A ship’s anchor lying at the bottom of the sea was behind one of two cuts last week in undersea Internet cables around the Middle East that caused dramatic outages across the region and in parts of Asia, the cable-owner company said Friday.
FLAG Telecom said its repair ship managed to recover one end of the cut FALCON cable in the Persian Gulf, 56 kilometers (35 miles) north of Dubai, between the Emirates and Oman.
At the site, FLAG’s repair crew discovered an abandoned anchor which the company said was behind the cut last Friday. The anchor, weighing more than 5 metric tons (5.5 U.S. tons), was pulled to the surface.
It was not immediately clear whether FLAG had any indication what vessel the anchor belonged to, or how such a heavy anchor could have moved to snap the cable or whether the cable itself was drifting and why.
At the time of the cut — the second in three days and involving three separate Internet cables — rough weather was reported in that part of the Gulf.
The unusual cuts led to disruptions in services, slowed businesses and hampered personal Internet usage. They also caused a flurry of Internet blogger speculation, including mentions of sabotage — allegations authorities and FLAG have refused to comment on.
“It is difficult to comment right now on this,” said a FLAG spokesman reached over the telephone. “We are doing our own investigation.” He spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with company policy.
Ovum analyst Matt Walker said undersea cable networks are highly vulnerable to deliberate attack and need enhanced security.
“If ports, railways, gas pipelines and other types of networks are being secured against possible sabotage, we must similarly increase the security of undersea optical highways,” said Walker.
The cuts also underlined potential threats that disrupted Internet connectivity could pose to…