Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

Sat Feb 2 01:48:44 UTC 2008

: bubba driving his backhoe ship

Now that'd make a great NANOG shirt!  :-)

scott

--- ops.lists at gmail.com wrote:

From: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <ops.lists at gmail.com>
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb at cs.columbia.edu>
Cc: "Scott Francis" <darkuncle at gmail.com>, nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2008 07:09:50 +0530

On Feb 2, 2008 4:07 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb at cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
> Yah.  I'm a security guy, and hence suspicious by nature -- our slogan
> is "Paranoia is our Profession" -- and I'm getting very concerned.  The
> old saying comes to mind: "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence,
> but the third time is enemy action".  The alternative some common mode
> failure -- perhaps the storm others have noted.

Quite a few other lists I look at (especially those with a "critical
infrastructure protection" type focus - seem to feel the same as you
do.  And at least one list has already started the "maybe al qaeda is
behind this" idea running.

The fun part is that quite a lot of these cables are in international
waters, so it just might turn into a high level multiple UN agency
conference, sooner or later with ideas like a bunch of navy or coast
guard cutters tasked to patrol on the borders of cable landing areas
and head off shipping that wants to anchor, trawlers that want to drag
nets across the ocean floor, bubba driving his backhoe ship .. [and
that still doesnt keep away sharks that want to sharpen their teeth on
undersea cables...]

srs