http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/mediterranean-c.html By Kim Zetter Threat Level Wired.com December 19, 2008 Reports from the Mediterranean indicate that two of the undersea cables severed and repaired earlier this year have been cut again, disrupting internet access and phone service between the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia. An additional third cable is down in the same region. The cuts are causing traffic to be re-routed through the United States and elsewhere. Egypt's communications ministry tells the Associated Press that the outage has almost completely killed internet services throughout Egypt. A second report indicates that the three cables that are out include the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable (also known as SMW4), which went out at 7:28 a.m. local time Friday morning; SEA-ME-WE 3, which went down at 7:33 a.m.; and the FLAG EA cable, which went out at 8:06 a.m. The cables were cut in the region where they run under the sea between Egypt and Italy. They carry an estimated 90 percent of all data traffic between Europe and the Middle East. SMW 3 and SMW 4 are owned by groups of phone companies; FLAG is owned by Reliance Globalcom. The SMW 4 and FLAG cables were among five undersea cables damaged earlier this year in January and February in the Mediterranean, launching a flurry of conspiracy theories before investigations revealed that at least one of the cuts was caused by a ship's anchor. When those cables went down, SMW 3 was used to re-route traffic. But this time, SMW 3 is reportedly involved in the outage as well. [...] _______________________________________________ Help InfoSecNews.org with a donation! http://www.infosecnews.org/donate.htmlReceived on Mon Dec 22 2008 - 01:27:22 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Mon Dec 22 2008 - 01:34:52 PST