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Satellite IDs Ships That Cut Cables

Posted by kdawson on Mon Apr 14, 2008 01:25 AM
from the busted-from-the-sky dept.
Networking The Internet
1sockchuck writes "Undersea telecom cable operator Reliance Globalcom was able to use satellite images to identify two ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place, damaging submarine cables and knocking Middle East nations offline in early February. The company used satellite images to study the movements of the two ships, and shared the information with officials in Dubai, who impounded the two vessels. The NANOG list has a discussion of where Reliance might have obtained satellite images to provide that level of detail. Google News links more coverage of the developments."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Hardware: Third Undersea Cable Cut 655 comments
Many readers are reporting that another undersea fiber optic cable has been cut, apparently caused by another wayward anchor. It looks like Iran has completely lost Internet connectivity."
[+] Fourth Undersea Cable Taken Offline In Less Than a Week 499 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Another undersea cable was taken offline on Friday, this one connecting Qatar and UAE. 'The [outage] caused major problems for internet users in Qatar over the weekend, but Qtel's loss of capacity has been kept below 40% thanks to what the telecom said was a large number of alternative routes for transmission. It is not yet clear how badly telecom and internet services have been affected in the UAE.' In related news it's been confirmed that the two cables near Egypt were not cut by ship anchors." Update: 02/04 07:13 GMT by Z : A commenter notes that despite the language in the article indicated a break or malfunction, the cable wasn't cut. It was taken offline due to power issues.
[+] IT: Fifth Cable Cut To Middle East 676 comments
You may have noticed a number of stories recently about undersea cables getting cut around the world. Apparently the total is now up to 5, but the scariest part of this is that Iran is now offline. You can also read Schneier's comments on this coincidence. Update: 02/06 17:42 GMT by Z : As a commenter notes, though the country of Iran is obviously experiencing some networking difficulties, it is not offline.
Submission: Busted From Space: Satellite IDs Cable Cut Ships by 1sockchuck (826398)
[+] Mediterranean Undersea Cables Cut, Again 329 comments
miller60 writes "Three undersea cables in the Mediterranean Sea have failed within minutes of each other in an incident that is eerily similar to a series of cable cuts in the region in early 2008. The cable cuts are already causing serious service problems in the Middle East and Asia. See coverage at the Internet Storm Center, Data Center Knowledge and Bloomberg. The February 2008 cable cuts triggered rampant speculation about sabotage, but were later attributed to ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place."
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Satellite IDs Ships That Cut Cables 50 Comments More /

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  • Kinda odd that they'd have taken a picture clear enough to ID ships of that remote part of the world the same day, or possibly even within a couple hours of the ships being there. And two cables cut by unrelated ships within such a short timeframe? This is soooo conspiracy inducing. I think it was all one big test to see what would happen if someone cut the cables. At least now we know all we have to do is drag and anchor to disrupt the communications infrastructure of entire countries. And we thought

    • Re:weird, huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive (622387) on Monday April 14 2008, @01:49AM (#23060222) Homepage Journal

      And two cables cut by unrelated ships within such a short timeframe? This is soooo conspiracy inducing.
      Is it? have you even checked the likelihood of that happening? As a matter of fact, in an average year, around 50 undersea cables are broken. Given that there are 365 days in a year, what is the chance of two breaking in 'such a short timeframe?' It doesn't happen every day, but it's not really out of the ordinary. Check these things before you try to dream up a conspiracy.

      Seriously, when it comes to technology slashdot is collectively pretty intelligent; but when it comes to paranoia and politics, slashdot collectively drops down to the IQ of a two year old.

      • Re:weird, huh? (Score:5, Funny)

        by dunezone (899268) on Monday April 14 2008, @02:49AM (#23060474) Journal
        Well you finally solved it...

        1. Create Paranoia on Slashdot
        2. Make and Sell Tinfoil Hats
        3. Profit

      • As a matter of fact, in an average year, around 50 undersea cables are broken.
        I'd like to know more about this

        • Re:Cite your sources (Score:5, Informative)

          by WaltBusterkeys (1156557) * on Monday April 14 2008, @03:16AM (#23060594)
          Your wish is the community's command. Here's ZDNet on cable statistics [zdnet.co.uk]

          According to one paper presented at last year's SubOptic conference in Baltimore, Maryland, rates of cable fault in water over 1km deep are less than 0.1 faults per year, per 1,000km of installed cable. This implies around 50 deepwater repairs per year, globally. At depths of less than 1km, failure rates hovered between 1-2 per 1,000km in the 1990s, but have been steadily declining. According to a SubOptic 2004 paper, the rate in 2003 was 0.2 fault per 1,000km.

          In other words, that's 50 deep-water cuts per year, in addition to some more shallow-water cuts per year.

          Another expert puts it this way [zdnet.com]:

          He said there are approximately 50 cable cuts a year, 65 percent of which are due to fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets and 18 percent of which are due to shipsâ(TM) anchors. âoeThey donâ(TM)t even track terrorism,â he said. âoeCable cuts are a routine part of the business.â

          These statistics don't include power failures and other problems with cables that arise from the land side; if a switching station goes down then the cable goes dark, even if it's still intact.

          • Re:Cite your sources (Score:5, Funny)

            by HoppQ (29469) on Monday April 14 2008, @07:16AM (#23061636) Homepage

            He said there are approximately 50 cable cuts a year, 65 percent of which are due to fishing trawlers dragging heavy nets and 18 percent of which are due to shipsâ(TM) anchors. âoeThey donâ(TM)t even track terrorism,â he said. âoeCable cuts are a routine part of the business.â
            A møøse once bit my sister's cable...

      • Re:weird, huh? (Score:4, Informative)

        by CustomDesigned (250089) on Monday April 14 2008, @06:24AM (#23061368) Homepage Journal
        Applying the standard birthday paradox math, the probability that at least 2 of 50 cuts in a year fall on the same day is 97%. So the weird part is why these particular same day cuts were news. The odds of two cuts on the same day affecting the same country group are lower. It is harder to quantify "country group", however.
    • When cables get cut, wouldn't you, as a service provider, want to know what ships are in the area? Might not intelligence services take a gander with their satellites to see what is happening in the area?

  • I hate to say I told you so... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Grym (725290) * <{anprice2} {at} {vt.edu}> on Monday April 14 2008, @01:34AM (#23060154)

    And here [slashdot.org] I was being made to feel like a regular fool for not being 99.99% positive (as "proven" by Bayes' theorem, no less) that the U.S. government (or others) were intentionally disrupting internet services to presumably stop the Iranian Oil Bourse [wikipedia.org].

    I'll never understand how a technical-minded group such as slashdot that prides itself on objectivity and generally mocks blind faith can, at times, get so easily carried away.

    -Grym

    • I'll never understand how a technical-minded group such as slashdot that prides itself on objectivity and generally mocks blind faith can, at times, get so easily carried away.
      Remember the child-hood comment "takes one to know one" when someone called you an idiot? Same idea, except most of us aren't willing to admit it.
    • Whatever my spam filters catch must be true. No matter the evidence presented, I know my penis will grow and Mr. Nabuti will give me half of his no-longer frozen assets.
    • Well if you want to talk objectivity, then how do a few pixels prove anything to you?

  • Jerks... (Score:3, Funny)

    by stendec (582696) on Monday April 14 2008, @01:35AM (#23060162)
    The cable was damaged because of jerks and force of the ship, the official said.

    JERKS!!!!

  • Some more details coming in now.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by superash (1045796) on Monday April 14 2008, @01:41AM (#23060186)
    Indian officer held for undersea cable damage

    http://www.ibnlive.com/news/indian-officer-held-for-undersea-cable-damage/63234-3.html
  • I just refuse to believe in any story which does not has the theme of international conspiracy in it. This is /. There can be no man made mistakes!!

  • Somehow it must be Israel's fault (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TheMiddleRoad (1153113) on Monday April 14 2008, @01:45AM (#23060214)
    The conspiracy nuts are pitiful. I used to think they were all on the right, but now I know there are just as many if not more on the left.
    • There are more conspiracy nuts on the opposite of whichever side has systematically abused their power for sinister gain, dissolving long-held protections, destroying systems and bucking customs for their own confusing purposes in direct opposition to the obvious right thing to do, or the interests of their employers (us). When they do it openly in many different areas without explaining themselves, and there is a well-funded, small group of idealogues behind them, who insist on an absolute right to their own secrecy(they claim the entire Executive Branch may choose whether to testify to court or Congress), and secrets keep leaking out (like suspending the 4th amendment in 2002) from disgruntled ex-employees...

      It's very difficult to have ANY sort of imagination, not just the tin-foil hat kind, and avoid wondering about at least the possibility that the current administration is involved in several large, sinister conspiracies which the public doesn't know about yet. We have literally dozens available that are already in the public sphere.

      This is why 9/11 conspiracy nuts will never die, even if they can't convince skeptics like myself who pick at the technical details. The thing their stories agree on - that those presently in power either caused or could have prevented the attack - fits like a glove into what we know about the administration's goals pre-attack and their actions post-attack. If the Democrats used an attack(cause unknown) to drastically change the country, get rid of all the constitutional rights you hold dear, fulfill a bullet point in preexisting plan to grow the military industrial complex, wage an aggressive war longer than WW2, set us up for at least the possibility of the destruction of our democracy, steal elections, and generally act like a bad Disney villain, there would be a hell of a lot of Republican conspiracy theorists after 8 years as well.

      Your political beliefs should not inform your reasoning, it should be the other way around.

    • Re:Somehow it must be Israel's fault (Score:4, Insightful)

      by moxley (895517) on Monday April 14 2008, @06:46AM (#23061470)
      Well I will tell you this much - it's only a true fool who believes that "conspiracies never happen" and everything govt/intel says is true.

      Indeed, conspiracies happen all of the time - any time more than one person gets together with another and plans to do something. It's also one of the msot common criminal charges in the US.

      I still think that the odds of how this happen with so many cables in such a short time span is suspicious. Does that mean it wasn't an accident? Anything is possible, but some things are more likely than others and keep in mind that those groups or agencies who do these sort of things specialize in damage control, cover stories, and manipulation of the public.

      All I am saying is that you really don't know, and for people to act like it's "case closed no questions remain" over this press release is kind of short sighted. It really doesn't change a thing. If this was done intentionally there would be a cover, likely a couple of layers of cover.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by CmdrGravy (645153)
        True but as someone once said you don't want to keep such an open mind that your brain falls out which would appear to be a necessary pre-condition for the vast majority of popular conspiracies.

  • Nanog Thread (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rufus211 (221883) <rufus-slashdot&hackish,org> on Monday April 14 2008, @02:11AM (#23060318) Homepage
    GMane is a *far* easier interface to read than whatever nanog's official archive uses:
    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.operators.nanog/54752 [gmane.org]
  • Some how i know this is george bush's fault. i don't care what the evidence says!
  • It's obvious, the NSA let them have them because they realised people guessed it was them that cut the cables so to pretend it wasn't they did a double bluff and gave out the images to say "look we're the good guys here!"

    It's all part of the coverup!

    Next week on Internet Conspiracies.com we bring you details of the sharks with laser beams that cut the other cables.

    Seriously though, where did they get satellite imagery capable of seeing ships? well erm, seeing as you can just about pick out people on Google

  • Images might not have to be that sharp. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by F34nor (321515) * on Monday April 14 2008, @05:48AM (#23061226)
    If you take the layout of the deck and then compare it to ships in port at known times and locations it would be easy to ident. ships even with a meter resolution. The color and organization of shipping containers has got to be nearly as good a fingerprint even form space.

  • cutting on the cheap (Score:3, Interesting)

    by v1 (525388) on Monday April 14 2008, @07:18AM (#23061656) Homepage Journal
    The one ship that did get released only paid 60 grand to get out of hock. I can't imagine that covering the cost to repair the cable, let alone the loss incurred by the cutting of the cable.

    I wonder how much that cost the internet providers... one would assume that whoever they leased the pipe from had to be given an alternate service, paid for by the company owning the cables that were cut, since they were likely under contract to provide the service. That can't have been cheap. Unless they used another line they owned, but still you'd think they would have to compensate their customers somewhat for the severe degradation of services and the downtime?

    • Man, are those guys good, or what? (Score:5, Funny)

      by capnkr (1153623) on Monday April 14 2008, @01:39AM (#23060178)
      Just think - the CIA/NSA/current administration somehow managed to purchase foreign-flagged ships of the line from arguably 'enemy' countries, hiding said purchases from both those governments, our own goverment, and the rest of the world, and then they somehow managed to get them to drop their anchors in just the places needed to cut the proper cables lying submerged on the seabed. They pulled all this off successfully - until YOU managed to figure it out.

      Brilliant!

      Huh? Occam who???

    • Thank you Mr. Expert (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheMiddleRoad (1153113) on Monday April 14 2008, @01:55AM (#23060256)
      Is it your years in the CIA or your years in the conspiracy nutjob section of the bookstore that make you so knowledgeable?

    • Re:Coverup (Score:4, Informative)

      by WaltBusterkeys (1156557) * on Monday April 14 2008, @02:14AM (#23060332)
      It was Iraq and North Korea!

      Except the second ship was South Korean, our ally. North Korea only has a handful of blue water ships. South Korea, electronics manufacturer to the world, has many.

      When in doubt, "Korean" mean South Korean.

      • Re:Coverup (Score:5, Informative)

        by WaltBusterkeys (1156557) * on Monday April 14 2008, @03:48AM (#23060740)
        I actually retract my statement above. It's not clear whether the ship is North or South Korean at this point. The only entry in the international ship registry [e-ships.net] matching an MT Ann ("Merchant Transport Ann") is a North Korean vessel.

        5105 7320069 ANN HMZE6 Oil Products Tanker 22600 1973 12 Korea (North)

        However, there's an "Ankuk" on the same list that's a South Korean ship that would also match:

        5090 8130033 ANKUK NO. 7 Oil Products Tanker 2474 1982 06 Korea (South)

        I'm no expert on ships, so it's possible I'm looking in all the wrong places. Or that there's a translation problem from Korean to English. Maybe somebody else has a better lead?
        • You got TWO +5 Informatives by saying something and then retracting it? Oh wise one! Please teach me your ways.

    • I am sorry, (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What interest does the US have in accusing its own puppet government (Iraq) and one of it's best allies, South Korea, of sabotage?

      Oh, that's right, none. STFU, troll.
    • It is so incredibly easy to cut cables and once someone does it, everybody will and everybody loses.

      MAD: Mutually Assured Disconnection

      Hence, nobody does it.

      A cable gets cut by accident every week of the year. So this time there were a couple grouped a bit closer both in time and geography. Big Deal.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tumbleweedsi (904869)
      The last report I saw into this suggested that it was the US because Iraq and Israel (the two main friends of the US in that region) were not impacted. This could either have been a test run for something else or a crafty excuse to re-route traffic from that region via the US (as actually happened) where the authorities have more chance of snooping on it. The reports into this were also pretty specific that sat data that was analysed at the time showed no vessels in the area of the break for 12 hours either
      • oh geez not this shit again.

        The odds that the moon landing was faked are about as high as my not submitting this post. And the odds that the American government is successfully running a conspiracy are about as high as the odds that the American government can run anything else competently.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The odds that the moon landing was faked are about as high as my not submitting this post.
          what post?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by OldeTimeGeek (725417)
            Wouldn't the dirt/dust also float a little bit?

            As I remember, it did. But I would think (and, no, I haven't done the math) that the lack of air resistance on the light dust/dirt might cause it to fall a bit faster than one would expect to due to lesser gravity.

    • Not all ships owned by Korean companies are registered as Korean flag vessels.

      Look at US cruise lines -- most US-owned cruise liners are registered in other countries (usually the Bahamas).

      See flag of convenience [wikipedia.org] for a list of countries that are the most frequent places to register vessels. There are Korean-owned vessels registered in Belize, Cambodia, Cyprus ... etc.

    • All we need is a photon beam that can cut cables instead of relying on ships.

      And a Selachimorph to mount it on.

      Sorry, a fricking Selachimorph to mount it on.

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