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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