Mediterranean Undersea Cables Cut, Again 329
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."
Reroute? Hmmmmm.... (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA:
Gee, why would someone want business internet traffic rerouted through the US?
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't buy the original explanation that 2 ships were able to cut 5 cables in different locations.
One of the cables near Egypt that was cut had video footage and it showed no ships at the time it was cut.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/02/04/egypt-ships-didnt-cut-internet-cable/ [datacenterknowledge.com]
Yeah⦠(Score:2, Interesting)
Someone managed to drop the anchor in the wrong place several times year ago, and now I'm confident that some big-jawed sea monster gnawed them. Nobody would be foolish enough to assume that the cables were cut intentionally, right?
So the best explanation we got so far is obviously wrong. Isn't there any other source of information about this, leaked documents, analysis based on the ship identification, pure speculations... Hell, even articles from conspiracy nuts would be better than what we already have.
The news that someone cut cables again struck me, but do we have any information about who did it and why? I'm quite more interested in this, than what it is linked.
There was a speculation about this here, our obvious options include sabotage and installation of spying equipment. But somehow I can't buy any of them.
So, whose ships were these?
Cross Country Links? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article claims that India is "82% Out of serivce". Something that I've always been curious about through is smaller inter country links and Internet connectivity. That is to say, if minor yet not insignificant links exist between Indian Telecoms and Pakistani Telecoms, and also between Pakistani Telecoms and Iranian Telecoms, and so on and so on... Then is it still possible due to the capabilities of packet switching, that computers in India could still communicate with ones in the US via a very, very long and convoluted path through many, many local connections?
Would any Slashdot Internet guru's have insight into the capabilities of the global packet switched network in the event of major single data connections going down? Is the network really as robust as we think?
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the alternative explantions were even more far-feteched, like the idea that the US would need to cut a cable in order to tap it (we have nuclear submarines built specifically for the purpose of not tipping our hand when we tap undersea cables).
As the old saying goes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Need I remind everyone what a third incidence would point to?
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:4, Interesting)
what about the US just wanting to cut the cables to fuck over iran? that seams both possible and feasible
Easy enough to fake, it seems (Score:3, Interesting)
Apart from the fact that you'd have to have an unknown boat in foreign waters, I'd think it would be pretty easy to "fake a mistake". Drop your anchor in a place you know where the cable is, drag for about a quarter mile, wait for your contact monitoring the connection to send you a nondescript signal that it's down, then pick up and make a bead for international waters.
So how does a nation without a sophisticated coast guard figure this out? Is any western country going to care (that is, the ones who aren't in on it, if it is espionage?
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:5, Interesting)
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes
If we have proof that there were no ships there at the time, then ships were not the cause. If the only remaining explanation is sabotage, then it was sabotage.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:3, Interesting)
We have no motivaiton to mess with Iran *in that way* right now. At current oil prices the current Iranian government is certain to collapse. The best thing we can possibly do right now to mess with Iran is to make it as hard as possible for the current Iranian goverment to distract it people from internal problems by giving them an external enemy.
Iran's demographics favor a serious culture shift soon. The ruling theocracy has dealt with this repeatedly in the past by going to war, often wars so nasty that they killed off the majority of males in their 20s, directly changing the demographics. Iran can't attack Iraq right now, and is dependent on the governemnt handing out money like crazy. That's great when oil's $100/bbl, but totally unsustainable when oil's $50/bbl (I think Iran needs $85 to break enev on internal spending).
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with that. One of the more interesting and plausible theories at the time was that it was a sign that we may soon invade Iran (they were the worst cut-off from the internet at the time). Thankfully that wasn't true.
Seymour Hersh recently talked about Cheney wanting to dress up as Iranians and have them shoot at US ships.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/ [thinkprogress.org]
I can't say the real reason for them being cut, but the official story doesn't add up. The article explaining the two ships is interesting. The information on those ships is from Reliance Communications, which is very suspect.
Here is a press release from Reliance on December 21, 2007: [indiatimes.com]
This step also paves the way to extend Yipes' services worldwide over FLAG's global next-generation network, creating significantly more value from our undersea network assets in the strongholds of India, the Middle East, and East Asia," said RCOM Global Business president Punit Garg.
It seems like this could be a case of industrial sabotage. I admit that I have no proof, but its a possibility. Extorting two ships in Dubai doesn't seem like it would be tough to do for a large company such as this.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:5, Interesting)
We do? Since when? You mean subs can go past 20,000 and not crush like eggs? We can't even retrieve the cables, we just lay new ones....
There's no need to go that deep, if your sub is stealthy enough to work undetected in water of a more reasonable depth. Operation Ivy Bells [specialoperations.com] is an example from long enough ago that's it's public knowledge. I suspect the US would still be keeping even that secret, but Russia put the wiretap device on display in a public museum (the old KGB headquarters), so the cat was pretty much out of the bag.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a program on the History Channel several years back on a research effort to learn more about the Titanic disaster (at least, I think it was the Titanic) by studying the wreck closely. The US Navy volunteered their "research" nuclear sub to help out with the project. The researchers weren't quite sure where the wreck was on the ocean floor, but the Navy suggested that they have special-purpose sonar that's really, really good at finding lengths of cable, and would that help?
I remember laughing about that at the time. The program made no mention of *why* the sub would have that particular technology developed to levels unheard of by civilian shipwreck-finding experts.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:3, Interesting)
The world can be far-fetched sometimes.
My current favourite is the far-fetched and still unexplained (good luck gettng Israel to own up to this one):
Israeli Art Student Mystery [salon.com], when at the beginning of 2001, the American DEA were flooded by large numbers of fake Israeli art students.
They were Israeli but not really students, some carried classified information on USA agents and locations, some had large denominations of cash or evidence of having moved large denominations around (up to $180,000 over a couple of months in one case), many stayed in areas that were later found to be spots for the Arab terrorists of 9/11.
It is a bizarre case, and nobody has any idea why Israel did it. You should read the story - it's fascinating :)
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:4, Interesting)
Since when does the government inform the public of their newest technology?
THEY DON'T!
We'll find out about it after they have something better. And the cycle repeats.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:5, Interesting)
Even though it never got reported on, the cable cuts were a serious nuisance to American troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time too.
This is probably no different.
Installing Eavesdropping Equipment (Score:4, Interesting)
During the cold war the US used induction to tap undersea wire cables running to the Soviet Union. This worked great because the device was undetectable. It didn't require severing the cable, instead the listening device was simply placed next to the cable.
Unfortunately for the US spy outfits, fiber optics can't be tapped the same way, induction doesn't work. To tap a fiber optics cable, you have to literally cut it and insert the new device.
Off the top of my head, I'd say the best way to tap a fiber optics line would be to cut it once, move to another location, cut it again, and install the monitoring equipment at the second location before the first cut is patched. By the time the first cut is patched the equipment will be functioning pretty much undetectably.
Why not tap it when the fiber optic cables come ashore? Besides the political problems of trying to get host countries to agree, an above water tap would be much easier to detect during and after installation.
I'm sure someone will point out that fiber optics can't be tapped, just like encryption can't be broken, and Windows doesn't have a backdoor for the NSA.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:4, Interesting)
Their problems are getting worse over time. With sufficiently high oil prices, the government suddenly had a future. This returns it to significant (and growing) instability.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:2, Interesting)
It's also interesting that the story, that they were searching for the Titanic, was just a cover for the fact that they were actually searching for a sunken sub. Russian if I remember. Those words are from the leader of the expeditions own mouth, after the security on the operation expired a year or so back.
Re:Installing Eavesdropping Equipment (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I'm pretty sure the problem with that plan is that you *can* tap fiber-optics. Without cutting an entire undersea cable to do it. You would have to cut into the cable, but I'm sure a good submarine (it's the US you're thinking is tapping, right?) could seal a section of cable off from the ocean and drain the water out, if that was its mission. From that point it'd just be sitting there a while until you managed to install whatever tap it is you want, seal the thing off, and leave.
Besides, nobody your plan fails because this happened in 10 minutes. They'll get fixed in order of "which is closer to the ship that will fix them" and even if they weren't 10 minutes is nothing on top of the time it'll take to get them repaired.
People were going crazy assuming the US was going to invade Iran last time this happened... and we didn't. It's possible someone's sabotaging them, but I doubt it's to eavesdrop or cover an invasion. More likely someone wants whoever's cables they were to go broke. Also the cables were apparently near each other, so accident isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Dropping Anchor (Score:3, Interesting)
You think the US cut these cables, on exactly the same amount of proof as the theory that it was done by aliens: none.
You think this is more probable than the facts that not all ships have the latest technology (especially in the thrid world), and the last time this happened ships were being allowed to anchor in an area (near the cables) that they hadn't been allowed before.
But even though there's no evidence of foul play, and no evidence that if there *were* fould play that the US did it, and even though it doesn't help the US in any way, you're leaning towards the "US did it" theory.
Face it, you *started* with "US = bad guy", and are now fishing for facts to support your idea. That's *exactly* how conspiracy theories work. Every fact that seems a little odd becomes "proof" of your theory, despite the fact that it supports 1000 other unrealeted theories just as well.