Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 49 posts

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#21

Post by j-g-faustus »

gkanai wrote: post #9
richardjordan wrote: post #5

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.

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.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#22

Post by duaneb »

gkanai wrote: post #9
richardjordan wrote: post #5

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.

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

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#25

Post by willvarfar »

ck2 wrote: post #13

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.

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

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

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#26

Post by Someone »

tsotha wrote: post #17
ck2 wrote: post #13

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.

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)

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#28

Post by daniel-levin »

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.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#29

Post by rorrr »

gkanai wrote: post #9
richardjordan wrote: post #5

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.

Anybody who is anti-knowledge. Historically, religious are a suspect.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#30

Post by james2vegas »

daniel-levin wrote: post #28

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 nothin…

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