{"id":95057,"date":"2014-01-18T21:48:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-18T19:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=95057"},"modified":"2014-01-20T08:21:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T06:21:30","slug":"potential-nsa-spying-on-sa-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/security\/95057-potential-nsa-spying-on-sa-networks.html","title":{"rendered":"Potential NSA spying on SA networks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Towards the end of 2013, German news website Spiegel Online reported<\/a> that the NSA<\/a> had essentially tapped the SEA-Me-We\u20134 undersea cable.<\/p>\n

SEA-Me-We\u20134 (SMW4) is a former partner cable to Seacom<\/a> which was used to carry traffic from the North of Africa to Europe. Outages on SMW4 had previously caused significant downtime on the Seacom network<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Quoting leaked NSA documents, the report said that the NSA had managed to get access to information about the structure of the network on 13 February 2013.<\/p>\n

The document went on to promise that the NSA would conduct more operations against \u201cthis and other cable systems\u201d, Spiegel reported.<\/p>\n

Spiegel\u2019s article followed an earlier report on the website of the Dutch newspaper, NRC Handelsblad, which cited an NSA presentation<\/a> that showed how the intelligence service used \u201cComputer Network Exploitation\u201d to gather information.<\/p>\n

The presentation indicated that the NSA had 20 access points to a number of large cable systems, with points of infiltration indicated in Southern Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Horn of Africa.<\/p>\n

It would appear that Spiegel\u2019s report confirms, and provides more detail to the document NRC wrote about, though it is unclear if SEA-Me-We\u20134 is the only undersea cable in the Mediterranean that was compromised.<\/p>\n

\"NSA<\/a>

NSA infiltrated networks slide, nrc.nl<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Following Spiegel\u2019s report, a spokesperson for French telecoms giant Orange told Reuters that they plan to take legal action<\/a>. \u201cWe want to know more about the eventuality that Orange data may have been intercepted,\u201d the spokesperson was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n

Seacom and Telkom<\/a> were asked whether they too would take legal action against the NSA, or join already ongoing legal action.<\/p>\n

Telkom did not comment by the time of publication, though it is understood that it currently uses providers other than SMW4 for trans-Mediterranean capacity, similar to Seacom.<\/p>\n

Seacom, on the other hand, disavowed a partnership with SMW4.<\/p>\n

When queried about its earlier relationship with SMW4, Seacom declined to answer questions on when it stopped using SMW4, and which provider it was using in its place.<\/p>\n

Instead, Seacom provided MyBroadband with the following statement:<\/p>\n

SEACOM is not a member of the SMW4 consortium and does not own any SMW4 capacity. During outages impacting multiple systems in the Mediterranean Sea in 2013, SEACOM utilised alternative capacity on other trans-Med systems including SMW4 to restore services on a short-term basis. Emergency capacity on these other systems was in use for less than a month. We have no further comment on this issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More Seacom-SMW4 articles<\/h3>\n

SEACOM outages and cable progress<\/strong><\/a> (April 2010 \u2013\u00a0December 2010)<\/p>\n

SEACOM\u2019s SMW4 problems continue<\/strong><\/a> (March 2011)<\/p>\n

Seacom services restored but problems remain<\/strong><\/a> (March 2013)<\/p>\n

More on spying and information privacy in SA<\/h3>\n

SA Spy Files link deepens to the tune of R3.6m<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s link to The Spy Files<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Spyware servers in SA: more details emerge<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revelations that the NSA has tapped the SEA-Me-We\u20134 undersea cable has raised questions about the implications for SA networks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":79775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[18736,35,23215,23219,23217,317,109,20395],"class_list":["post-95057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-eastern-africa-submarine-cable-system-eassy","tag-headline","tag-national-security-agency-nsa","tag-sat-3safe","tag-sea-me-we-4-smw4","tag-seacom","tag-telkom","tag-west-africa-cable-system-wacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95057"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95095,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95057\/revisions\/95095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}