
Russian ship loitering near undersea cables - willvarfar
http://www.hisutton.com/Yantar.html
======
leggomylibro
Neal Stephenson wrote a bit about this in Cryptonomicon; laying new undersea
cable is both expensive and time consuming, but the cost of cutting existing
ones is fairly low. So if any sufficiently-funded individual, corporation, or
nation-state wanted to hold a gun to the world's head, cutting undersea data
cables wouldn't be a bad way to do it.

The problem is, you can't make that kind of threat in a subtle way, so to
consider something like it you would have to be some kind of international
pariah with a warmongering streak and a history of 'lying in plain sight'
about your own nefarious deeds.

Edit: Okay, we're in better shape today than we were in the '90s and cutting
off Cyprus' internet wouldn't cripple the world, but we still don't have THAT
many cables running across the Atlantic and Pacific.

~~~
15thandwhatever
I'm less concerned about denial of service via cutting cables, and more
concerned about the tapping of cables for wholesale data snarfing.

~~~
Bdiem
Is that a realistic threat model? What does the technology look like to tap
into 800Gbit/s of fiber traffic - under water?

~~~
willvarfar
The USS Jimmy Carter submarine is equiped to do it
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping)

The USA were caught tapping cables in the cold war
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells)

Now this doesn't mean that the Russians are right now tapping these cables;
they could be simply mapping their precise location etc for later or using
them as a training exercise.

The Russians have submarines for this kind of thing, and I bet they're
regretting they sent a surface ship. See a list of some of the submarines used
for tapping cables at the bottom of the Yandar article.

~~~
tropo
Why regret? The intent is to be noticed.

This is like killing a person with polonium, which is made in just a handful
of facilities around the world. Russia wants to cause worry. They want
"respect", which mainly means fear.

~~~
xXx_swat21_xXx
Unlike the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 (to show agents
don't defect and live), unlike military exercises in plain view of your
adversary (to show your military prowess), and unlike displaying new shiny
hardware at a parade (to make your adversary wonder about their capabilities);
covertly tapping (or cutting) cables is done _covertly_ , and as someone else
mentioned has been going on by "both sides" for decades. If it was done
_overtly_ , the country who was being spied on would be tipped off and stop
using that means of communication. I think willvarfar is closer to correct,
they are probably mapping and looking for things, for future use, not
exploiting things right now. I still think one of the things they're looking
for, if they're actually over the cables, are other taps that have been placed
by others before, or maybe looking for static ASW equipment laid there to
detect subs.

------
willvarfar
The US famously spied on Russian underseas cables in Operation Ivy Bells
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells)
during the cold war. A spy sold the secret to the Russians and they recovered
the recorders.

Of course they used submarines, so there was no plot on normal publicly-
accessible marine maps..

The Russians have several subs with mini-subs too and are building more; there
is a good list of links at the bottom of the article!

------
themodelplumber
Russia is doing a lot of fearmongering in the run-up to the US elections. I
stumbled across some agitprop on Twitter yesterday, where I read that Russia
was recalling all students who were studying abroad. Out of curiosity (to say
the least) I tracked down the source article, which was a) not available in
English, and b) just Russians criticizing privileged Russians who sent their
kids abroad to study. Looking around the rest of the agitprop stuff that I
could find at a cursory glance, there is a ton of literal FUD going around
right now, to the tune of "WWIII imminent."

Wonder who they're trying so hard to influence?

~~~
crb002
Putin recalled Russian military family members. For those that don't
understand Russian culture that's Defcon 3.

~~~
xXx_swat21_xXx
The western media has been fed a story that Russian diplomats' families have
been recalled. No proof of that yet. No leaked emails, memos, letters,
boarding passes of families, people moving out of their apartments, motorcades
of diplomatic people rushing to the airports... nothing.

Who benefits from putting that story out there?

Why would you believe that story?

------
dfsegoat
Looks like the ship is currently off the coast of Lebanon.

You can watch/follow this ship in semi-real time as long as it's transponder
is active/in-range of a receiver (and not being spoofed):

[http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:121...](http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1215053/mmsi:273546520/vessel:YANTAR)

------
kbuck
Looks like the site is down. Mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iq7DDCu...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iq7DDCul7nAJ:www.hisutton.com/Yantar.html&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

~~~
emmelaich
Link from site to marinetraffic site showing the ship and location:

[http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:121...](http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1215053/mmsi:273546520/vessel:YANTAR)

------
gozur88
Seems like at this point you're really depending on encryption to keep your
data safe. You have to assume one or more entities is poring through your bits
looking for interesting information.

~~~
philsnow
and also logging the bits forever so that they can reinterpret what is
"interesting" at a future date.

------
habitue
Does anyone else feel like if there's enough evidence that a public site is
noticing this ship loitering, that intelligence agencies the world over are
plenty aware of it already? What are the chances this website has a "scoop"
here that governments aren't aware of? If the intent of this site isn't to
make government agencies aware of the loitering, what is the goal? What should
members of the public do with such information?

~~~
parceltape
I don't think it was intended as a call to action. Do you think all non-
actionable information is worthless?

------
adriancooney
Ars Technica had a great piece on how these undersea cables:
[http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-
th...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-
works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/)

------
ageofwant
Ships do not "loiter" in international waters. "Loiter" implies the loiterer
is violating some rights the accuser imagines himself to have. Russia may be
simply legally installing its surveillance equipment on cables it found in
international waters. There's no 'loitering' involved here.

I invite you to study the speeches of Anson Chan, less you believe that this
irritating political weasel-wording we are so used to currently is universal.

~~~
6502nerdface
"Loiter" is especially used in military and strategic contexts to mean simply
holding position. No implication of violation or anything. Aircraft loiter
over a waypoint, etc.

------
xXx_swat21_xXx
The story now has coverage from motherboard.vice.com

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-theory-about-a-
russian...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-theory-about-a-russian-ship-
tapping-syrian-internet-is-weird)

------
rbanffy
How hard - or detectable - is one tapping on an underwater fiber?

I suspect it's very hard to tap and easily detectable.

------
platz
the ship appears between lebanon/syria and cyprus, not turkey and cyprus.

------
okket
Cyprus must have an extremely good internet connection :)

~~~
kafkaesq
For the benefit of a certain low-key UK military base:

    
    
        http://espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste/2013/11/04/news/the-history-of-british-intelligence-operations-in-cyprus-1.139978?refresh_ce

------
aw3c2
Well, how accurate are those cable lines?

~~~
lithos
There are very accurate maps available publicly.

When a ship lays anchor it's not just the end but can end up being a mile of
chain as the real holding force(with the ship bouncing around). Fishermen are
able to damage cables as well

~~~
xXx_swat21_xXx
If you could source that very accurate map that's available publicly I'd be
very appreciative; I can only find the paper version for sale and don't want
to pay $100 for something that will only arrive in a few weeks. The lines on
the images that are being circulated are not accurate in the least, they are
very rough estimates.

~~~
lithos
Paper and $100 is still very public, we're just spoiled. It's also going to
cost you less time contacting/accessing each website individually.

You might have some luck with RL social networking.

Or could settle for info graphic form(and link/contact info) at
submarinecablemap.com

~~~
xXx_swat21_xXx
That's the problem. SubmarineCableMap.com and similar web sites show logical,
not physical, representations of the underwater cables. Cables are not that
neat and tidy. A proper nautical chart would; I'll pay for it, if I find a
downloadable digital one for sale.

I apreciate @CovertShores's diagram showing a general area where cables are
believed to be, but we can do better with a nautical chart showing exactly
where the cables are, to prove or disprove the RV Yantar is over top of them.

RV Yantar's slow methodical movements suggest they're doing _something_ , but
I don't know that it suggests they're tapping cables. It looks more like a
search pattern using underwater equipment that moves very slowly.

Towed sonar arrays can usually move ~4kn, so I don't think it's towed sonar. I
believe it's a remote operated vehicle sniffing along the ocean's floor, on a
tether, and they need to move the ship slowly, at 0.5kn to "keep up" with the
ROV at the end of the line.

Are they _looking_ for the cables themselves? Maybe. Are they looking for pre-
existing taps on those cables? If they're doing anything to do with underwater
cables, I think so. Are they putting their own taps on the lines? Maybe, I
can't disprove that, but I'd like charts to show _exactly_ where those
underwater cables are, to see if they're even doing something cable related -
which is total speculation at this point.

If the cables are shown to be 10 miles away, they're clearly looking at
something else.

Isn't it possible the Russians want you to think they're looking at cables,
and not helping a stuck submarine, or other unmentioned possibility?

------
xXx_swat21_xXx
There is no evidence that the Russians are "tapping" or "sabotaging" undersea
cables; the Americans and Israelis would also tap those cables, and I think
it's far more likely the Russians are doing counter-espionage of taps on
Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese cables, to win favour with their governments.

~~~
guelo
You provide no evidence why one scenario is far more likely than the other.
There are much more direct ways that Russia is winning favour with those
governments such as fighting Syria's wars for them or signing a gas pipeline
deal with Turkey.

~~~
xXx_swat21_xXx
If Russia was tapping Syrian cables... they'd do so on shore. They don't need
to do it at the bottom of the ocean; it's the same way the United States taps
cables in many allied countries.

It is rumoured that Russian SIGINT tipped off the Erdogan government of the
coup, not American SIGINT, which would suggest that Americans were complicit
with the coup. To win further favour with the Erdogan government Russia would
love to pants the United States by showing they are tapping their "ally's"
telecom infrastructure. You may remember the NSA also tapped Angela Merkel,
the Chancellor of Germany, an ally. You may also remember the NSA tapped all
Greek telecom as well; also an Ally. Do you think the United States _isn 't_
tapping the Turkish telecom lines?

The Israelis clearly have the Lebanese telecom system tapped in about a
hundred different ways, from buried taps on shore to underwater taps at sea.
Do you doubt that too? Wouldn't it be in Russia and Syria's best interest to
help Hezbollah?

~~~
rosser
I think you may have misunderstood the grandparent comment's use of the word
"evidence".

~~~
xXx_swat21_xXx
_Why_ would Russia tap Turkey's telecom? _Why_ would Russia tap Syria's
telecom? _Why_ would Russia tap Lebanon's telecom?

I've offered up motive for why they would be looking to un-do taps that are
already there, but haven't heard any competing explanation to why Russia would
tap commercial undersea cables.

The American military does not use commercial undersea cables for their trans-
continental communications, by the way. So, if the RV Yantar is not near
commercial cables, they could be near secret military cables, or Anti-
Submarine Warfare equipment set up by the Americans, Israelis, Greeks - who
knows.

I'm trying to point out that latching onto the idea that they're loitering
above and tapping/sabotaging underwater commercial cables is only one of many
things they could be doing. Since we don't even know the location of those
cables, it's extremely speculative to say they're loitering above them to
begin with.

