Sunday Times 2
Three men arrested by the Egyptian army for ‘cutting undersea cable’
View(s):By Amanda William
Three men have been arrested by the Egyptian army for apparently trying to cut through an undersea Internet cable. A patrol stopped a fishing boat near the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and arrested three divers, an army spokesman said on his official Facebook page.
It is believed they were trying to cut through an SEA-ME-WE 4 undersea cable – one of the main connections between Asia and Europe, running from France to Malaysia and linking Italy, north Africa, the middle east and south Asia. If the men had been successful, experts warned they could have taken an ‘entire continent offline’, but interruptions were reported around the region, including Dubai and India, today.
A picture of the three men who are believed to have been arrested in connection with the incident, which the Egyptian army has posted on Facebook
The men were reportedly just 750metres off the shore of Alexandria when they were caught. No indication of who the men were or what their motive for cutting the cable was. It is also unclear how much damage was done. Then, Egyptian web traffic was cut by around 75 per cent until the cable was repaired.
News of the men’s arrest comes after a bitter feud between two online companies – a group which aims to block unwanted emails known as ‘spam’ and a firm accused of sending them – has already been blamed for days of disruption for internet users, in the biggest cyber-attack ever launched.
Spam-fighting organisation Spamhaus said it has been subjected to a massive cyber-attack, apparently from Dutch company Cyberbunker which it black-listed earlier this month. At its peak, Cyberbunker clogged up 300 gigabits per second of the Internet, it has been reported.
But if the men had been successful in their undersea sabotage attempt, it would have effectively switched off 1.28 terabits – four times as much bandwidth- and with nothing more high-tech than an axe, Quartz.com claims. It said: ‘Most big countries have several redundant cables landing on their shores.
‘But the loss of even a single one means that all the traffic must be jammed through remaining connections, causing congestion.
‘And there is nothing to stop determined attackers from targeting several cables. Indeed, since many cables go through geographic chokepoints like the Suez, it wouldn’t be difficult to disrupt a whole bunch of connections in a brief period of time.’
In the past week there have been several reports of severed cables off the coast of Egypt that are part of Seacom, a network of cables serving much of Africa. Business Standard, of India, reports many using Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Tata Communications and state-run Bharat Sanhar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) had witnessed disruption or a slower speed during the past few days as a result of the recent fibre optic cable breaks off the Egyption coast, close to Alexandria.
It reports the fibre optics which were cut include Europe India Gateway (EIG), Telecom Egypt North (TEN), South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SMEWE4), India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE). It had been thought that ships had accidentally caught the cables, but there are now concerns there could be a concerted effort to take down Egypt’s connectivity, although it has not been confirmed whether the incidents are connected.
© Daily Mail, London
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