75-year-old woman cuts off Internet to Georgia and Armenia

Apr. 7, 2011 (4:05 am) By: Jennifer Bergen

A retired 75-year-old woman has single-handedly managed to cut off the Internet connection of two countries.
She was digging around for scrap metal when she happened upon something far more valuable: Armenia and Georgia’s connection to the Internet. The interior ministry in Tbilisi said the woman hacked into a fibre-optic cable which runs through Georgia to Armenia, causing thousands of Internet users in both countries to lose connection for a few hours on March 28.
Georgian interior ministry spokesman Zura Gvenetadze told the Associated Foreign Press that she found the cable and had intended to steal it. She was then found in the village of Ksani, north of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capitol, and has been charged with damaging property. The woman could be seeing up to three years of prison if convicted.
Gvenetadze said the woman’s age has been taken into account and she has been released pending the end of the investigation and upcoming trial.
The cable is owned by the Georgian Railway Telecom company, which clearly now has some major repair work to do. Hopefully that includes placing the new cable a little deeper underground. Although the connection has now been re-established, for 12 hours 90% of Armenia was without the web, and some ISPs in Georgia also went down. Gearogian Railway also owns cables in Azerbaijan, which were not effected.
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