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Severed fibre cables disrupted internet access in eastern Europe, Iran, Turkey
- zknz 7y agoIs that is a terrible headline, or an association for what disappears when the internet is down?
- iudqnolq 7y agoNeither, I think. From the article > The company told internet service providers to connect to its other servers to "route around the problem". I believe this means they changed their DNS settings and waited for it to propagate. This implies that the internet in general was accessible, but some larger companies that bought part of a fiber cable were inaccessible over that line.
- alexchamberlain 7y agoProbably BGP rather than DNS?
- iudqnolq 7y agoI wouldn't know. Thanks!
- MagnumPIG 7y ago> In a statement, the company blamed "multiple simultaneous fibre cuts", which are very rare. Corporate speak for "obvious sabotage"...
- clumsysmurf 7y agoCould this vessel be the cause? "Suspected Internet Cable Spy Ship Operating In Americas For Over A Month" https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2019/12/01/suspected-internet-cable-spy-ship-operating-in-americas/#6f5c0f6d32ae https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2019/12/01/suspected-i...
- rcostin2k2 7y agoBetween Bucharest and Iran ? Hard to believe .....
- kitteh 7y agoNeed to remember that some cables have common points where they cross over and share fate, identified as shared risk link groups (SRLGs). Good engineering and design practices involve ingesting detailed fiber routes in GIS databases (kmzs in some cases) to identify these and build diverse paths. Every now and then sometimes people get surprised by what is documented isn't what's in the ground (this is a bigger problem in urban/metro locations). Example where fiber goes under the same sidewalk, transitions from aerial to underground, etc.
- bigiain 7y agoInteresting that the word "cuts" is perhaps-intentionally ambiguous. I wonder if this was detectable undersea fibre damage, or just Iran/Turkey switching off multiple shore stations at once?
- incomplete 7y agomany years ago, when i worked at google, we'd joke that every time fiber was 'cut' it was some rando government agency installing a tap. this was before internal traffic was encrypted. of course, we were less than half joking.
- yahwrong 7y agoLike the 'government agency' doesn't already posses the encryption keys or other methods to extract information from encrypted data.
- sillysaurusx 7y agoMost governments don't, but even the NSA taps into unencrypted or weak links along the pipe. https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-companies-slap-back-at-the-n-s-a-s-smiley-face https://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/tech-companies-s... "SSL added and removed here! :)"
- penagwin 7y agoMy understanding is that they record encrypted traffic too. They can't read any of it - yet. But they're betting one day either a security vulnerability will be discovered, or computers will be fast enough to attack the encryption and allow them to read the data. So even though it's unreadable today, it might be in 10 years.
- germinalphrase 7y agoI remember hearing a speech by a quantum computing researcher that was primarily funded by the NSA. He included an anecdote about how “they would prefer quantum computing didn’t exist, but if it’s going to exist - they want the first one”.
- bduerst 7y agoThat's a lot of data though, especially since it's usefulness goes down with time.
- iagovar 7y agoHmmm, I've also been experiencing downtime today to nixval and amazon (don't know which region exactly) hosted sites. IDK if it's a coincidence.
- mikeyouse 7y agoAuth0 is completely down for us too.. http://status.auth0.com/ http://status.auth0.com/ again, probably not related but a weird morning with all these outages.
- bredren 7y agoWas this a test? Who and why would be motivated to see the result of these actions?
- ryanmercer 7y agoProbably not, this just happens (at least for submarine cables) . My job was affected by this event in 2008 involving submarine cables https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruptio... and as the Wiki entry says >According to Beckert, cable cuts happen "on average once every three days." He further noted that there are 25 large ships that do nothing but fix cable cuts and bends, and that such cuts are usually the result of cables rubbing against rocks on the sea floor. >According to Global Marine Systems, "Undersea cable damage is hardly rare—indeed, more than 50 repair operations were mounted in the Atlantic alone last year". While a cut in a cable crossing the Atlantic has "no significant effect" due to the many alternate cables, only a handful of Internet cables serve the Middle East. These disruptions are only noticeable because of the small number of cables
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> such cuts are usually the result of cables rubbing against rocks on the sea floor. Huh. How much current is there down at the bottom of the ocean? I was imagining a mostly static environment.
- ryanmercer 7y agoHmmm, now I'm curious but couldn't find a generic answer. Here is a figure for the waters around Antarctica though: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean-conveyor-belt/ https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/ocean-convey... >An estimated 35 million to 45 million cubic meters (between 1.2 billion and 1.6 billion cubic feet) of water per second are continually moved from the ocean bottom to the surface. That's over a huge area though and still no real idea of speed.
- relaunched 7y agoIt only took them 30 minutes to recover from multiple, simultaneous fiber cuts. That's amazing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago> In a statement, the company blamed "multiple simultaneous fibre cuts", which are very rare. In cases where multiple cables are cut simultaneously the simple answer was that it was probably done intentionally. Reminds of 2015 in SF: ”At least 11 physical attacks on these cables have occurred in at least 10 Bay area cities” I don’t know who these people are, but I bet they play dress up in a black mask and have convinced themselves that the ends will justify their means. https://fortune.com/2015/07/01/cutting-internet-cables/ https://fortune.com/2015/07/01/cutting-internet-cables/
- duxup 7y agoMultiple cuts, at multiple locations? or one location? Or just one location where primary and backup systems went through the same pipe, system, whatever? Telco land is full of redundancy that eventually converges into a single point of failure.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rhacker 7y agoWas it just auto-fixed via BGP?
- freedomben 7y agoIn the mid 2000s I was in the Middle East and used the internet to connect back to the United States for conducting business. One day almost every site became unreachable (anything hosted in the states). It turned out that a naval vessel had dropped anchor and Murphy's Law put the anchor right on top of some undersea fiber cables. It was called a freak accident because statistically was so unlikely to happen. It took a while to figure out what happened, and internet was out for a couple of days. Considering service was restored in 30 minutes in this case, we are getting a lot better at handling severed cables.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- BubRoss 7y agoOff the top of my head I could believe that a good place to lay cable (by some definition) might be a good place to drop an anchor. The more shallow the water, the less cable you need.
- freedomben 7y agoIndeed, and so many ports are attached to major cities that are also great places for internet hubs ...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kitteh 7y agoCable landing stations are generally a bit further away from ports and such. They're also heavily armored when near the shore for this particular reason. The folks laying the cables will also put in energy to do outreach with local fishing organizations to let them know about the cables too (and they're charted).
- pen2l 7y ago> Considering service was restored in 30 minutes in this case, we are getting a lot better at handling severed cables. 30 minutes? This is absolutely mind-boggling to me. 30 minutes -- and you can identify exactly where the cut was, deep in the water, access it, fix it in the water? To me that sounds like a 30-month job not a 30-second job. Anyone here with insight into this fix-process: could you please shed light on how this is done and how it can be so fast?
- lsllc 7y agoI was going to ask "where is the USS Jimmy Carter", but it looks like they were overland fibers!
- MR4D 7y agoWeird coincidence that the Federal Reserve ACH network has an outage at the same time? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/federal-reserve-bank-glitch-delayed-bank-account-deposits.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/19/federal-reserve-bank-glitch-...
- tpmx 7y agoProbably a weird coincidence? My best guess: a) The up and coming dictator Erdogan flexes his muscles for no particular reason. He has now probably demonstrated that he can cut two fibers at the same time using his all mighty turkish subs. b) The Fed botches a software upgrade in the US And this happens to happen at approximately the same time.
- sierpinski 7y agoVirgin Media in London also has had it's fibre optic cables cut this morning. https://my.virginmedia.com/faults/service-status https://my.virginmedia.com/faults/service-status
- ryanmercer 7y agoBack in 2008 when some submarine cables were cut[1], it had us frantic at work as origin stations had no way to transmit documents to us in the affected countries so we couldn't do our jobs before the freight landed. Until it was rectified they were having to take the physical documents and fly them to a country that did still have a reliable connection and scan them there to transmit to us. Then in 2010 [2] when the volcano in Iceland grounded flights throughout parts of Europe we were similarly like "argh, sorry customers!" Cut a few cables and knock out the 31 GPS satellites and the world would grind to a halt. It's terrifying how dependent we are on technology for virtually ever facet of our lives. Then we rely so much on air travel for delivering persons and freight, modern society is so incredibly fragile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_submarine_cable_disruptio... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...
- acqq 7y ago> modern society is so incredibly fragile http://energyskeptic.com/2016/when-trucks-stop-running-so-does-civilization/ http://energyskeptic.com/2016/when-trucks-stop-running-so-do... "When Trucks Stop Running, So Does Civilization" and also http://energyskeptic.com/2015/power-transformers-that-take-up-to-2-years-to-build/ http://energyskeptic.com/2015/power-transformers-that-take-u... "Large power transformers are essential critical infrastructure to the electric grid, and are huge, weighing up to 820,000 pounds. If large power transformers are destroyed by a geomagnetic disturbance (GMD) electromagnetic pulse (EMP), cyber-attack, sabotage, severe weather, floods, or simply old age, parts or all of the electric grid could be down in a region for 6 months to 2 years. "
- kjksf 7y agoSeems like SpaceX's Starlink will have no shortage of business. It seems like a no-brainer to use space as a backbone haul for inter-continent traffic vs. physical cables. It might be slightly faster, it'll probably be cheaper, you can scale the bandwidth by deploying more (very cheap) satellites. Most of all, the traffic cannot be cut, spied on, you can spread access points in multiple locations (i.e. resiliency via distribution vs. single point of failure).
- fastball 7y agoSuch satellites have firmware which presumably can be hacked.
- schoen 7y agoI don't think that the inability to spy on traffic is a typical benefit of satellites over fiber optic cables. :-( Spying on RF signals to and from satellites was a major Cold War activity. Governments spent a lot of money on it and got really good at it. You might say that satellite data is still safer than terrestrial cables because a particular adversary might not be present in the footprint of a particular satellite, but (1) they might be, because the equipment needed to intercept the downlink may be easy enough to conceal, and (2) satellite signals get intercepted in both directions, uplink and downlink. The one countersurveillance benefit that I can think of is in bypassing cable landing regulations that are used to require cable operators to give governments access to the data on their cables. While governments may also try to place licensing regulations on the use of satellite data services within their territory, it's a lot easier for individual end-users to evade or ignore those regulations than it would be for them to surreptitiously land a fiber-optic cable! However, governments will also have an easy time monitoring downlink signals in their territory so they may not lose much access compared to the cable landing license approach, depending on how the operators handle link encryption.
- zozbot234 7y agoThere's no way that wireless links will ever be faster than backbone fiber - the whole notion makes very little sense. Starlink may be useful in other ways, of course.
- paganel 7y agoSo that explains it, I thought I was going crazy when simple Google queries were taking 10 seconds or more to finish (I live in Bucharest)
- m0xte 7y agoI wonder if this is why turkey post’s tracking has been down for days.
- CzarnyZiutek 7y ago"John, we must destroy Skynet now."
- tpmx 7y agoThe first HN thread I saw this morning (CET) about this was deleted, I think, but here's the second one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21832934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21832934
- Trias11 7y agoI'd love have a 1" slice of that cable on my desk for amuzement. Probably will be like a foot or more in diameter.
- blackflame 7y agoIt's not as big as you think. It's about the size of a high-voltage power line approx 3' diameter.
- Trias11 7y ago3 feet? or inches?
- bigiain 7y agoYou heard the old gag about the most important pieces of camping safety gear? You need to have a meter of optical fibre with you. Then, if you get lost, you just bury it and then ask the backhoe driver who digs it up for a ride home.
- blackflame 7y agoI used to work at a military base in San Diego that lost all internet connectivity after construction workers replacing a sewer line accidentally cut the OC-48 line
- ferros 7y agoWhen a cable is severed, and traffic is rerouted, who profits, how, and why? The obvious loser is the severed cable owner.
- latchkey 7y agoIn Vietnam, near every holiday or major event the internet magically slows to a crawl and the Govt run papers declare that sharks have attacked the undersea cables, it is almost comical how well timed the 'attacks' are... https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchors-red-tape-why-it-takes-forever-to-fix-vietnam-s-broken-internet-cables https://saigoneer.com/saigon-technology/11885-sharks,-anchor... https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20190528/vietnams-internet-speed-slowed-by-cable-problem-off-da-nang/50125.html https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20190528/vietnams-intern... https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20171016/vietnam-grapples-with-internet-cable-problems/42065.html https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/society/20171016/vietnam-grapple... https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/city-diary/20170125/save-vietnam%E2%80%99s-internet-sharks/29467.html https://tuoitrenews.vn/news/city-diary/20170125/save-vietnam... https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/sharks-are-eating-the-internet-in-vietnam-9962747.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne...
- lucasjans 7y agoAfter living in Vietnam for 6 years I can second this. Even my Vietnamese team jokes that "sharks bite" before each major national holiday. Fortunately, I've also noticed that the effects are not as disastrous as before. Previously, it would be impossible to keep a VPN up to a US server, but now I can still get high speeds and low latency through the "cable cuts."
- latchkey 7y agoHey Lucas! Nice to see you here too. =)
- jldugger 7y agoWas reading the wikipedia page on undersea cables and ran across this gem -- some pirates tried to sell 100 tons of fiber cable they nabbed off the bottom of the ocean near Vietnam: https://lirneasia.net/2007/06/vietnams-submarine-cable-lost-and-found/ https://lirneasia.net/2007/06/vietnams-submarine-cable-lost-...
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- mitchtbaum 7y ago'vee + it + nom' vee = V (!! obviously !!) it = _? (good question) nom = (will you remember it) ? ~~~ o = O (!! oh!.. less obvious, but still,..A(nd) !!) ...
- ChrisClark 7y agoWhat
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- paule89 7y agoSeveral connections at once? I saw an article about some Easter-Easter Europeans State Submarines crewsing around on the bottom of the sea. So maybe it was them?
- appleflaxen 7y agois it just accepted at this point that wiretapping is the cause, when this happens?
- wslh 7y agoYesterday I could not find a The Pirate Bay mirror site that works. Now I assume that is connected to this issue but the first RARBG mirror I tried worked so I wonder if this is just an anecdote or it gives some insight about the demography of these two sites.
- unfocused 7y agoIn Northern Canada, it's Wolves apparently that 'attack' our cable: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northern-fibre-optic-northwestel-threats-1.5222102 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northern-fibre-optic-no... "This is a picture of the Mackenzie Valley fibre optic cable. Since it was laid, it's been eaten at by wild animals, struck by lightning, and run over by construction workers."