Egypt finds no ships in area of cable cuts and unconfirmed reports of problems with a fourth cable
The UK Press Association is reporting that Egyptian authorities no longer believe that a ship at anchor is responsible for the recent fiber cuts affecting much of the Middle East.
No ships were present when two marine cables carrying much of the Middle East's internet traffic were severed, Egypt's Ministry of Communications has said, contrary to earlier speculation about the causes of the cut.
The ministry had originally stated that a ship dropping its anchor on the two key cables was most likely responsible for Wednesday's cut in service that robbed Egypt, Saudi Arabia and India of most of their internet connections.
"A marine transport committee investigated the traffic of ships in the area, 12 hours before and after the malfunction, where the cables are located to figure out the possibility of being cut by a passing vessel and found out there were no passing ships at that time," said the statement.
There are also unconfirmed reports of minor problems with a fourth cable.
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Comments: 4
[02.04.08 11:45 AM]
Oh, nevermind, you've already run that conspiracy theory in another entry. So apparently there's conspiracy theory consensus. Weird. Has that ever happened before?
[02.04.08 12:07 PM]
I don't think it's the US, as we have probably already installed our taps and it would have been a momentary outage if it was detected at all.
[02.05.08 12:39 AM]
It makes you realise how vulnerable the whole global Internet connection is - doesn't it?
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Anonymous Coward [02.04.08 10:21 AM]
So, essentially, someone's cutting the cables with submarines. Either someone wants to disrupt communications or intercept them. Either way, sounds like its the United States.
I'm inclined to go with "intercept". If you cut the cable first, you have all the time in the world to set up the intercept, and the device can probably be placed anywhere along a rather big cable without anyone noticing while the cable is dark. It's certainly something the United States is more than capable of pulling off, and we've got plenty of motive.