The two impaired undersea cables, which slowed Internet traffic from Asia to the US to a crawl last Thursday, are expected to be fully repaired next week.
Two Japanese repair boats arrived at the location of the incident over the weekend, said a China Telecom spokesperson in a telephone interview.
"It will take a week to repair the cables provided that weather conditions are fair," he said, adding that the completion date could be delayed by choppy waters.
The fault, which occurred on the China-US and SEA-ME-WE3 cables about 30 km off Shantou in China, could have been due to shipping vessels dragging their anchors along the sea bed, said telecommunications service provider Reach Communications spokesperson Martin Ratia.
According to the China Telecom spokesperson, ships could be anchoring themselves in preparation for a typhoon last Friday.
View: SEA-ME-WE3 Cable Cut Chaos
News source: ZDnet Australia
Two Japanese repair boats arrived at the location of the incident over the weekend, said a China Telecom spokesperson in a telephone interview.
"It will take a week to repair the cables provided that weather conditions are fair," he said, adding that the completion date could be delayed by choppy waters.
The fault, which occurred on the China-US and SEA-ME-WE3 cables about 30 km off Shantou in China, could have been due to shipping vessels dragging their anchors along the sea bed, said telecommunications service provider Reach Communications spokesperson Martin Ratia.
According to the China Telecom spokesperson, ships could be anchoring themselves in preparation for a typhoon last Friday.
View: SEA-ME-WE3 Cable Cut Chaos News source: ZDnet Australia
Extra layer
The technique may not be infallible. The methods used by Provos and Honeyman were particularly aimed at uncovering use of steganographic tools already released on the internet.
There are more advanced methods of hiding communications within images that involve using active, as well as redundant parts, of the underlying code. Sushil Jajodia of the Centre for Secure Information Systems at George Mason University in Virginia, US, says that this could have evaded detection but would require considerable technical sophistication.
Jajodia says that a message might also be encrypted before hiding. "This would add an extra layer of security," he says. But he also stresses that there are far simpler methods for hiding communications. Using a code word in a telephone conversation or a radio broadcast would provide a far easier way to communicate in secret, he says.
Magnus Ranstorp, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews in the UK, agrees. He told New Scientist: "These groups do use encryption, but some of the most important information is relayed non-technologically, it is often carried by human couriers."
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