Apparently, Ships Can Drag Anchors from Egypt to Malaysia
[UPDATE - 02/12/08 - The Complete Guide to the 2008 Internet Outage has been finished. It contains the most up to date information including detailed images and explanations to help unravel this cable mess. Please check it out here]
[UPDATE - please be sure to check out part two of this post: Submarine Cables, Subsidiaries and Subversion, where you can find out information on who might stand to gain from these outages.]
Alright. Grab your foil hats if you must, but there’s some things that need to be said here.
While working hard at my job today I was stunned after I read engadget’s report that another large submarine internet cable had been severed. This comes after the news that other cables had been severed reducing the internet, phone, and television capabilities of many countries to nil. As of this writing, there are still reports that Iran is without internet connectivity according to InternetTrafficReport.com. EDIT Many readers have written in to inform me that Iran is, in fact, not entirely offline and that InternetTrafficReport.com is a terrible source. However, there are still millions of people without service. Thanks for keeping me in line.
It seems, that something is not quite right here. Just when I am starting to doubt my gut instinct, the Khaleej Times reports that it is in fact 5 submarine cables that have been damaged:
“Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.””
According to their reports, there was another cable severed that went unreported. So, here’s the list that they had of the 5 different cables:
“These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.”
As I said: 3 was quite a few. 4 is pushing it. 5 starts to make you wonder. In case you aren’t familiar with that part of the world, here’s a map that I made which shows the approximate locations of the “cuts” in the underwater cables: [UPDATE: I have completed the Google Maps version which includes all the new damages and links to the sources:]
We’re supposed to believe that these were most likely caused by an anchor from a ship fighting a storm. This author finds it hard to believe that this anchor was drug behind a boat from Egypt to Malaysia.
So everyone is scrambling to try and figure out why this would happen. Here’s some of the possible reasons that I have found while looking around the internet:
- U.S. Government
- Israeli Government
- Aliens
- Underwater Monsters
- The Cloverfield Monster
- Rudy Giuliani
However, this author actually dug a bit deeper and found a trail that leads from the owners of most of these internet cables all the way back to some very, very large companies in the U.S. and in the U.K. Which companies you ask? Who is behind this?
Well, that’s the topic for my next post. You’ll have to subscribe to my RSS feed and stay tuned for my findings. Don’t worry, the wait is over.
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February 6th, 2008 at 2:54 am
Iran isn’t without internet. That’s just one router that’s down. Supposedly.
February 6th, 2008 at 6:28 am
…
Who ever said it was the same ship?
February 6th, 2008 at 6:28 am
This guy said what I was thinking: “The idea is, you cut the cable at point ‘A’, and make it look like it was an accident (ship anchor, etc). Then, before they fix the cable, you trot on down the cable a few (tens of) miles to point ‘B’ and cut the cable there, too. But now you splice in a repeater that copies everything sent over that cable and sends it …to you! When the cable is fixed at the original spot, comm traffic starts up, and no one is the wiser.”
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=440700&cid=22288410
February 6th, 2008 at 8:12 am
See, this is why we need Telecom immunity!
February 6th, 2008 at 8:25 am
You forgot Chuck Norris.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Though I would not put my money on it,
you could make your list of perpetrators
more complete by adding fundamental
terrorists / interest groups against
globalization from the area. Also
if a dicatator”ship”, likes to limit
the flow of information to the people
in order to better control them,
limiting their information sources
to change their perception of reality
is also plausible, though also less likely,
but worth mentioning.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:31 am
I’m assuming you’re trying to get flamed.
Noone said it was a single ship that dragged the cables from Egypt to Malaysia. Furthermore, they also stated that it was *probable* that this was the cause, for that particular region (i.e. Egypt).
February 6th, 2008 at 8:50 am
I still think it was Rudy Giuliani
February 6th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Personally I think some smug CIA or NSA agents are chuckling in their little submarine about this.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:00 am
hahaha iran suck swe need to nuke tehm before htey nuke us
February 6th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Before you go making all these wild claims, you should look at the validity of your source, the internet traffic report. Take a look at http://www.internettrafficreport.com/details.htm According to them, it looks like Florida has fallen into the Sea and Germany must have exploded… One source being unreachable in an entire country is not justification for the claims that you are making… Yes I do agree that things are a little fishy with all these breaks…
February 6th, 2008 at 9:49 am
First off, only four cables have been cut. The other was powered down for some reason.
Secondly, Iran isn’t offline; the router Internet Traffic Report monitors is. Big difference.
Four cables cut and a fifth offline is awfully strange, but get the facts right.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Here it states, that germany is off too. That is total nonsense.
http://www.internettrafficreport.com/europe.htm
February 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Anyone thought of the possibility of Terrorists??
February 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Someone in Iran’s government probably discovered Goatse and ordered the cables cut.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Its not Giuliani, otherwise it would have been 9 internet cables cut with a bandwidth loss of approx. 11%.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:34 am
Thanks for all the feedback about internettrafficreport.com. The fact remains that there are still millions of people throughout the middle east and Asia that are without service.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am
The picture above shows all the cuts in a more or less straight line. Reminds me of the
1. the command and conquer particle cannon swath
2. the swath taken by an eclipse (although its in an opposite direction to ones the a real eclipse takes, see link below)
http://www.hermit.org/Eclipse/2006-03-29/
February 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
It was Xenu
February 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Really who cares if these countries lost internet, phones, and tv. I still have all mine, and really thats all i care about
February 6th, 2008 at 10:50 am
> Anyone thought of the possibility of Terrorists??
Why? Anyone terrified?
February 6th, 2008 at 10:54 am
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0QUY/is_2004_July/ai_n6142317/pg_1
Apparently, there is a history of cutting cables before commencing war.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:56 am
“# Concerned Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Someone in Iran’s government probably discovered Goatse and ordered the cables cut.”
Actually I was informed by someone inside the government that it was not Goatse, but it was actually 2 girls 1 cup.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:05 am
It is not the terrorists. They have tried to cut the cables many times, but their camels keep drowning, and the air bubbles in their turbans won’t let them sink to the bottom. I think it was the CI…………………………Transmission has been interrupted. Please ignore previous text.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:22 am
OMG! It really IS a series of tubes!
February 6th, 2008 at 11:23 am
From Star Wars:
First step of invasion is interrupting all communications…
And we all know how much Iran is a thorn in Uncle Sam`s greedy paw.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Is anybody here honestly suggesting that “terrorists” are doing this? Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, they have access to box cutters and can created IEDs and also have access to old Russian AK-47s, but they do not have access to a fleet of submarines that can cut a telecom line buried on the sea floor!!! And even if they did, why would they be cutting of Iran?!? Somebody is actually buying Neocon bullshit. How very sad.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Why dont they use the satellite?
February 6th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Only the first two suspects on your list are rational suspects, as defined by motive, means and opportunity. Both Israel and the US have submarine fleets and are in a state of military hostility to the other nations of the world.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
On what factual basis do you claim that Iran is not disconnected from the Internet? The claims of vocal readers? That’s pretty weak. You must remember that many sites with .ir domain names are not hosted in the physical bounds of Iran. In order to determine that a site within the physical boundaries of Iran was connected to the Internet, you would need to get a traceroute response from an address which was demonstrably owned by an Iranian national entity, for which a preceeding hop was known to be an international exchange link adjacent to Iran, with no intervening hops known to be outside of Iran.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Yeah, it’s sad that with five cables cut, people are stupid enough still stupid enough to believe neocon lies. definitely something is up.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Um, I’m going to go with Bob on this one. Have we explored the possibility of Chuck Norris?
February 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
why would they be cutting them for a war? if they where wouldnt they all be in more of one general area, unless somebody is going to war with all the middle east.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
You can never forget Chuck Norris. Never. If you do you’ll remember him as the very last thing you ever remember as he roundhouses you from a sitting start.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I vote for Dr Evil -
it’s a good prelude to blackmail isn’t it? For say… $200 million ?
February 6th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Look at the tinfoil crowd jump on the US and Israel…
could be Iran or some other fundi whackos – they want to keep the modern world out, duh.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Stop the flow of information before any attack. Learned that in Nam. Watch for news about Iran.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
The Egyptian Ministry of communications said that there were no ships in the area at the time of the first two cuts/breaks/whatever the damage. The cables were actually in a restricted traffic area.
Cables get damaged all the time, but this is just a bit ridiculous. And @ who_cares, the ISPs in the affected countries now have to route much of their traffic through other pipes in Europe and the US — and the extra volume could actually end up slowing our service down here.
Sumthing wicked this way (or that way) comes for sure.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Does anyone know what time the disruptions had occured? I know one of them happened at 8am. Just curious about the level of coincidence. If the times are on the hour or some derivative of that would be one well organized renegade anchor.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
OK, its a theory, its not great, but its closer than Aliens……
here goes
Recently a large cult has been under attack via internet, these people are known for being deranged idiots, they also happen to have an awful lot of money due to exploiting the mentally ill into handing over their lives savings, and their life.
Is it too hard to believe that the people who willingly pay hundreds of dollars to crawl around on carpet picking up fluff in an attempt to remove the alien souls (hey aliens!!) that cause their problems…….Would try and attack the internet by going for the cables.
(google search top result for “Dangerous Cult” if you don’t know what im talking about)
They are also known for exploiting the media by threatening to sue for copyright violations over things that have negative coverage on the them…
February 6th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
i highly doubt that scifags are behind this lol
February 6th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
epic LULZ!1
February 6th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Yes, that is too hard to believe.
February 6th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
so, yeah… the US military cut some of the major traffic lines for the internet in the mid-east slapped a repeated on it so that it sends not one but two copies of what ever it gets to the US and it’s destination…
SMOKE AND MIRRORS GENTS SMOKE N MIRRORS!
February 6th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
# antihostile Says:
but they do not have access to a fleet of submarines that can cut a telecom line buried on the sea floor!!!
A brief article about Al Queada’s Navy: http://www.newsweek.com/id/62899
“Arab intelligence officials say a Tunisian naturalized as a Dutch citizen was sent to Morocco before 9-11 to set up a Qaeda diving school”
He was expelled from morocco, but they’re trying, and I doubt that they have a developed the “Marine Biology Bug”
February 6th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
The moon landing was obviously a hoax, the US did that in Idaho to try and claim that they are better than the Russians.
Now, they want control of Iran because they are one of the world’s leading oil exporters.
They think they can get away with it because for one, the general American public (i.e. over-patriotic rednecks) hates most of the Middle East because some angry cultist freaks who happened to be from that region came and crashed into a tower seven years ago.
So, they’ll probably find this as the perfect cover-up since most of Iran is going amish for the moment, and bomb the living shit out of them.
Sad. Truly sad.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
My mum cut the lines
February 6th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
I can’t figure out if you people are stupid or just hate the U.S. so much as to believe that the government had anything to do with it. If you really hate this country so much then move to a country you admire like Iran or Cuba. If you half-wits had any brains you would realize that fundamentalist Muslims would prefer to isolate themselves from the secular world if they can’t kill all of us infidels. Look at the countries affected. Most of them are the more secular Islamic countries. Another way to look at the situation is that U.S. corporations lose revenue when these cables are cut. Really makes allot of sense for the U.S. to damage them right?
February 7th, 2008 at 12:20 am
If this is deliberate interference, the only nation with the motive and technology to do it is the US. Think about the region being affected.
A couple of you have suggested a covert cable splice operation. I think this is quite plausible. And the purpose: to spy on communications to and from the middle-east.
The US has been working very hard to stop repeats of 9/11 and I think they are now going to extreme measures to intercept communications between terrorist leaders in foreign countries and terror cells that exist in their own country.
I don’t think this is a prelude to war. However, Internet disruption could one day be an act of war – given the significant commerce and communications that rely on the network.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:57 am
No, the US didn’t do it. It was Iran. Most of the impacted nations were the Sunnis friendly to the US. And the cuts come right after Iran test fires a new space missile.
Iran will close the Strait next.
February 7th, 2008 at 1:41 am
Maybe its Israel. They have the technology, and the lack of respect for the rest of humanity.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:33 am
@Zurenriri
Seriously, just shut up. Making baseless claims about something you clearly don’t understand must have made you feel edgy and important; but really you ended up sounding pretty stupid. You and my crazy Uncle Larry would get along well.
February 7th, 2008 at 4:43 am
Ok, let’s put the tin foil hat and:
-Suspect it was the US.
Why?
The US has the cultural preeminence, so discard this.
Economic reasons. But they have delocated a lot of services!! this would hurt them a lot.
The only reason woluld be to limit the outsourcing by creating “blackouts”.
It is very difficult and expensive to locate and cut the cable… so if it was made on purpose it must be either a powerful organization organization or a government.
If you have studied economics you should know that you have to put your money and resources to work where they can be most effective.
Using several large ships to almost simultaneously cut cables is both expensive and difficult to manage.
If you really have this capacity, you could just load a couple of ships with fertilizer (paid by companies that want
you to transport it) and blow them up… my guess is that if you blow up Rotterdam’s crude oil offshore terminal you have more impact…
This won’t be done for a number or reasons, so don’t panic!!
So it isn’t terrorists, it must be a government.. but then again, I really don’t see a good reason to do so…
So, if it must be deliberate, it is aliens!!! Grab your tinfoil hat and run to the nuclear shelter!!
February 7th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Sonds like a job for Superman
February 7th, 2008 at 11:46 am
My guess (apart from conspiracy theories) is that the amplifiers died or sharks bit the fibre-optic cables. These are very frequent occurances on these cables and is probably more likely. For some reason the sharks have an affinity to the cables. When the salt water gets into the jacket (even if the shark didn’t cut it off completely) and screws up the optical index delta. Biologists believe the sharks do this due to the power that is transmitted with the cable to power the undersea optical amplifiers. The sharks (being rather primitive creatures) percieve the EM field as a injured food source. As well, while the optical fibre’s in-line amplifiers tend to be reliable these particular optical cables are rather old in comparision to some and the components are probably nearing the end of their lives.
But for my fictional money I’d place a bet on Dr. Octopus….
February 7th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Cutting communications is a prelude to military action.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Since the internet is made of tubes and the Iranians need tubes for their missle systems for their nuculer weapons, the Iraninas figured a few tubes from the deep ocean wouldn’t be missed. Let’s bomb them and get our tubes back.
February 7th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
I hate to bust all your bubbles but a repeater can be placed on a loop that connects to the original cable and no cutting is needed. Something the U.S. has done in the past. Try looking a little further, folks.
btw – my money is on Goldfinger, he once said “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is enemy action.”
February 7th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
If you want to know the real reason for these actions you need only to look in one place. It’s simple, it’s not terrorists unless you consider the US to be a terrorist organization. Here is the only reason why someone would want to cut these lines.
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
read section II in the middle of the page. However section one is pretty interesting as well.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:51 am
To me, this is a clear strategy of the US to incommunicate Iran from the rest of the world and bomb their main objectives. They need satelites to do this, that is the reason why they have not block satelites.
We all know that the US is waiting for the right moment. The Bush administration would want to do it before elections. Why not soon?
This is scary, but to me. The US government did it and now we just need to pray that it doesn´t happen.
This is my opinion from Spain.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
consider this:
during the cold war the us sent a submarine and divers to place a listening device on soviet “secure” telecommunication lines (electric current communication) that ran along the coast. they periodically retrieved recorded data for the duration of the cold war.
us admitted rf listening (ie: eschelon) has become increasingly impotent with communications taking place over the internet. that is the whole argument for bush’s domestic spying in “new era communication”. that is why the placed taps on major us backbone locations within at&t and others as klein revealed.
the probability of multiple lines being accidentally cut should raise questions. the latest reports of egypt say their ships did not cut them as they have evidence they did not travel near the break.
tapping into today’s optical fibers undetected needs them to be broken first – ie: the line needs to be taken down. time domain reflectometery can show a discontinuity if it occurs between repeaters, but an undersea tap at a repeater would later not be detected – unless one were willing to pull up and inspect all 1900 miles and verify the repeater was the original.
the breaks occur curiously near egypt and other “states of interest” and us and israel have reason to be suspected. sure the us would like to track such things as how ubl’s tapes and communications make their way to aljazeera. ip logging would go far to better locate the source – some thing local inter-middle east country communication doesn’t avail the west to with their taps on domestic/international spying.
given the factual history of the us behavior and the probabilities it suggests concern is prudent.
some media coverage in the west intentionally/non-intentionally is denouncing the whole issue. some attempt to broadly paint all the possibilities as “conspiracy theories” simply because one offering that the us is taking out iranian communications prior to an attack, has shown that the communications were unaffected. they should be more concerned with what countries are served by these lines, how odd the coincident of multiple failures is, and of showing past history and relating it to current spying by the us administration. paying particular attention to a break in egypt’s line and the requirement of a “offloading” site in a nearby country to exploit the data.
[ADMIN EDIT - truncated for length. For similar information, check out my post here: Submarine Cables, Subsidiaries and Subversion]
Internet cable breaks causing buzz on tech blogs
http://www.newsoxy.com/news/internet/article10355.htm
Conspiracy theories about Iran abound as 4th internet cable is cut
A little truth would go a long way at stopping conspiracy theories.
Scott Adams at DilbertBlog notes the conspiracy theories, and sardonically notes similarities to one of his satires:
It seems highly coincidental that three undersea cables get cut and the only country entirely shut off is Iran. I doubt it is the first step before war, but you can’t help raising an eyebrow when reality starts to intersect with fiction.
http://www.bloggernews.net/113572
February 8th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Wow! Unreal!
February 9th, 2008 at 1:29 am
@those so quick to judge the “tin-foil hat crowd”
Please check out my latest post:
We’re All Up in Your Internets, Cutting All Yur Cablez
February 9th, 2008 at 4:49 am
The cables were not cut, but the US goverment installed sniffer routers at the choke point of Middle eastern internet traffic to monitor it.
Basically, they are do it for traceability and surveillance.
It is for the sake of world domination.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Yea – I noticed the story off of drudgetracker.com. It’s pretty creepy… Don’t take my internet away : (
February 9th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
if you would like some background on these underwater supercables, read this article. it was written in 1996 just as the FLAG cable was being laid. warning, it is about 6 chapters in a good book, so put some time away to read it.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html
February 9th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
damnnnnnnnn you aquaman!!!!!!!!!!!!! *shakes fist*
February 10th, 2008 at 9:01 am
I’d have to say:
1) bloodforoil hit the nail on the head, quite the find, that link. I think you are precisely correct.
2) When folks like noteom and bite me open their mouths, it is a welcome sound.
I always like to know who to completely ignore as bone stupid, and not waste my time reading their excrement. No need to wonder about their motivation to demonstrate public inanity: They might simply be IQ deficient, without ulterior motives.
And that’s about as kind as farang can be to their ilk.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
farang “farang can be to their ilk” Is that gangstar slang in a highclass fathom?
August 9th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Hahahahahha The whole world is at the mercy of Israel. We will do whatever we feel is best for us, to hell with the rest of the world.
With the US as our loyal partner, we are untouchable. Soon the world will quake in fear of our might. No holocaust will ever happen again because we will destroy everything that stand sin our way, be it your fathers, mothers or your children. The world is ours because we are the chosen.
Shalom motherfuckers!
February 5th, 2010 at 7:59 am
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March 2nd, 2010 at 6:14 pm
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