
Russian submarine activity increases around Atlantic internet cables: report - erowtom
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/366290-russian-submarine-activity-increases-around-under-sea-internet-cables
======
dmourati
I'm reminded of an excellent book detailing the US's own interference with
Russian cables 30 years back:

[https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-
Espionage/...](https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-
Espionage/dp/1891620088/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1514086907&sr=8-1)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The best story surrounding this was a mole who was identified via taps on
Russian cables. They were unwilling to prosecute him for fear of tipping off
the Russians so he got off and was used to funnel disinformation.

~~~
dmourati
My favorite part was that the Russians detected our undersea tap, found it,
and put it in a Moscow museum complete with the stamp "Property of United
States Government."

~~~
gtcode
That's indicative of the stark cultural contrast between USA and Russia,
indeed: [https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/01/23/vladimir-putin-robert-
kraf...](https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/01/23/vladimir-putin-robert-kraft-
patriots-super-bowl-ring-stolen)

~~~
cfghcrtyd
In some ways, the story of someone getting ripped off like that leaves the
victim with a better story for themselves than simply being a guy who has four
super bowl rings even though he doesn't actually play football.

Which is not to applaud theft, but rather to highlight the unsympathetic
qualities of the victim.

~~~
CurtMonash
Robert Kraft was in the headlines (e.g. atop CNN.com) for two days when that
happened.

How may CEOs get that sort of public attention and have it be FAVORABLE? It
was an enormous PR win for him.

And then the ass had to go support his buddy Donald Trump ... :(

~~~
CurtMonash
Why would anybody downvote me on THIS site for opposing Trump? Do you like the
bitter Steve Bannon attacks on the tech industry? Do you think immigration is
a bad idea? Do you find him to be an honest, decent, likeable man? Do you
agree with his moves to get science out of scientific policy-making? Do you
favor his attitude of "Truth is whatever I tweet it is?"

I don't get it.

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temp-dude-87844
Making others believe you're able and willing to interfere with cables is an
effective and bloodless way of force projection. For a player like Russia,
who's always been big on visible activities shrouded in a hint of plausible
deniability, this fits.

~~~
raverbashing
Their plausible deniability is helped by the naivety or ideological blindness
of some

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cdibona
I was at the talk where CDS Peach discussed the cutting of cables. The gist of
it was that the UK navy would want to start patrolling/monitoring incoming UK
cables as it was a vulnerability point that he felt was ... a likely target of
those who might work against the UK interest.

It was a pretty interesting talk. The video can be found here:

[https://rusi.org/event/annual-chief-defence-staff-
lecture-20...](https://rusi.org/event/annual-chief-defence-staff-lecture-2017)

With the youtube video here :

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6YoI9kjbc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6YoI9kjbc)

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erowtom
Amazing resource to learn more about submarine cable: [http://submarine-cable-
map-2017.telegeography.com/](http://submarine-cable-
map-2017.telegeography.com/) (Google maps of submarine cable)

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richardw
I guess we're entering the time of mutually assured cable destruction.
Cheapest way to defend is to ensure the Russians know you can cut all their
comms immediately.

Of course Russia could be doing that in response to US activity.

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Pyxl101
Does anyone know if the data flowing across cables like these is typically
encrypted? Does the infrastructure itself provide any defense against a
submarine hacking into a cable and installing a device that can monitor
traffic?

I would hope that the infrastructure could add its own encryption across the
link to defend against unauthorized interception.

~~~
sitepodmatt
Typically not.

~~~
telekid
Wait, really? That’s shocking to me - I would have assumed the entire link was
encrypted E2E. Are there technical limitations that make this infeasible?

~~~
nugi
Imagine the hardware required to encrypt that much data on the fly... not so
shocking anymore is it?

~~~
ris
Considering that AMD processors now have the streaming encryption capacity to
encrypt data as it travels to and from the memory controller, I think we're at
a point where performing high bandwidth symmetric encryption is not
significantly more expensive than the existing encoding/transport costs.

~~~
Pyxl101
Indeed. It seems like we ought to be able to do encryption in hardware at
arbitrary speeds without a lot of cost by this point. (No?)

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cm2187
I believe that until recently neither Azure or AWS had a datacenter in the UK.
Cutting undersea cables between the UK and the US / Europe / Ireland could
have some serious consequences in the UK, at the very least on the economy,
possibly on its infrastructure (payment systems, communications, etc).

But aren't terrestrial cables more vulnerables than undersea cables? Cutting
undersea cables require sophisticated technologies. Cutting terrestrial cables
just requires a local guy with a map and some TNT. It's impossible to protect
thousands of km of cables.

~~~
einrealist
Terrestial cables are easy to repair, in terms of hours. For undersea cables,
this could take weeks or months, depending on location and wheather
conditions.

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ridgeguy
Non-oceanic internet distribution might mitigate concerns raised in the
article. [1]

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/space...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2016/11/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency-
gigabit-speed/)

~~~
adrianN
I don't think wireless technology will ever be able to compete with fiber for
bandwidth. You can cram _incredible_ amounts of data through glass. It's on
the order of Petabits/second for a single strand.

~~~
metaobject
They mention inter-satellite optical links, but an operational space-to-ground
optical system might be tolerable.

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john_moscow
Given that it's 2017 and a huge fraction of the traffic is HTTPS anyway, is
there any practical benefit to this?

~~~
yeukhon
This is quite interesting:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193353)

and not too long ago a big portion of Internet were rerouted to Russia (BGP).
One must wonder what they are up to.

Perhaps the Russian is mapping the world’s Internet, particularly on
identifying critical infrastructure which without them would paralyze the
world.

My theory is based on North Korea. Imagine NK owns its own cable (I believe
they just have its own country interent, but still rely on the global cables)
or is successful to hijack while severing communication of the rest of the
world, NK can strike its adversaries without worries. Apply this to Russian.
We are so dependent on the Interent (think dns and ntp), we are doomed if we
can’t communicate (let alone getting emergency alert).

Btw, I can’t help but have to leave a note about the last part of your
username... :)

~~~
WillyOnWheels
> and not too long ago a big portion of Internet were rerouted to Russia (BGP)

This happens every few months, and not always by Russian ISPs. This would
never happen if all upstream providers had proper filters on accepting BGP
requests.

It really means the current system of using BGP is not resilient, and never
has been.

Look up bgp hijack nanog

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stctgion
Anyone know the specifics of how you actually intercept data on a fibre optic
cable?

~~~
anonymfus
You just clean and bend the fibre it until enough light escapes for you to
detect.

~~~
jacquesm
Not so simple at the bottom of the ocean and working with pressurized cables,
besides the fact that the data will most likely be encrypted at the link
level.

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gcb0
and how do you exfiltrate the data?

if you can tap on petabytes/s of data with your probe, how can you move that
data for analysis or how can you decrypt it in real time in case you only want
to retransmit portions of it?

~~~
3pt14159
You should read the Snowden papers (or was this some other leak? I’m getting
so confused by all the leaking). They have two methods: first a device at the
location dumps most of the traffic they don’t need like porn or torrents. The
remaining data can be reencoded to look like normal https or ssh or whatever
and sent through a third cable to another main network location. The data can
also be stored locally and retrieved.

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basicplus2
I think I can confidently say that every major power has tapped every undersea
comms cable there is whether under the sea or where it exits to shore

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hbarka
The history of sea cable espionage and sabotage is a fascinating one. A few
good books by noted historians.

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valuearb
If only the Internet was resistant to losing connections. I guess all we can
do is give these guys more money to defend us from the big bad bear with a
military that is a tiny fraction of ours.

~~~
craftyguy
I seriously doubt that a full-scale military assault on Russia is 1) going to
be productive in the long run and 2) really _not_ justified just to protect a
cable. Given the ultra-big egos of donald and vladmir, any act that one might
interpret as an assault would very likely result in massive amounts of
firepower launching at civilian targets. Maybe I'm alone in accepting some
spotting internet connection to Europe vs hundreds of thousands (or easily,
millions) of casualties.

~~~
Simon_says
The problem from a game-theoretic point of view is that if your opponent
believes you won't retaliate over something small, they can just keep nibbling
small chunks. Better to have the public believe that you're super territorial
and will react violently to the slightest provocation. I think Vlad and Donnie
know this and incorporate it into their public images, which is part of the
reason you describe them as "ultra-big egos".

~~~
craftyguy
But it's probably not necessary to shake a big military stick at every
problem. That's been a consistent response throughout most of human history,
and it rarely ends well for the folks that are not on top.

