The biggest cyberattack ever, triggered by a dispute between Spamhaus and Cyberbunker, was done using a distrubuted denial of service (DDoS) attack. But relatively high-tech techniques are not the only way to severely slow down the global Internet. As it turns out, you can achieve the same damage, and probably even more, with an axe.
On Wednesday, three Egyptian divers were arrested when they were trying to cut off a SeaMeWe 4 undersea cable, one of the main Internet wires that connects countries throughout Europe and Asia, as reported by Reuters. While their motives are still unknown (although we can see their faces, uploaded by the Egyptian navy on Facebook), their action might be linked to a series of disruptions and severed connections suffered by SEACOM, an African submarine cable operator, in the last few weeks.
SEACOM hasn't confirmed whether the previous disruptions have been caused by sabotage or perhaps just malfunctions or careless ships that inadvertently cut off cables. Whatever the case, this is not the first time that the region has suffered these types of cuts, similar incidents were reported in 2008 as well.
As reported by Quartz, by cutting off an undersea cable like the one the three Egyptians were attempting to sever, you can basically completely switch off 1.28 terabits of data, four times as much data used in the Spamhaus attack. Taking out a cable like that would force the data to be re-routed through some of the other redundant cables than funnel Internet bits around the world. That can cause congestion and slowdowns.
You don't need to be a hacker or a deft Anonymous hacktivist to achieve widespread Internet disruption. Turn out, you might just need a scuba diving wetsuit, and an axe. And in case you're wondering, the list of cables connectiong countries and making the Internet the network of networks that it is today, is available online.