Fourth Cable cut in the Middle East

[samplegirl]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/threatchaos/?p=525

[spotbird]

1. What's really going on with this?

Is it information someone doesn't want out, or in?

[sarcasmo]

10. Israel pre attack planning, cut off communications.

[backscatter712]

12. This may be the most plausible scenario.

I know, call me Mr. Tinfoil, but this stinks to high heaven. One cable cut is an accident, two is a colossal fuckup. Three is hostile action, and now we're up to four severed cables.

It ain't an accident, folks. Someone's deliberately cutting off Iran's communications.

Israel's one culprit - they may be planning to pull an Osirak.

Or it could be the US - CIA operations in planning for their own air bombardment.

[samplegirl]

2. It's really hard to tell at this point but...

why is Media not all over this?

[liberal N proud]

5. That is the part that make one suspicious

When the media conveniently does not report something you must think in these times that something is going on they don't want the world to know about.

[renate]

13. as of 1 PM Eastern time, 10 AM Pacific, it's nowhere on CNN

Not only is it not on the front page, it's not even anywhere in their tech section, even though a days-old story about how a police chief caught a pedophile is still up.

We've been warned for years that cyberterrorism could have earth-shattering, economy-destroying, civilization-altering effects... but apparently it's not so bad after all. Yay!

[gateley]

3. Egypt learned that their cables were NOT cut due to dragging anchors, as they

initially speculated. I don't know if they've come up with another possibility or not.

I never heard any explanations about Dubai, and now nothing about Qatar.

Do you suppose the intelligence agencies are going crazy trying to find out what's happening? (Unless they're responsible, of course.)

[bdamomma]

4. trying to stop the flow of information perhaps???

just guessing.

[hisownpetard]

6. I haven't heard a word about this on the news. Anyone have a clue who's involved

and why?

[Subdivisions]

7. Be very careful. You may be accused of being a tinfoil-wearing

nut for thinking there's anything at all to this. I was and those who gleefully made such accusations in the earliest threads on the first cables that were cut have yet to show back up and admit they may have been wrong.

They love to troll but they hate the light of day.

[Donk Yore]

8. here ya go

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2008/February/theworld_February77.xml§ion=theworld&col

[originalpckelly]

9. Even the professional blogger thinks something weird is going on.

It's a little too co-incidental to be a mere co-incidence.

[JCMach1]

11. Submarines could do this, but who and why?

I don't buy the Iran theory because the rest of the ME and India have been hit just as hard.

[Xenotime]

14. Could the US be doing this?

[bdamomma]

15. this is from BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7222536.stm

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. So the US can invade Iran, but there will be no way for information about it to get out.

Bushco, I'm sure, is behind it all.

I think they learned with Iraq that if journalists - even the shitty laughable excuses for journalists we have nowadays - can email and send videos over the Internet and phones, the truth gets out and we find out how poorly we're doing and how poorly managed the war is and the atrocities and war crimes we've committed.

Start a war in a place that has no infrastructure to send out data, and you can do what you want. You don't even have to let your people know that you've sent their sons and daughters there.

[NeedleCast]

21. Why?

Why would you cut trans-atlantic cables to the middle east prior to an invasion of Iran? Not like it would effect internal iranian networks (defense, government communications, etc) because they don't use those trans-atlantic lines.

not like there wouldn't be media coverage in Iran and the VAST majority of media coverage uses satellite networks, not the trans-atlantic cables, to communicate with its home offices.

[thecrow]

17. Maybe someone is trying to force the communications to be sent thru the US

(or another country)for purposes of spying?
The article said their communications were being rerouted through
the "Americas".
It might be anyone, though.
Check out how few the cables are in that area:
http://content.zdnet.com/2346-9595_22-11239.html

[NeedleCast]

19. No

The information carried on those lines is 99.9% mundane. It's E-mail (probably mostly spam), it's business information, it's various other crap of no military significance. Re-routing that information doesn't make it any more prone to being "spied" on and it would take thousands of people working hundreds of thousands of hours to sort through all the dross. it would be like draining all the water out of the pacific ocean one bucket at a time to look for fish.

[tuckessee]

18. I wonder how often does this happen?

When was the last time an undersea cable was cut/severed in any part of the world?

I'd love to see a list such incidences to help put things in perspective.

[NeedleCast]

20. 2005 and 2006

Two trans-atlantic cables where cut to the UK in 2006. At least two were cut to South America in (I think) 2005.

[tuckessee]

22. Thanks.

If I get time later tonight I want to google around and see what I can find about frequency & cause.

I don't know enough to tell whether these recent incidents are anything to be concerned about or not.

[NeedleCast]

23. Here's a few links

TAT-14 suffered two "breaks" in 2003 (this is one of the UK trunk cables...I was wrong about the year it happened, thought it was mroe recent). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAT-14

Here is the more recent one in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANTAT-3 CANTAT-3 (a data carrying line, as opposed to the older telephone lines like TAT-14) caused some pretty serious internet connectivity issues in the UK and Iceland.

Wiki also has some limited information about two of the recent line cuts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-Optic_Link_Around_the_Globe) that were both part of the FLAG network (two terminus of the same cable).

As far as concern goes, I'm most concerned with what's causing the breaks. Understand that these are very high capacity data cables that (in the case of the FLAG cable(s), have many terminal points all over the world and the data they carry is not usually of a very secure nature (i.e. these networks would not carry military or internal government information from Iran or other countries, as that stuff does not go out over public networks).

More breaks:

In July, 2005, a portion of the SEA-ME-WE 3 submarine cable located 35 kilometers (21 miles) south of Karachi that provided Pakistan's major outer communications became defective, disrupting almost all of Pakistan's communications with the rest of the world, and affecting approximately 10 million Internet users.

In March, 2007, pirates stole an 11-kilometre section of the T-V-H submarine cable that connected Thailand,Vietnam, and Hong Kong, affecting Vietnam's Internet users with far slower speeds. The thieves attempted to sell the 100 tons of illicit cargo as scrap <8>. Cable theft is becoming a more frequent problem worldwide.

The 2006 Hengchun earthquake on December 26, 2006 rendered numerous cables near Taiwan inoperable.