The most likely culprit responsible for Internet woes is still the hacker, although some attacks on the virtual world actually come from biters. That is right, biters, not byters. A number of transatlantic underwater glass fibre cables – the lifelines of our smart phones and tablets – appear to have become interesting hors d’oeuvres for sharks, some of whom have actually lost a tooth or two trying to enter the Web, so to speak.

The solution now being proposed is to wrap the apparently quite tasty cables in a plastic cover. It remains unclear whether the sharks will find it as appealing, but operators hope the polymer layer will offer additional protection against the Internet-sharks.