - were damaged at the weekend.
Internet service providers and mobile phone operators have re-routed to the Seacom link - which was not damaged by the dropped anchor.
But the companies have only bought a small amount of bandwidth because of cost.

The BBC's Noel Mwakugu in Nairobi says as a result internet connections are expected to slow down by 20% in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Sudan's capital, Juba.

Seacom - the first to be up and running - links East Africa to Europe, India and South Africa.
Teams links the region to the United Arab Emirates - and Eassy, which went live in July 2010, links countries along the East African coast.

Correspondents say that since then, the increased bandwidth has given a boost to mobile services and the burgeoning tech scene of home-grown developers, programmers and designers in Kenya.
In the first 12 months after the cables arrived, the number of internet subscriptions in the country jumped from 1.8m to 3.1m.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17179544

 

[rynner2]

Undersea internet cables off Egypt disrupted as navy arrests three
Coastguard arrests three men off Alexandria, claiming they were cutting cable known as SE-WE-ME-4, amid disruptions to internet connectivity in Egypt and beyond
Charles Arthur, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 March 2013 22.00 GMT

Egyptian naval forces have arrested three scuba divers who they say were trying to cut an undersea cable off the port of Alexandria that provides one-third of all internet capacity between Europe and Egypt.

However the navy who captured the men had no explanation of who they were working for, where they came from or why they would want to disrupt Egypt's internet communications.

Pictures on the Egyptian coastguard's Facebook page showed the three men tied up on board a boat, and alleged they were cutting an undersea cable partly owned by Telecom Egypt, the country's main communications organisation. The men had been on a fishing boat, said a statement by Colonel Ahmed Mohammed Ali, but offered no other details.

The world internet submarine cable map by the telecoms analysis company Telegeography shows that six cables come aground at Alexandria. The men were allegedly trying to cut the SeaWeMe-4 (South-east Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) cable, able to carry a third of the traffic between Europe and Egypt. Covering a distance of 20,000km, it enters the sea at Marseilles and makes landfall in Annaba in 15 other countries including Sri Lanka, Thailand and India.

[Map showing the location of Sea-We-Me-4 cable. Source: Telegeography]

It is one of eight undersea cables between Europe and Egypt - so cutting one would not immediately destroy connectivity, but would lead to congestion and slowdowns.

However reports earlier this week suggested cable breaks on four cables around Egypt - IMEWE (linking France to India via Alexandria and Suez), TE-North (owned by Telecom Egypt), EIG (Europe India Gateway), and SEA-ME-WE-3, a partner to the cable that was allegedly attacked. That would cause significant [?!]

Internet services in Egypt have been suffering disruption since 22 March, apparently after a ship's anchor cut through another cable.

Worldwide, undersea cables carry 99% of intercontinental internet traffic, and form complex networks across the world. Jim Cowie, co-founder and chief technology officer at the network security company Renesys, said that internet connections had been slowed down as far away as Pakistan and India.

Internet connectivity in the Middle East was seriously affected in 2008 when ships' anchors cut through cables, which cut capacity between Europe and Africa by up to 70%.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... le-arrests

 

[OneWingedBird]

Next it will be sharks with fecking lasers...

The Global Internet Is Being Attacked by Sharks, Google Confirms

The Internet is a series of tubes ... that are sometimes attacked by sharks.

Reports of sharks biting the undersea cables that zip our data around the world date to at least 1987. That’s when the New York Times reported that “sharks have shown an inexplicable taste for the new fiber-optic cables that are being strung along the ocean floor linking the United States, Europe, and Japan.”

Now it seems Google is biting back. According to Network World’s Brandon Butler, a Google product manager explained at a recent event that the company has taken to wrapping its trans-Pacific underwater cables in Kevlar to guard against shark bites.

Google confirmed to me that its newest generation of undersea cables comes wrapped in special protective yarn and steel wire armor—and that the goal is to protect against cable cuts, including possible shark attacks. Here's an old video of what that looks like, in case you were wondering:

To digress for a moment, it’s not clear that the coating Google is using is actually Kevlar, per se. A little searching on Google’s own handy website reveals that the company actually holds a patent of its own for a material called “polyethylene protective yarn.”

It makes sense that Google would be investing in better ways to protect transoceanic data cables. Over the years there have been several instances in which damage to undersea lines resulted in widespread disruptions of Internet service. Dependable network infrastructure has become increasingly essential to Google’s business, which relies on ultra-fast transmissions of information between its data centers around the world.

Damage to undersea cables can result in widespread outages.

On Monday, Google infrastructure czar Urs Holzle announced that the company is helping to build a new trans-Pacific cable system connecting the United States to Japan at speeds of up to 60 Tbps. “That’s about 10 million times faster than your cable modem,” Holzle noted. Google’s partners on the project include China Mobile and SingTel.

Why are sharks attracted to undersea data cables? Unclear. Several outlets have pointed out that sharks can sense electromagnetic fields, so perhaps they’re attracted by the current. Alternatively, a shark expert from Cal State-Long Beach suggested to Wired, they may just be curious. Anyone with a dual expertise in chondrichthyan behavior and electrical engineering is warmly invited to offer a more compelling explanation in the comments below.

Regardless, it’s clear their powerful bites can cause real problems. Popular Science dredged up a 2009 UN Environmental Program report that includes the following rather convincing background information:

Fish, including sharks, have a long history of biting cables as identified from teeth embedded in cable sheathings. Barracuda, shallow- and deep-water sharks and others have been identified as causes of cable failure. Bites tend to penetrate the cable insulation, allowing the power conductor to ground with seawater.

Slate

 

[rynner2]

Next it will be sharks with fecking lasers...

The Global Internet Is Being Attacked by Sharks, Google Confirms

Reports of sharks biting the undersea cables that zip our data around the world date to at least 1987.

Slate

I posted on this story on Friday, on the March of Technology!

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 31#1445731

I suppose that's another fecking thread that nobody reads!

I'm casting my pearls before swine!

 

[Mythopoeika]

Next it will be sharks with fecking lasers...

The Global Internet Is Being Attacked by Sharks, Google Confirms

Reports of sharks biting the undersea cables that zip our data around the world date to at least 1987.

Slate

I posted on this story on Friday, on the March of Technology!

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 31#1445731

I suppose that's another fecking thread that nobody reads!

I'm casting my pearls before swine!

Relax! I read it.

I just don't read 'The Lone Coastguard' thread.

 

[Victory]

The Sun newspaper speculates that the recent power cable break that caused loss of communications to the Shetland Islands might have been sabotage by the Russians?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20194911/mystery-severed-shetland-undersea-cables-russia/

 

[hunck]

The Sun newspaper speculates that the recent power cable break that caused loss of communications to the Shetland Islands might have been sabotage by the Russians?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20194911/mystery-severed-shetland-undersea-cables-russia/

Hmmm….The Sun - I’ve read it’s more likely a fishing boat has trawled/dredged the cable.

I wouldn’t put anything past the Russians however, but targeting the Shetlands seems a bit minor & petty. I think comms have already been reinstated..

 

[ramonmercado]

The Cable that Changed the World: Cable sabotage isn't a new form of warfare, the Royal Navy cut Germany's Trans-Atlantic cable in 1914. I found out this fact in the fascinating documentary The Cable that Changed the World. It tells the epic story of the first transatlantic communications cable laid between Valentia Island, County Kerry, and Newfoundland, Canada 165 years ago. It was grueling task, many failures and and the US Civil War caused a hiatus before things were properly up and running. Lord Kelvin was involved in the project and finally tweaked issues about signal strength. In the early days it cost £1 a word to send a telegraph and the average wage of operators and engineers was the same as a bank manager. Narrated by Jessie Buckley and produced by RTÉ in partnership with University College Cork and Tyrone Productions, ‘The Cable that Changed the World’ features graphics, historical reconstructions and rarely seen archive footage. It's available on the RTE player. Written and Directed by Ruán Magan. 8/10

It will be broadcast on BBC1 on Wednesday, 14 August, 2024,10:40 pm -11:40 pm.

 

[Floyd]

rynner2 mentions February and December 2008 in his posts, which is odd, because I was in Egypt in Summer 2008 when a cable was damaged (or so I remember, anyway).

I was in a touristy part and people were running around like headless chickens, not knowing what to do without access to facetube etc.

I, on the other hand, simply sat down, drank some beer and looked at the sea.

(Of course, I may have totally got my dates mixed up due to the aforementioned Egyptian beer).

 

[Floyd]

Sweden seizes ship after suspected Baltic Sea cable sabotage​

Swedish authorities have seized a ship suspected of damaging a data cable running under the Baltic Sea to Latvia.

The Vezhen - a Maltese-flagged ship - is now anchored outside the Swedish port of Karlskrona.
Prosecutors said an initial investigation pointed to sabotage. An inquiry has been launched involving Sweden's police, military and coast guard.

Images shared by Swedish media showed that the ship appeared to have a damaged anchor.

However, on Monday, Bulgarian shipping company Navigation Maritime Bulgare, which listed the Vezhen among its fleet, said one of the ship's anchors dropped to sea floor in high winds and that there was no malicious intent.

On Sunday, Latvia's military reported that three ships were seen in the area where the damage occurred.

Less than a month ago, Nato launched a new mission in the Baltic Sea in response to repeated attacks on underwater power and telecom cables – some of which have been blamed on Russia.

Finnish police said late last year they were investigating whether a Russian ship was involved in the sabotage of an electricity cable running between Finland and Estonia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqx9g5wwp89o

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Looks like Russia is ramping up its international sabotage programme.

 

[ramonmercado]

Looks like Russia is ramping up its international sabotage programme.

Looks like there;s a lot of hot air being vented over and under the Baltic Sea.

Swedish prosecutors have released a vessel belonging to a Bulgarian shipping company after ruling out initial suspicions that sabotage caused damage to an undersea fibre-optic cable between Sweden and Latvia.

Damage to the cable running between the Latvian city of Ventspils and the Swedish island of Gotland was detected on January 26, and the vessel was seized by Swedish authorities later that day.

This was one of a string of recent incidents of ruptured undersea cables that have heightened fears of Russian sabotage and spying in the region.

An investigation into a possible role of the Vezhen ship “has clarified that it is not a case of gross sabotage”, the prosecutors said in a statement.

Senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said the ship did cause the cable break, but after crime scene investigations, analyses of confiscated equipment, and the collection of testimonies, “we can say with certainty that this is not a case of sabotage”.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/s...ltic-undersea-data-cable-rupture-1725668.html

 

[Floyd]

Baltic states begin historic switch away from Russian power grid​

More than three decades after leaving the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have begun to unplug from Russia's electricity grid and join the EU's network.

The two-day process began on Saturday morning, with residents told to charge their devices, stock up on food and water, and prepare as if severe weather is forecast.

Many have been told not to use lifts - while in some areas traffic lights will be turned off.

A giant, specially-made clock, will count down the final seconds before the transition at a landmark ceremony in Lithuania's capital on Sunday, attended by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen.

The three nations will then officially transition away from the power grid which has connected them to Russia since the years after World War Two.

The so-called Brell grid - which stands for Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - is controlled almost entirely by Moscow and has long been seen as a vulnerability for the former Soviet republics, which are now Nato members.

After disconnecting from it on Saturday morning, the three countries have now entered "isolated mode" - surviving only on their own power - before integrating into the European grid via Poland on Sunday.

"When the Baltic States joined the EU and Nato, everybody talked about them being an energy island that was still dependent on that joint electricity network with Belarus and Russia," said Smith. "That's been completely broken now."

Tensions between the Baltic States and Russia, which share a combined 543 mile-long (874km) border, have soared since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Since then, a spate of suspected sabotage incidents involving electricity cables and pipelines in the Baltic Sea have prompted fears that Moscow could retaliate against the shift towards EU energy.


Shortly after they notified Russia of their decision to withdraw from Brell in August 2024, disinformation campaigns emerged on social media falsely warning of supply failures and soaring prices if the countries were to leave the joint power grid.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c627d55v07go

 

[Floyd]

Subsea fibre cables can 'listen out' for sabotage​

Subsea cables are critical to the operation of the internet

The diver had found the fibre optic cable lying on the seabed of the North Sea. He swam closer, until it was near enough to touch.

He reached out his hand. But someone could tell he was lurking there. Someone was watching.

"He stops and just touches the cable lightly, you clearly see the signal," says Daniel Gerwig, global sales manager at AP Sensing, a German technology company. "The acoustic energy which travels through the fibre is basically disturbing our signal. We can measure this disturbance."

Multiple reports of damaged telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea have raised alarm in recent months.

So important are these cables, which carry huge volumes of internet data between countries, that Nato has launched a mission called "Baltic Sentry", to patrol the Baltic Sea with aircraft, warships and drones.

The EU is also stepping up measures, external to monitor and protect cables.

Despite those efforts the authorities cannot be everywhere at once.

So, some companies are trying to monitor what's going on in the vicinity of any cable – by using fibre optic signals to listen out for surreptitious underwater drones, or hostile vessels dragging their anchors along the seabed.

It was during tests of AP Sensing's system last year – not a real attempt at sabotage – that the diver patted his hand on the subsea cable watched over by the firm.

The company also deployed ships, drones and divers with sea scooters to find out how accurately its software could pick out and identify the presence of these vehicles.



Optics11's fibre optic listening technology can be deployed on military submarines, Mr Heiden adds, and he says the firm is soon to begin testing a monitoring cable installed somewhere on the floor of the Baltic Sea.

Ms Burdette also notes that, even when a cable is severed, telecommunications networks typically have significant redundancy built into them, meaning that end users often don't notice much disruption to their service.

Still, the visible military response to cable breakages in the Baltic Sea is welcome, says Thorsten Benner, co-founder and director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank: "It's good that Nato and the European Union have woken up."

And while cable sensing technology might be useful, its efficacy in terms of preventing damage rests on how quickly coastguard or military patrols could receive alerts about potential sabotage and react. "The question is how quickly you could establish contact with a vessel," Says Benner.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn52rglxr62o