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Satellite IDs Ships That Cut Cables
1sockchuck writes "Undersea telecom cable operator Reliance Globalcom was able to use satellite images to identify two ships that dropped anchor in the wrong place, damaging submarine cables and knocking Middle East nations offline in early February. The company used satellite images to study the movements of the two ships, and shared the information with officials in Dubai, who impounded the two vessels. The NANOG list has a discussion of where Reliance might have obtained satellite images to provide that level of detail. Google News links more coverage of the developments."
And here I was being made to feel like a regular fool for not being 99.99% positive (as "proven" by Bayes' theorem, no less) that the U.S. government (or others) were intentionally disrupting internet services to presumably stop the Iranian Oil Bourse.
I'll never understand how a technical-minded group such as slashdot that prides itself on objectivity and generally mocks blind faith can, at times, get so easily carried away.
-Grym
JERKS!!!!
Just think - the CIA/NSA/current administration somehow managed to purchase foreign-flagged ships of the line from arguably 'enemy' countries, hiding said purchases from both those governments, our own goverment, and the rest of the world, and then they somehow managed to get them to drop their anchors in just the places needed to cut the proper cables lying submerged on the seabed. They pulled all this off successfully - until YOU managed to figure it out.
Brilliant!
Huh? Occam who???
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Indian officer held for undersea cable damage
http://www.ibnlive.com/news/indian-officer-held-for-undersea-cable-damage/63234-3.html
The conspiracy nuts are pitiful. I used to think they were all on the right, but now I know there are just as many if not more on the left.
Seriously, when it comes to technology slashdot is collectively pretty intelligent; but when it comes to paranoia and politics, slashdot collectively drops down to the IQ of a two year old.
Qxe4
Is it your years in the CIA or your years in the conspiracy nutjob section of the bookstore that make you so knowledgeable?
GMane is a *far* easier interface to read than whatever nanog's official archive uses:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.operators.nanog/54752
It was Iraq and North Korea!
Except the second ship was South Korean, our ally. North Korea only has a handful of blue water ships. South Korea, electronics manufacturer to the world, has many.
When in doubt, "Korean" mean South Korean.
Well you finally solved it...
1. Create Paranoia on Slashdot
2. Make and Sell Tinfoil Hats
3. Profit
It is so incredibly easy to cut cables and once someone does it, everybody will and everybody loses.
MAD: Mutually Assured Disconnection
Hence, nobody does it.
A cable gets cut by accident every week of the year. So this time there were a couple grouped a bit closer both in time and geography. Big Deal.
The last report I saw into this suggested that it was the US because Iraq and Israel (the two main friends of the US in that region) were not impacted. This could either have been a test run for something else or a crafty excuse to re-route traffic from that region via the US (as actually happened) where the authorities have more chance of snooping on it. The reports into this were also pretty specific that sat data that was analysed at the time showed no vessels in the area of the break for 12 hours either side of the break.
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In other words, that's 50 deep-water cuts per year, in addition to some more shallow-water cuts per year.
Another expert puts it this way:
These statistics don't include power failures and other problems with cables that arise from the land side; if a switching station goes down then the cable goes dark, even if it's still intact.
That's quite likely, since South Korea build the most ships in the world.
c++;
I actually retract my statement above. It's not clear whether the ship is North or South Korean at this point. The only entry in the international ship registry matching an MT Ann ("Merchant Transport Ann") is a North Korean vessel.
5105 7320069 ANN HMZE6 Oil Products Tanker 22600 1973 12 Korea (North)
However, there's an "Ankuk" on the same list that's a South Korean ship that would also match:
5090 8130033 ANKUK NO. 7 Oil Products Tanker 2474 1982 06 Korea (South)
I'm no expert on ships, so it's possible I'm looking in all the wrong places. Or that there's a translation problem from Korean to English. Maybe somebody else has a better lead?
Tell that to my lecturer
If you take the layout of the deck and then compare it to ships in port at known times and locations it would be easy to ident. ships even with a meter resolution. The color and organization of shipping containers has got to be nearly as good a fingerprint even form space.
Applying the standard birthday paradox math, the probability that at least 2 of 50 cuts in a year fall on the same day is 97%. So the weird part is why these particular same day cuts were news. The odds of two cuts on the same day affecting the same country group are lower. It is harder to quantify "country group", however.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
I find your ideas intriguing. I would like to purchase stock in your "tinfoil hat" company.
You got TWO +5 Informatives by saying something and then retracting it? Oh wise one! Please teach me your ways.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
>>It's the responsibility of the Claimant to back-up his claim with references/citations.
Do you have any sources to back up this claim?
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.