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Monday, February 04, 2008

5TH Internet cable cut:, 1.7 million

IRAN: thru singapore

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USA needs a "Internet protection force"

DUBAI - An estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected due to the recent cable cuts, an expert said on February 4, quoting recent figures published by TeleGeography, an international research website.

Internet data was majorly affected as it is the biggest capacity carried by the undersea cables. However, all voice calls, corporate data and video traffic were also affected.

Two du experts briefed the media on the current methods being undertaken by the telecom provider to re-route the Internet traffic to provide normalcy to the users.

Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, "The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, 6 million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia."

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

The first cut in the undersea Internet cable occurred on January 23, in the Flag Telcoms FALCON submarine cable which was not reported. This has not been repaired yet and the cause remains unknown, explained Jaishanker.
More SOURCE:

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We first mentioned this new paradigm here, New threat to GWOT. 02.01.08 2:05 pm EST

And followed up with New WMD, related to this situation. 02.03.08 10:16 pm EST

Whom ever it is cutting these cables can work under water, even a diesel sub, with a special ops team or special munitions could be doing this.

How is it that both Flag Telecomand
SEA-ME-WEA 4 cables
(above and below) were severed within hours of each other, although
Marseille, France and Alexandria, Egypt, are hundreds of miles apart?

AT LEAST 2 SUBS.

( ArabianBusiness.com was told on Sunday by unofficial sources that the problem is related to a power system and not a physical break in the cable, as is thought to be the case in three international incidents earlier in the week. ??? unconfirmed )

Cutting the ME off from the Internet would hamper the Military forces in the region.

I expect USA is marshaling all the anti-sub forces in this region to this region.

This is cut number 5 and there is no reason to expect it will stop soon.
As slow as they are going they must have great confidence in their invisibility and
or defensive capabilities.
And taking them out maybe a signal for the next phase.
Almost 90 per cent of Internet traffic is routed through undersea cables and only 10 per cent is done through the satellite.

We enter a new phase of Internet WAR.
Whether this is an attack or not, it is known and must now be planed for.
Who needs to be watched?
Any one with a sub force ( +300 subs? )that can range the world and take out enough cables simultaneously to take down the web.
OR:
Subs in combination with bots.

Gerald

TeleGeography is proud to announce a new edition of its popular Submarine Cable Map. The 2008 edition includes information for over 120 submarine cable systems, including major systems that are in service as well as announced cable systems expected to join a reinvigorated cable market. All data contained in the map is drawn from our Global Bandwidth Research Service, our definitive guide to the supply, demand and pricing of international bandwidth.
SOURCE:

The history and explanation can be founded here: submarine communication cable.

high-res pdf of global submarine fiber optics: http://www1.alcatel-lucent.com/submarine/refs/World_Map_2007_LR.pdf

Map most impacted countrys.

The FLAG cut is reported to have taken place 8.3 kilometers (5.2 miles) from
Alexandria beach in northern Egypt.

The SEA-ME-WEA 4<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4_%28cable_system%29>cable
was damaged
in the waters off Marseille,
France<http://www.news.com/Two-communication-cables-in-the-Mediterranean-are...>,
reports C/Net. The two cables, which are separately managed and operated,
were damaged within hours of each other.
<http://www.vsnlinternational.com/map/>

How is it that both Flag
Telecom<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-Optic_Link_Around_the_Globe>and
SEA-ME-WEA
4 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEA-ME-WE_4_%28cable_system%29> cables
(above and below) were severed within hours of each other, although
Marseille, France and Alexandria, Egypt, are hundreds of miles apart? At
this point, details are sketchy and the cause is still unclear.
<http://www.vsnlinternational.com/map/>

VSNL has a terrific interactive global cable
map<http://www.vsnlinternational.com/map/>(above), while the
SEA-ME-WEA 4 map <http://www.seamewe4.com/> (below) shows the distance to
France. VSNL <http://www.vsnlinternational.com/map/>,

Cable cut History:

The magnitude 7.1 earthquake was followed by one of the largest disruptions
of modern telecommunications history.
<http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/01/14/fiber-crosses-the-pond/>

Nine submarine cables in the Strait of Luzon, between Taiwan and the
Philippines, were broken thus disabling vital connections between SE Asia
and the rest of the world. China
Telecom<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Telecom>reported that
several international submarine communications cables had been
broken, including:

Work begins to repair severed net (BBC)

- 3 hours ago
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Al Qaeda deep sea divers!

They hide in underwater caves!

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Cable repair ships, photos

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REPAIR SCHEDUAL

Behalf Of Sanghani, Bijal
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 1:26 AM

Subject: [menog] FLAG Cable Cut - Update

Dear All,

Thought I'd give you all an update on where we (FLAG) are with the cable cuts -

FEA Segment D - The Cable ship CS Certamen is now expected to arrive at the Alexandria repair ground on Wednesday 6th February. A Permit for the repair is currently being expedited with the Egyptian authorities.

FEA Segment M - The cable ship CS Asean Restorer has been booked for this repair. It is currently out on an APCN repair and with current plan will be ready to start any work on our cable on or after 11th Feb. We have the OTDR traces from Penang and see that the fault is around 28km out from the station.

FALCON Segment 7b (Bandra Abbas - Al Seeb) - E-Marine continues to await the permit to enter the Iranian waters and current forecast for the ship to start a work is around 19th February.

FALCON Segment 2 - Fault 1st February 41km from repeater, which is between the first two repeaters out of Dubai toward Muscat (Al Seeb). The ship has left Abu Dhabi and is on route to the repair ground. The repair is expected to start in the next 12 hours (weather permitting).

FALCON Segment 7a - Fault 1st February between BND (Bandar Abbas, Iran) and KWI (Kuwait), we are waiting for ship to go out and it maybe fixed before going out the fault on 7b - to be confirmed.

I hope this helps,

Regards,

Bijal Sanghani

Sr. IP Technical Support Engineer

Technical Services Group

FLAG Telecom

Tel. +442 082 *** ***

www.flagtelecom.com

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 8.1

iQA/AwUBR6hEeb/UEA/xivvmEQL5YgCg9tX2lZmq937MhRd65qm0wk9EYP UAniED
VAxSCsr92aysSkrs6dGspaVm
=45sb
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FALCON is a submarine telecommunications cable connecting India and several countries in the Persian Gulf. The cable is operated by India's Flag Telecom, a fully-owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications.

Landing points are:^[1]

Suez, Egypt
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Al Hudaydah, Yemen
Al Ghaydah, Yemen
Al Seeb, Oman
Khasab, Oman
Doha, Qatar
Manama, Bahrain
Ad Dammam, Saudi Arabia
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Mumbai, India

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Strange:

Hasn't even mentioned this.

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Abandoned Anchor Cut Gulf Internet Cable
FLAG says a 5.5 ton anchor found near cable break is believe to be the cause for one cable break. But the others...?
.
..

.

Labels: 1.7 million, 5TH, cable, cut:, internet, uae

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Friday, February 01, 2008

Third Internet undersea cable cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

"It seems now to be way beyond the realm of coincidence that a further 4th critical international communications cable should break within seven days," one ArabianBusiness.com reader commented.

"Clearly Iran, who was most affected, would gain nothing from such an action and is perhaps the target of those responsible," said another reader.

Those theories were fuelled further on Monday when Egypt said damage to the cables in the Mediterranean Sea was not caused by ships, as previously thought.

Egypt's Transport Ministry said footage recorded by onshore video cameras of the location of the cables shows no maritime traffic in the area when the cables were damaged.

"The ministry's maritime transport committee reviewed footage covering the period of 12 hours before and 12 hours after the cables were cut and no ships sailed the area," a statement by the Communications Ministry said.

"The area is also marked on maps as a no-go zone and it is therefore ruled out that the damage to the cables was caused by ships."

It is not clear how badly Iran's internet access has been affected by the cable breaks.

The Iranian embassy in Abu Dhabi told ArabianBusiness.com that "everything is fine", but internet connectivity reports on the web, citing a router in Tehran, appear to indicate that there is currently no connection to the outside world.

Third undersea cable reportedly cut between Sri Lanka, Suez.

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)--A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.
Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged Wednesday leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.
"We had another cut today between Dubai and Muscat three hours back. The cable was about 80G capacity, it had telephone, Internet data, everything," one Flag official, who declined to be named, told Zawya Dow Jones.
The cable, known as Falcon, delivers services to countries in the Mediterranean and Gulf region, he added.

There are conflicting reports of how the two Alexandria cables were cut. Oman's largest telecom, Omantel, said a tropical storm caused the damage while the United Arab Emirates' second largest telecom, said the cables were cut due to ships dragging their anchors...

SOURCE:

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Asymmetric warfare?

all out bot net Pearl Harbor attack

An attack on USA forces Internet connections?

G
strange

GREAT FOLLOW UP hERE: Renesys Blog

UPDATE: EMAIL
> In a conversation w/ US Navy this morning, it was
> said that any ship over 300 metric tons is supposed
> to beacon who and what it is, and that the ships of
> interest, which are explicitly tracked at all times
> in any ocean, are those that do not. Ipso facto,
> it is either a small boat or who it was can be
> ascertained.
>

One imagines the NOSS satellites play a role here... (those are
the US classified birds that fly in formation of twos or threes)...

They locate (mostly marine) emitters very efficiently....

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Email:
Gerald, . Internet here in the Middle East is still very slow today, it’s taking 10 – 15 seconds to open a simple email message, and we are experiencing problems with phone connections. Officials I’ve spoken to say bad weather is likely to be the reason behind the cuts – not terrorism.

Best Regards,

Tahani Karrar

his article:

FOCUS: Weather Not Terror To Blame For Mideast Internet Cuts
Zawya Dow Jones Newswires

Monday, Feb 04, 2008

By Tahani Karrar

Of ZAWYA DOW JONES

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)--Bad weather not terrorism may be behind unexplained cuts to underwater cables that provide internet to more than 85 million users across the Middle East, according to telecommunications officials.

Internet and telephone users in India, Pakistan, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have been directly affected by the cuts in the underwater cables, which began last week.

"Cables are exposed to the danger of terrorist groups but at this moment we don't think these events are a result of that," a spokesperson for Flag Telecom, owner of two of the cut cables, told Zawya Dow Jones Monday.

Two submarine cables responsible for 75% of telecommunications between the Middle East and Europe -- FLAG Europe-Asia and SEA-ME-WE 4 -- were cut on Jan. 30, off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt.

Ships anchoring due to bad weather, not terrorism, are the likely cause of three consecutive submarine cable cuts linking the Middle East and South Asia to Europe and the U.S., the Flag spokesperson said.

A second Flag cable, known as FALCON, was cut between Dubai, U.A.E., and Muscat, Oman, on Feb. 1, an hour after Qatar Telecom's DOHA-HALOUL subsea cable was severed at 0500 GMT.

Terrorists and militants have targeted infrastructure such as oil facilities in the Middle East and Persian Gulf in an effort to disrupt the region's economy. A high profile attack in 2006 narrowly failed to blow up Saudi Arabia's giant Abqaiq oil complex.

The U.S. Embassy officials in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., dismissed suggestions that the simultaneous cable cuts in the Persian Gulf could be linked to terrorist activity.

The Persian Gulf has played a central role in linking east and west with telecommunications since the British established the first wire link between India and Europe in the 19th century via a a landing point near the Strait of Hormuz, known as Telegraph Island.

A Flag repair ship sailing from Catania, Italy, is expected to reach the FLAG Europe-Asia cable by Feb.5 as Egyptian Authorities expedite permits for the repair work.

It is expected to take up to two weeks to fix the cable.

The port of Abu Dhabi is closed due to bad weather and another repair ship will set sail to fix FALCON as soon as the weather clears. It may take ten days to fix the FALCON cable, according to the spokesperson.

The U.A.E.'s second-largest telecom company, known as du, said up to 80% of previous cable cuts in the region had been due to external causes such as ships dragging their anchors, fishing boats using trawling nets or general wear and tear due to cable movement along the sea bed.

"One reason could be the bad weather in the region at that time forced ships to anchor to stabilize themselves," said Khaled Tabbara, executive director of carrier relations at du.

Submarine cables usually last between 15 - 20 years before wear and tear is bad enough for them to warrant being changed. SEA-ME-WE 4 is a new cable which was launched in 2005.

-By Tahani Karrar, Dow Jones Newswires,

http://www.zawya.com/printstory.cfm?storyid=ZW20080204000086&l=000000080204

http://snipurl.com/1yy59

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On NANOG are reports of yet another submarine cable in the middle east that was damaged Sunday. It's a cable between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates.

Also interesting is that Egypt claims no ship were near two of the previous cable cuts.

Now even in the face of this many concurrent submarine cable losses, most will still have (reduced) service, so it's not a reason to panic just yet. See a.o. the renesys blog for reasons not to jump to conclusions too fast.

Still designing for a quadruple failure isn't the most trivial nor economical solution in all cases, especially not when dealing with expensive submarine links.

SOURCE:

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New class of WMD, ( RELATED)

Iran's Internet OUT, GONE. not,

5 th cable cut here: 02.04.08

.
.

Labels: Asymmetric, cable, internet, warfare

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New Threat to GWOT

From a members only group:
Emails:

> > http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html
> >
> > failure hits two continents
> > Story Highlights
> >
> > Extensive Internet failure has affected much of Asia, the Middle
> > East, north Africa
> >
> > A telecommunications provider blames the outage on a major cable failure
> >
> > It has caused major disruptions to business, television and phone services
> >
> > Several reports say damaged cable in the Mediterranean could take

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From CNN's Elham Nakhlawai and Mustafa Al Arab
> >
> > DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (CNN) -- Large swathes of Asia, the
> > Middle East and north Africa had their high-technology services
> > crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which
> > brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope.
> >
> > One major telecommunications provider blamed the outage, which
> > started Wednesday, on a major undersea cable failure in the Mediterranean.
> >
> > India's Internet bandwidth has been sliced in half, The Associated
> > Press reported, leaving its lucrative outsourcing industry trying to
> > reroute traffic to satellites and other cables through Asia.
> >
> > Reports say that Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United
> > Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain are also experiencing severe problems.
> >
> > Nations that have been spared the chaos include Israel -- whose
> > traffic uses a different route -- and Lebanon and Iraq. Many Middle
> > East governments have backup satellite systems in case of cable failure.
> >
> > An official at Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information
> > Technology, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was believed
> > that a boat's anchor may have caused the problems, although this was
> > unconfirmed, AP reported. He added that it might take up to a week to
> > repair the fault.
> >
> > Rajesh Chharia, president of India's Internet Service Providers'
> > Association, explained that some firms were trying to reroute via
> > Pacific cables and that companies serving the eastern US and the UK
> > were worst affected, AP added.
> >
> > Besides the Internet, the outage caused major disruption to
> > television and phone services, creating chaos for the UAE's public
> > and private sectors.
> >
> > There were contradicting reports on the real cause behind the
> > disruption, but Du, a state-owned Dubai telecom provider, attributed
> > it to an undersea cable cut in the Mediterranean Sea between
> > Alexandria, Egypt and Palermo, Italy.
> >
> > A Du internal memo, obtained by CNN, called the situation in Dubai
> > "critical" and stated that the cable's operators did not know when
> > services would be restored.
> >
> > "This will have a major impact on our voice and Internet service for
> > all the customers," the memo stated. "The network operation team are
> > working with our suppliers overseas to resolve this as soon as possible."
> >
> > The outage led to a rapid collapse of a wide range of public services
> > in a country which proudly promotes itself as technological pioneer.
> >
> > Sources from Emirates Airlines confirmed to CNN Arabic that the
> > outage did not affect its flight schedules -- a statement which
> > assured hundreds of travelers worried after rumors about the
> > possibility of rescheduled flights due to the faults.
> >
> > However, Dnata, a government group in charge of providing air travel
> > services in the Middle East and ground handling services at Dubai
> > International Airport, acknowledged facing problems because of the
> > outage, sources from its technical department confirmed to CNN Arabic.
> >
> > The outage heavily crippled Dubai's business section, which is
> > heavily reliant on electronic means for billions of dollars' worth of
> > transactions daily.
> >
> > Wadah Tahah, the business strategies and development manager for
> > state-owned construction company EMAAR, told CNN Arabic that it was
> > fortunate the outage started Wednesday, when there had been only
> > moderate activity in the UAE markets. He said that softened the blow
> > to business interests.
> >
> > But Tahah warned that if the outage continued, "such a situation
> > could create problems between brokers, companies, and investors due
> > to loss of control."

World Class, Professional, Ethical, and Competent Bug Sweeps, and
> > Wiretap Detection using Sophisticated Laboratory Grade Test Equipment.
> >
> ------------------------------

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> > James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803
> > Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467
> > 127 Eastern Avenue #291 Web: http://www.tscm.com/
> > Gloucester, MA 01931-8008
> >
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > We perform bug sweeps like it's a full contact sport, we take
> no prisoners,
> > and we give no quarter. Our goal is to simply, and completely stop the spy.

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At 08:57 PM 1/31/2008, kondrak wrote:

>They're now claiming it was "fishing trawlers", I'll wait to see where
>the cuts are exactly, if they're close to shore I can buy the fishing story.
>Seems we will have to wait a week is to find out.
>
>James M. Atkinson wrote:
> > Two similar mid span cable cuts... massive service outages,
> > suspicious circumstances.
> >
> > I would suspect that a grapple hook was involved and that someone
> > went fishing for this cable just so that they could cut them to
> > disrupt communications infrastructure.
> >
> > The ideal threat model is would be two boats grappling for one cable,
> > which they cut is two places about a mile apart. The two more boats
> > grappling for the cable on the secondary path(s) which they also cut
> > in two locations separated by about a mile. The "floating" one mile
> > segment that they isolate would then be towed some distance way from
> > the main cable and then dropped back to the sea floor thus leaving a
> > huge gap ensuring the outage lasted months, not days.
> >
> > By targeting both the primary and secondary cables (both sides of the
> > rings) the saboteurs could have completely blinded everything in the area.
> >
> > One major cable outage in a region can be blamed for an accident, two
> > in the same region is highly suspect.
> >
> >
> > -jma

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This brings up the possibility of even deisel powered subs torpedoing Internet cables around the World. How do we protect the cables? Harden them? replicate them with satellites?

Add this type of attack to a Internet Pearl Harbor attack, and we have a problem Huston.

Gerald
Internet Anthropologist

.

Labels: cable, internet, new, threat, to GWOT

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Monday, August 13, 2007

India Intel agancy RAW

Internet: PC's world wide.

Wednesday August 08 2007 12:24:34 PM BDT

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: Indian intelligence agencies not only eavesdrop on domestic
telephone lines but have also been intercepting international
communication traffic passing through the SEA-ME-WE submarine cable
connecting Western Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, in
violation of international laws. Set up in 2000, the cable is the main
source of connectivity for telephones and broadband Internet services
in the region. Major General VK Singh, former head of the Research and
Analysis Wing's (RAW) technical cell, claims that the agency has
procured interception-technology from France. The equipment has been
installed at the VSNL (India's overseas communication service) gateway
in Mumbai, he says.

Spilling the beans in his latest book "India's External

Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)," Gen Singh
says RAW, in its bid to emulate the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), has been unnecessarily tapping telephone traffic between, for
example, Germany and Japan.

The author also lashes out at the former NDA government for
going public with the famous interception of a telephone conversation
between Gen Pervez Musahrraf and his chief of staff, Lt Gen Mohammad
Aziz, to prove Pakistan's complicity in the Kargil war. Gen Singh
believes India may have won some brownie points with the United States
by going public with the intercepted conversation, but it led to
Pakistan immediately closing the satellite link between Beijing and
Islamabad, which RAW had been tapping into for quite some time. "It is
impossible to estimate the value of intelligence that would have been
obtained if the link had continued to be used," he writes.

Demanding parliamentary oversight over intelligence agencies, Gen
Singh says lack of accountability is the most glaring shortcoming of
RAW. Incompetent leadership as well as mistrust are also eating into
the credibility of the organisation.

Since RAW officials are not answerable to any outside agency, many
officers treat themselves as being above the law, and in fact as a law
unto themselves, he adds.

Labels: cable, inda, raw

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Internet Anthropologist Think Tank

Monday, February 04, 2008

5TH Internet cable cut:, 1.7 million

Work begins to repair severed net (BBC)

Friday, February 01, 2008

Third Internet undersea cable cut between Sri Lanka, Suez

New Threat to GWOT

Monday, August 13, 2007

India Intel agancy RAW

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