Two European internet cables were interrupted in quick succession

Cloud security company Zscaler reports that an internet cable was interrupted on Wednesday evening, causing problems with the internet connection worldwide. In the North Sea, another cable broke at about the same time, although it does not appear to have had anything to do with each other.

on Wednesday evening reported Zscaler that an internet cable had been cut north of Marseille, disrupting three submarine connections. It would be one of the world’s largest internet hubs. From Marseille, connections to Lyon, Milan and Barcelona were cut, causing the company to detect packet loss and delays at customers worldwide.

Redirecting the internet connection helped mitigate some of the impact on global internet traffic. Repairmen, on the other hand, were unable to directly access the cable break because the local police were still investigating the incident. On Thursday afternoon, any nuisance caused by the cable break was resolved. Zscaler’s CEO mentions the incident on LinkedIn ‘vandalism’ and a ‘man-made disaster’ due to the global impact on internet traffic.

Roughly half a day later, a second incident involving internet cables took place; north of Scotland, internet connection to the Shetland Islands was disrupted by a broken undersea internet cable, according to the BBC. As a result, emergency services from the island group were temporarily hard to reach and internet traffic to the mainland was disrupted.

The simultaneity of the two incidents and the similarities with the previous sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines quickly led to speculation that Russian submarines may have sabotaged the Internet cables. The Marseille incident, on the other hand, took place on the mainland. According to the English newspaper, the incident in the Shetland Islands is also the result of a collision with a fishing boat; a boat would have damaged the internet cable in question several times. Zscaler himself has not yet given any indication that it is politically motivated sabotage.

Update, Monday: The link to Zscaler’s CEO’s blog post didn’t work. The link now works properly. Thanks to HoeZoWie.