New topic: What do you think about the Internet outage in the ME and Asia today?

[PinkTiger]

"High-technology services across large tracts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa were crippled Thursday following a widespread Internet failure which brought many businesses to a standstill and left others struggling to cope..."

Link:http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/31/dubai.outage/index.html

I feel there is something more sinister here than a cable cut. Could this have been a test of a high-tech "information bomb?" (My term - not sure what this would be called.) And who, or what, would have done this? And why? I can think of no better way to isolate a group of people than to destroy their Internet connection, take away their cell phone connections, etc. You can pull the plugs on them, but they can get generators. But if you take away the very connection itself, a generator does no good.

[I Have A Dream]

1. I was wondering the same thing, PinkTiger.

I hope that we're just being paranoid. I prefer that to the alternative. :(

(I'm now going to visualize the Earth's people living freely and happily.)

[rumpel]

2. perhaps

and if so - one possibility could be to stall the markets

from exodus of investment in $ and the US -

Imagine Mr. Al Waleed et al seeking Euro instead of $? The $ was free-falling until yesterday - across the board except against the Yen.

[PinkTiger]

3. Oh, good call. Test secret weapon and still the market,

all at one flick of the switch.
Hmmmm.

[Dover]

4. Interesting. But that seems like a very short fix. Won't it just keep falling

once they fix it?

I think we will likely see more sabotage like this. Is it better than traditional war?
Well, it certainly costs less.

[japple]

7. Yeah, Rumpel, I think you're right about this--a little

stalling tactic. It won't work though. The whole thing is going to crash at some point. The powers that be think they can get their stuff protected and get out of town before it happens, though.

[Celebration]

5. now a third cable?

Third undersea Internet cable cut in Mideast

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/?iref=hpmostpop

This is weird. It's like the news people think this is a coincidence or something. Fine for the first two, but this one isn't near.

[AZBlue]

6. Could be a test for a "fire sale" or cyber-terrorism

There have been other incidents previously that could be part of a test as well, including wide-spread electricity outages not brought on by weather or other explainable phenomena. Cyber-terrorism can be more specific, but the idea of a "fire sale" is hitting everything at once, thereby shutting down a town, state, country and its economy. Just imagine the chaos if everything shut down at once. It's a very scary concept.

(some say the term "fire sale" was coined for the movie Die Hard or Live Free, but I know I'd heard of it as well as the concept before that ever came out)

[rumpel]

8. I had to quickly google how deep these things are

that as reportedly a ship's anchor can not only damage but snap it...

some graphics here
http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_cable/index.php

going back to lie down....

one more:

4. ANCHOR THREATS Anchors are used for a wide variety of tasks ranging from the positioning of f@ing gear through to the mooring of large merchant ships and the permanent fixture of offshore platforms used in the oil industry. We have even encountered a fault caused by a meteorological buoy dragging its anchor, although such events are rare. The threat to undersea cable from such diverse applications differs widely and is discussed in more detail in this section, with the emphasis again placed on seabed penetration. However, statistics do indicate that the threat from anchors diminishes siuuply with water depth to around 150 metres, beyond which anchor faults are virtually unknown.

from one of their pdf's

http://www.scig.net/

[libodem]

10. sounds like a type of economic hit

a cyber hit to be specific..I would be surprised if it weren't done by CIA or some American interest. Could it be Dick?

[Celebration]

9. new DU thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2810827

[Dover]

11. Cables NOT cut but taken 'offline'?

So IF the cables were NOT cut, what are these repair ships actually doing?

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/0158249

--------------------------------------

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/0158249

...The cause of damage is not yet known, but ArabianBusiness.com has been told unofficially the problem is related to the power system and not the result of a ship's anchor cutting the cable, as is thought to be the case in the other three incidents.

[I Have A Dream]

12. Here's another one...

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?no_d2=1&sid=08/02/06/1431206

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theuae/2008/February/theuae_February155.xml§ion=theuae

[villager]

13. I notice Egypt checked for cable damage/ship traffic off Alexandria...

...seat of the ancient trading crossroads and library, seat of "communication" in the world for hundreds of years?

One of those odd cosmic "twists?" Something intentional?

[MorningGlow]

14. A new twist, stateside

It was just reported today that one of our local colleges, Rochester Institute of Technology, saw all its inbound Web traffic get switched to "somewhere overseas" for more than an HOUR yesterday. Nobody knows how it happened. Apparently it happened to four other universities around the world at the same time, but the news report I heard didn't name the others.

The kicker? RIT is a huge recruiting ground for CIA. Lots of links to government activity.

http://www.local12.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoId=[e-mail]&navCatId=5