The Guardian: Armenia 2011 internet outage among weirdest in the world

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korea suffered an internet outage lasting almost 10 hours in the wake of a row with the U.S. over a cyber-attack against Sony Pictures, the Guardian says when describing weirdest web shutdowns around the world.

Washington blamed the hacking on the secretive state – in allegations countered by strong denials from the North Koreans – and promised retribution.

While it is not known if the shutdown was the result of U.S. action or caused by something else, history shows web access can be cut for all sorts of unlikely reasons.

In 2011 a 75-year-old Georgian woman scavenging for copper to sell as scrap accidentally sliced through an underground cable with her spade and cut off internet services to all of neighboring Armenia, the Guardian reminds.

The woman, soon labeled “the spade hacker” by local media, was digging near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, when she damaged the fiber-optic cable. Georgia provides 90% of Armenia’s internet, meaning the bulk of the nation lost all access for up to five hours. The damage was detected by a system monitoring the fiber-optic link from western Europe and a security team was sent to the spot, where the woman was arrested.

While land-based cables are usually better protected, those running under the sea are seen as vulnerable, mainly to accidental damage.

In 2008 web and phone access was impaired in much of the Middle East on two occasions after a cable under the Mediterranean was damaged. The first time, in January, a ship’s anchor was believed to have been the culprit. Later in the year engineers sent out an underwater robot after three cables were damaged, either by an earthquake or a trawler net.

More unusually, last year Egypt’s navy arrested three men alleged to have deliberately cut undersea cables off the country’s coast, causing a big drop in web speeds. The men reportedly said they cut the cable in error.

Sometimes cables just break – in September this year web access in south-east Asia was affected after a 12,000-mile cable under the Pacific, connecting the region with the U.S., suffered a fault.

And sometimes government action can also be to blame. In 2012 the Syrian government was widely accused of being behind a near-total web blackout in the country – seemingly caused to prevent rebels spreading propaganda images of the country’s civil war.