Intellectual Property Law

UN Official Feeds Cable Cut Sabotage Speculation

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

The five underseas cables that were cut or went out of service in the Middle East in recent weeks might have been sabotaged, an officer at the International Telecommunication Union told the Agence France-Presse.

"We do not want to preempt the results of ongoing investigations, but we do not rule out that a deliberate act of sabotage caused the damage to the undersea cables over two weeks ago," the UN agency's head of development, Sami al-Murshed, told AFP.[...]

Some experts doubt the prevailing view that the cables were cut by accident, especially as the cables lie at great depths under the sea and are not passed over by ships," Murshed said on the sidelines of a conference on cyber-crime held in Gulf state of Qatar.

Or in the immortal words of the Beastie Boys, "I Can't Stand It. I Know You Planned It. Listen All of Y'all, It's Sabotage!"

The rash of cuts to underwater fiber optic telecommunications carriers set the nets ablaze with theories that included Al Qaeda trying to reduce Western influence, the NSA creating cover for its wiretapping submarine the USS Jimmy Carter, and a U.S. military attack on the Iranian's oil stock exchange.

Al-Murshed's comments could revive speculation, which was dampened when FLAG Telecom reported it found a large abandoned anchor next to the first cable it fixed.

Stephan Beckert of TeleGeography hopes it does not, saying that his company keeps in very close touch with the companies that run and fix telecom cables and they haven't heard anything yet about sabotage.

"To my mind, it is just speculation," Beckert said. "There is no point in ruling anything out, but I don't think speculation does anyone any good."

"Cable Cut Fever" gripped the net in early February, with even Slashdot falsely reporting that Iran's internet connection had gone dark.

But the timing did even raise the suspicions of security and networking expert Steven Bellovin -- who happens also to be a Columbia University computer science law professor.

Bellovin ran down several possible theories on his blog, and then concluded "So ? I don't know what happened. As a security guy, I'm paranoid, but I don't understand the threat model here. On the other hand, four accidental failures in a week is a bit hard to swallow, too. Let's hope there will be close, open examination of the failed parts of the cables."

Note: TeleGeography has a really cool looking map of the world's underseas cables, but for those of you without $250 to shell out for one -- you can download a desktop wallpaper version.

See Also:

• Five Ton Anchor Caused Cable Cut
• Fiber Optic Cable Cuts Isolate Millions From Internet, Future Cuts ...
• Vietnamese Fishermen Charged With Harvesting Fiber Optic Cable
• Cable Cut Fever Grips the Web

Full post as published by Threat Level on February 19, 2008 (boomark / email).