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Divers captured while trying to cut undersea optic cables
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/27/egypt_cables_cut_arrest/
I am not sure how reliable source Theregister is, but if this is true - it brings DoS attacks to a whole new level 
"Why do we need to send you hundreds of gigabits of traffic when we can just cut your cables..."
Comments
That'd be fun to repair.
And untraceable too.
Its true, I think http://renesys.com/ reported on it too
New service found at Hack Forums Premium
wow, cable cutter :P again?
nice find
I wonder why they wanted to cut internet off to egypt.
New kind of DOS.
@raindog308
D-Dumb
O-optic
S-sawing
WTF?
You know this sort of thing isn't new... How many sea cables have ended up "snagged" by sea vessels? Accidents, right... I dropped anchor and took the interwebs down.
These guys in an inflatable dinghy scuba diving? Possible, but can't be very deep water there and repair wouldn't be that hard.
It wouldn't be that easy, either. Some years ago a backhoe accidentally dug up and broke the fiber optic cable that ran 2.5 kilometers between our headquarters building with all of the main computers, and the building that housed over 200 engineers who depended on that connection. The company paid a lot to fly a specialist across the country to repair the cable in the middle of the night.
I assume that splicing fiber optic cable has gotten easier since then, but repairing a broken underwater fiber optic cable bundle can't be that easy or cheap, even in relatively shallow depths.
^ I only said easy since dudes in a dinghy have real finite dive range. That water isn't real deep where they were.
I expect there to be slack and other means to up and outing fiber underwater. These things are anchored so tight or they'd break all the time with under sea currents.
I'm gonna save up for a boat!
^ @BronzeByte with that inflatable dinghy and the worlds biggest anchor.. Damn, that ship has b@lls.
Fixing a underwater splice probably requires a full sever of the cable so it can be brought up on the ship to splice in a new section, unless they've invented a bell system to drop on the cable to let the guy work, but the air pressure at depth could be a problem.
Of course the cable is brought up on the repair ship and spliced there.
Here is an animation of how it's done:
Yeppers @rds100. Cable slack is likely sometimes the problem with "snags".
I'd think wireless / microwave would be used moreso out across water... Yeah, still limits... but no snags or crazy divers..
Those ships to do repairs... well all ships are mighty thirsty on fuel. Not cheap to operate....
Yeah, not to mention that it usually takes several weeks to repair. There are no repair ships waiting on stand by in every port... probably just several such ships in the world.
So depending on where the ship is and whether it is currently busy with other things the repair can take quite some time.
By the way wireless over the water doesn't work well. And doesn't have terabits capacity either. Not to mention that because of the earth curvature you would need some quite tall towers on the shore at larger distance.
Right on @rds100... But major port cities tend to have booming towers.. Not a guarantee though, but other umm floating airbound aircraft capable of deflecting/repeating.
Those ships have be in short number. Niche customer base.