Choose Your Own Conspiracy: Undersea Cable Edition
After three undersea cables in the Middle East were taken out last week, those who fear black helicopters started to worry. But now, with the number of broken undersea telecommunications cables in the Middle East rising to five, even sane people (and pundits) are donning their tinfoil hats to discuss what might be behind it.
The Mossad Theory: This one blames the Israeli secret service for the cuts. Problem: What the heck do they have against India?
The Muslim Terrorist Theory: Do I really need to explain this one? Problem: Terrorists like to surf the Net too.
The Bubba Theory: Fisherman are told where the cables are, but don’t care. Problem: These guys do have maps and in some cases, boats weren’t in areas where the cuts occurred.
The Pentagon Theory: The U.S. is cutting the cables to deprive Iran and Syria from the Internet. In some variations of this theory, we’re working with Israel. Problem: We’re depriving India and Kuwait, too.
The James Bond Theory: The odds of a cable getting damaged are low. Multiply that by five and the odds get even lower. Problem: The cables are vulnerable. Geography forces many of the cables to run close together, and there are about 50 repairs to these things done each year all over the world.
Personally, my bets are on an angry Kraken.
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Stacey,
What worries more then who cut them – are the results. As I wrote in a post on my blog yesterday – “The Day the Internet Went Down” http://flatplanetphone.com/wordpress/?p=471
The real problem is our dependency on hosted applications and data.
Personally, my main communications are on Gmail, Facebook and IM. They are all hosted. I back up all my email to… Gmail. What will happen on the day the internet goes down??
Coincidence? I for one don’t believe in 5 separate coincidences
When two cables were severed, I joked with a friend in Saudi Arabia that “they” want to replace it with systems more suited for snooping. Now, five!;the joke is on me. Hey, it is the Middle East, nothing happens by accident in that region. Imagine five cables severed for US; we would have been on Def-Con 4. Cheers!.
One cable cut is an accident.
Two cables cut are a coincident.
Three cables cut, maybe something’s going on.
Four cables cut, OK, something is going on and we just don’t know what and probably never will.
Five cables cut, see above.
…all happening in the span of 10 days and serving mostly the MidEast?
Have you ever heard of a book called “Blindman’s bluff”,
or about operation “Ivy Bells” – US submarines used to
enter soviet (territorial) waters and place listening
devices on under-sea cables.
Is someone snooping on internet / other communication?
An accident cut five cables?
I agree that five cable cuts in such a short timespan is highly suspicious, but I think this is more a case of fragile infrastructure than targeted destruction. At least I hope that’s what it is.
you missed another likely culprit…see my post at
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com/deal_architect/2008/02/cyber-wars.html
Apart from natural jokes on conspiracy theories, one shall try to figure out whether cable cuts where results of classical business-level over-optimizations (e.g. cost cuts on O&M) before looking into more profound question like “quo product” from major switch of Asian ISPs from European undersea cable branch to alternatives.
No matter what we say, the truth will probably never surface. Best thing to do is to back-up valuable files locally and regularly. Recent events prove that a few large pipelines can cause huge problems and a more distributed approach with lots of alternative roots is necessary.
http://electronrun.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/undersea-cable-damage-hammers-internet-connectivity-in-egypt-and-india/
Wow, as many as 50 repairs a year world wide? That’s like, one a week, for the entire globe. I’m not sure how this is supposed to make anyone feel better about 4 in one week within a single region. These cables do run close together in some spots, but the damage has not all been in one location. I work in this industry. This is extremely rare. Given the political and religious climate of the region, and the absolute rarity of this event, I am personally convinced that this was no accident, especially when we are fed obviously false information about how it happened. I’m not willing to sign up to any one conspiracy theory, but we need to think about other reasons someone would do this besides making the Internet really slow for some people. Where is the traffic being rerouted to? Do those countries have the ability to tap network traffic? I bet they do.