Posted on 02/09/2008 8:52:55 PM PST by shield
Dang sharks playing with those laser beams again.
Most likely the cables were cut to force traffic through a more friendly route that could trap and read the data.
Or (more likely) while the cables were dead, a tap or transparent bridge was being installed [think Navy Seals] in another section. The tap theory sounds more plausible than the bridge, because even though it is undetectable, if the bridge goes down, it becomes immediately obvious. A tap just passively views the traffic but the downside is, you cannot invisibly manipulate the data like you can with a transparent bridge.
It seems like it'd be a lot easier to install a tap or transparent bridge (or both) , if the line is dead.
Another thing - when the three or four fibers were cut there was a lot of congestion when the traffic was routed around it. So it wouldn't be unexpected that those other routes would shut down momentarily from the surge in traffic. At least for the two minutes it would take to install taps on those.
February 2008 On February 4, the Iranian Cabinet approved the creation of the oil bourse in two stages - first a raw oil exchange and secondly an oil byproducts exchange. The Ministry of Finance and Economics, the Oil Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Central Bank of Iran are required to create a workgroup to coordinate the project, and the Iran Commodities Bourse Company is given the task of carrying out the project. The communique from the Cabinet states that the "Ministry of Finance and Economics is required to take measures in making the petrochemical byproducts bourse operational by the end of February 2008." [20]
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