6 ms·
Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions
- mkhattab 14y agoAs an Egyptian, this is seriously bedan[1]. Though it's not surprising that some people would do something like this, the article doesn't provide much context/information. I could provide many personal anecdotes of people cutting telephone lines, throwing nails and spikes in the streets and doing other diabolical shit for no good reason. -- [1]: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bedan http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bedan
- dsr_ 14y agoHow did they get the backhoe running down there?
- bdunbar 14y agoThey borrowed an amphibious backhoe from the Navy.
- orenmazor 14y agowhat were they using to cut those wires? thats not a cat5 down there.
- jlgreco 14y agoH2/O2 torch probably. Or perhaps a "jaws of life" hydraulic scissors style setup. Probably not any sort of electrical blade, I imagine cavitation and/or the viscosity of water would become an issue there.
- pyre 14y agoThey thought there might be copper wires in there that they could sell for scrap. :P
- chiph 14y agoOther than sheer criminal mischief, this is the most likely explanation. A coworker once saw some workers in the Philippines use a bulldozer to drag 500 meters of copper phone cable out of the ground so they could sell it on the black market.
- tsotha 14y agoWestCoastJustin says they're 2.7 inches. That's small enough you could probably use a large pair of bolt cutters.
- richardjordan 14y agoIt's something I think we'll see more of in the future and speaks to the power of the masses having a direct connection to the outside world - that there are parties who recognize that to pursue their agenda they need to disrupt Internet access.
- gkanai 14y agoBut who? The cables are Egypt Telecom- the monopoly carrier. So cutting it hurts everyone inside Egypt.
- bdunbar 14y agoNot everyone. Just people who need the internet. There are people who don't actually _care_ all that much if their neighbors can read yahoo mail or not.
- richardjordan 14y agoThe forces of ignorance and oppression always gain by reducing access to information.
- j-g-faustus 14y agoSeveral options: - Ideological motive: Internet corrupts people, we must protect them from evil influence. - Political motive: Disrupting infrastructure as an attack on the current rulers. - Financial motive: Maybe they sell cable repair services or satellite-based internet access. Or just plain vandalism, which doesn't need a discernable motive. No way of telling without asking them, I guess.
- mercurial 14y agoIt could be gang-related - an Internet protection racket.
- duaneb 14y agoSometimes disruption is enough to achieve a goal, I would definitely not discount domestics.
- ewams 14y agoInteresting that the Egyptian Army and Reuters are friends on Facebook. Though I suppose the Army must have a page on FB for recruitment purposes. Are they really using FB as an official information sharing portal about news like this? Looks like a recruitment tool: https://www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Armed.Forces https://www.facebook.com/Egyptian.Armed.Forces Official page? http://www.mmc.gov.eg http://www.mmc.gov.eg (compare that to http://www.army.mil http://www.army.mil which looks like a news site) Possible that because of the instability recently Eqyptian authorities think Facebook is more capable of serving web pages than their own sites? Why is an Army spokesperson talking about an event handled by the coast guard? The ISP, Link Dot Net, does not have any English information about the event on their web page: http://www.link.net/English/Linkcorp/News+and+Events/ http://www.link.net/English/Linkcorp/News+and+Events/ Apparently last week another Egyptian ISP had an issue as well: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/67894/Egypt/Politics-/Egypts-military-stop-attempt-to-cut-internet-cable.aspx http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/67894/Egypt/Pol... Nothing on their webpage: http://www.tedata.net/eg/en/About-Us/News-And-Events http://www.tedata.net/eg/en/About-Us/News-And-Events Also discovered that a lot of Egyptian websites have not had any updates to their news pages since late 2012.
- bdunbar 14y ago> Why is an Army spokesperson talking about an event handled by the coast guard? You will have noticed that when a guy is filmed at the Pentagon handing out bad news, it's whatever PIO is up next, not an officer for that branch of the service. Speculation: the Egyptian armed forces have the same sort of deal with the press. The Army guy was just the PIO on duty at the time.
- michaelt 14y agoPossible that because of the instability recently Eqyptian authorities think Facebook is more capable of serving web pages than their own sites? Nike, McDonalds and Coca-Cola have Facebook pages they often update. Hamas and the IDF even have twitter accounts. Perhaps it's not that they think their website is unstable - but that they think communicating with the public through Facebook and Twitter is part of the future of public relations.
- WestCoastJustin 14y agoBBC [1] says this was the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable. The cut (according to the SEA-ME-WE_4 wiki page [2]), lead to a degradation of internet speed by 60% in several countries including Pakistan and Egypt. How large are these cables? Looks like about 2.7in [3], so it easily fits in the palm of your hand [4]. To get an idea of what this looks like, check out a photo of a similar deployment [5]. [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21963100 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21963100 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4 [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable [4] http://blog.zulyusof.com/?p=135 http://blog.zulyusof.com/?p=135 [5] http://news.priyo.com/tech/2011/08/06/bangladesh-experience-internet-33868.html http://news.priyo.com/tech/2011/08/06/bangladesh-experience-...
- ck2 14y agoMy first thought was CIA but we have subs that can splice optical cables on the sea floor so this would be amateur hour in comparison.
- ynniv 14y agoIt's probably much easier to quietly splice a cable when someone else is caught severing it elsewhere.
- tsotha 14y agoWhat would be the motive?
- Someone 14y agoEavesdropping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells is An example. It is rumored they can do that on fiber, too (http://cryptome.org/nsa-fibertap.htm http://cryptome.org/nsa-fibertap.htm)
- tsotha 14y agoBut that doesn't explain why they were cutting it.
- lmm 14y agoI think the many-parent's idea is: cut it in one place in an obvious way, then while the cable is known to be cut, insert your splice in another place. That way no-one notices the few hours' disconnection while you put the splice in.
- runjake 14y agoThis is more the NSA's territory and they avoid splicing if at all possible and instead shave the cable.
- willvarfar 14y agoNecessary link: Operation Ivy Bells http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/ivybells.html http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/ivybells.html Also, everyone read the book "Blind Man's Bluff"
- kislayverma 14y agoThis is the most low-tech DDOS ever!
- duaneb 14y agoWouldn't it just be a DOS since it's one cut?
- kislayverma 14y agoThe first 'D' is for 'Drastic' :)
- Validus 14y agoNo actually it's for 'Distributed'.
- frozenport 14y agoHoping to disrupt the telecommunication monopoly? Har har har...
- daniel-levin 14y agoSeacom is one of the primary cables that connects South Africa to the world. Since Friday 22nd March, we've experienced reduced speeds. What is interesting is the technical responses of the local (South African) ISPs to the disruption. Regular HTTP was severely throttled. FTP was disabled completely - it wasn't slow - it was literally switched off. When you tried to load a page, the browser / wget would report nothing for a few seconds, and then after a while would immediately start the download. To me, this suggests that requests were being queued before being sent through. Also, the same symptoms manifested themselves when looking at local websites - a broken undersea cable shouldn't affect that. It's just interesting from a technical standpoint how our ISPs did damage control.
- james2vegas 14y agoMost South African ISPs do that already, you just noticed it less. They stick transparent caching proxies in front of HTTP[s]/FTP
- neebz 14y agoand we thought the internet is slow in Pakistan because of the DDOS attack Cloudflare has been harping about.
- pyvpx 14y agosince the arab spring, cable plans for routes diverse and not reliant on an Egypt drop have gotten some serious momentum behind them.
- josemariaruiz 14y ago<conspiranoia> 1) People in Cyprus (and investment funds?) start using Bitcoin. 2) "Biggest" attack in Internet ever, latency increase. 3) ECB send trucks with cash to Cypruss 4) Guys are caught cutting cables that can affect trading (increase latency again). </conspiranoia>
- aubergene 14y agoI read this 1996 article by Neal Stephenson about the construction of FLAG. It's really interesting and deals with how cables are laid and possible damage to them. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html