The founder and CEO of Subco, a company that owns several undersea cables servicing Australia, said that two of its cables — Indigo-West, connecting Perth to Indonesia and Singapore, and Indigo-Central, which has endpoints in Victoria, Tasmania, and New South Wales — reported shunt faults in close succession, with the detected problems also appearing to be in close proximity to each other. According to Bevan Slattery’s LinkedIn post, the errors occurred at around the same time that a vessel was traversing the area. In a statement, Australian Federal Police told Tom's Hardware that it had received a report of a crime and was investigating, strongly hinting the cables may have been cut in an act of sabotage.
“Earlier tonight: Shunt faults on two systems (Indigo West and Indigo Central) straight after each other and in close proximity to each other. Remarkably this also happened in the Submarine Cable Protection Zone off Perth Australia. Coincidently some suspicious/coincidental activity from a vessel near the location and timing of the shunts occurring,” Slattery said in his post. “This is a concerning development. Partially because submarine cables are the digital lifeblood of our nation, but also because this could very well turn out to be the second such incidence in a Federally declared cable protection zone. This maybe a coincidence, but it’s important for the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to investigate the issue urgently.”
