Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions • Hacker News Board

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#41

Post by mercurial » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 11:26 AM UTC

j-g-faustus wrote: post #21

gkanai wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#42

Post by pyvpx » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 12:35 PM UTC

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

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#43

Post by Validus » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 12:37 PM UTC

kislayverma wrote: post #27

duaneb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

No actually it's for 'Distributed'.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#44

Post by michaelt » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 12:52 PM UTC

ewams wrote: post #7

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) Po…

  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.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#45

Post by josemariaruiz » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 1:38 PM UTC

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).

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#46

Post by aubergene » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 1:50 PM UTC

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

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#47

Post by chiph » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 2:24 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #6

orenmazor wrote: post #4

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.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#48

Post by lmm » Thu, Mar 28, 2013, 2:31 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #31

Someone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Egypt catches divers cutting Internet cable amid disruptions

#49

Post by ucee054 » Fri, Mar 29, 2013, 12:41 AM UTC

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.

Israelis