Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions | Hacker News Reader

Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

reuters.com

108 pointsorrsella47 comments

BBC [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

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable

[4] http://blog.zulyusof.com/?p=135

[5] http://news.priyo.com/tech/2011/08/06/bangladesh-experience-...

As 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

bedan feshk gamd

OMG! I am not going to lie, but you two made my day. Egyptian profanity jokes on HN. Haha.

Interesting 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

Official page? http://www.mmc.gov.eg

(compare that to 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/

Apparently last week another Egyptian ISP had an issue as well: 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

Also discovered that a lot of Egyptian websites have not had any updates to their news pages since late 2012.

> 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.

  Possible 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.

It'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.

But who? The cables are Egypt Telecom- the monopoly carrier. So cutting it hurts everyone inside Egypt.

Not 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.

The forces of ignorance and oppression always gain by reducing access to information.

Several 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.

It could be gang-related - an Internet protection racket.

Sometimes disruption is enough to achieve a goal, I would definitely not discount domestics.

Might be old media, or their masters.

Consider the activities we saw and still see in Syria. What government wants the easy exchange of information, namely pictures, when its suffering internal strife?

You could also with countries whose access is limited to one or two points threaten them economically.

No, it doesn't hurt everyone inside Egypt. I don't think you understand the extent to which Salafist thought has penetrated the Muslim world. It is by definition traditional and also by its very nature inward looking and isolationist. The idea of cutting off Egypt from the influence of the outside world is enormously appealing to such folks.

Indeed, this was the fundamental demand of al qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, for the west to halt contact with the Islamic world and stop influencing it.

Israelis

I 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

Seacom 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.

Most South African ISPs do that already, you just noticed it less. They stick transparent caching proxies in front of HTTP[s]/FTP

My 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.

It's probably much easier to quietly splice a cable when someone else is caught severing it elsewhere.

What would be the motive?

Eavesdropping.

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)

But that doesn't explain why they were cutting it.

I 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.

This is more the NSA's territory and they avoid splicing if at all possible and instead shave the cable.

Necessary link: Operation Ivy Bells http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/ivybells.html

Also, everyone read the book "Blind Man's Bluff"

You don't have to go back that far https://www.google.com/search?q=undersea+fiber+optics+tapped

The first thought that popped into my head was Dirk Pitt.

I suspect the infamous Mossad Shark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-related_animal_conspirac...

How did they get the backhoe running down there?

They borrowed an amphibious backhoe from the Navy.

<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>

This is the most low-tech DDOS ever!

Wouldn't it just be a DOS since it's one cut?

The first 'D' is for 'Drastic' :)

No actually it's for 'Distributed'.

Hoping to disrupt the telecommunication monopoly? Har har har...

what were they using to cut those wires? thats not a cat5 down there.

They thought there might be copper wires in there that they could sell for scrap. :P

Other 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.

H2/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.

WestCoastJustin says they're 2.7 inches. That's small enough you could probably use a large pair of bolt cutters.

since the arab spring, cable plans for routes diverse and not reliant on an Egypt drop have gotten some serious momentum behind them.

and we thought the internet is slow in Pakistan because of the DDOS attack Cloudflare has been harping about.

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