Sabotage suspected in Egypt submarine cable cut

 

Sabotage suspected in Egypt submarine cable cut

Three men were arrested for allegedly slicing a submarine Internet cable,

SEA-ME-WE 4, that links at least 14 countries from France to Singapore

By Jeremy Kirk | IDG News Service

http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/sabotage-suspected-in-egypt-submarine-cable-cut-215376

 

 

Egypt said it has arrested three men suspected of slicing a crucial undersea

Internet cable on Wednesday, causing widespread problems from Kenya to

Pakistan.

 

The South East Asia-Middle East-West Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable runs

12,500 miles from France to Singapore, with branches connecting

telecommunication companies in Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri

Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia

and Algeria.

 

Egypt published photos of three men in a boat with their hands tied along

with scuba diving tanks. The men were apprehended just offshore where

SEA-ME-WE 4 reaches land, according to a Facebook posting purportedly by

Egypt's military.

 

Egypt's Facebook account could not be immediately verified with the social

networking company, but Telecom Egypt also wrote about the arrests on its

Twitter feed.

 

SEA-ME-WE 4 is a major cable, said Doug Madory, senior research engineer for

Renesys, a company that monitors global internet activity by collecting data

on how traffic is routed to different service providers around the world.

The cable stopped carrying traffic at 6:20 UTC on Wednesday, he said.

 

Undersea cables can break due to earthquakes or ship anchors, Madory said.

There are fewer than 10 ships worldwide that are equipped to repair

underseas cables, he said. But Egypt's might be easier for fix since it is

closer to shore, he said.

 

If the allegation of sabotage is true, "that is just staggering," Madory

said. Renesys posted a graph on Twitter showing the outage affecting

countries, including Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Saudi Arabia.

 

At least 614 networks that connect to Telecom Egypt were not working, Madory

said. Hundred of smaller networks that connect to Pakistan's Transworld

Associates network were also down, he said.

 

Renesys monitors routing information for 400 telecommunication companies

worldwide. When a cable does down, Internet routers run by telecoms are

designed to reroute traffic. But smaller networks that are dependant on a

sole large provider to the cable could remain offline until it is fixed,

Madory said.

 

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