
How the NSA taps fiber at the bottom of the oceans - car
http://pastebin.com/VzqpaF8y
======
stbullard
This is a (poor) translation of an article that ran last weekend in the Sunday
edition of a German newspaper[1].

It does not appear to contain any new information that was not already
publicly available: see, for example, the Wikipedia entry for the USS Jimmy
Carter:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_(SSN-23)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_\(SSN-23\))

1\. Behind a paywall at [http://bit.ly/12cXRi9](http://bit.ly/12cXRi9) ; full
original text at [http://pastebin.com/KFhVj2X1](http://pastebin.com/KFhVj2X1)

------
wyck
An interesting article from 2001 which discusses this at length.
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB990563785151302644.html](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB990563785151302644.html)

Alternative link (WSJ one acts wierd) : [http://www.zdnet.com/news/spy-agency-
taps-into-undersea-cabl...](http://www.zdnet.com/news/spy-agency-taps-into-
undersea-cable/115877)

Also for anyone looking for better reading, the wikipedia page sources
(4][5][6][7]) all discuss this topic.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_(SSN-23)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter_\(SSN-23\))

A video on how Fiber Optic splicing is done by boat is super interesting :
[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvlowj_tyco-resolute-
mighty...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvlowj_tyco-resolute-mighty-ships-
discovery_tech#.UdPEzfndNAs) (45minutes Tycho Resolute).

You would think this is a much easier way than building a billion dollar
submarine, then again some cables are in delicate waters.

~~~
car
After reading the WSJ article from 2001, it's become clear that the FAZ/FAS
article is largely based on it.

Interesting quote from the WSJ article, in light of the fact that it was
written 3 months before 9/11:

 _The NSA long boasted some of the most powerful computers on earth. But the
agency 's technological edge dulled as the equipment aged and money grew
tight. The NSA's budget is classified, but individuals familiar with it say it
is about two-thirds what it was a decade ago, even before accounting for
inflation._

------
anemic
There is a book called Blind Man's Bluff that documents how this started
during the cold war by NSA tapping soviet undersea communication cables.

According to the book one of the captured tapping devices is on display in
Moscow and on the side it says "Property of the United States Government". No
point in hiding it...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untold...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untold_Story_of_American_Submarine_Espionage)

~~~
youngtaff
I read it a few years back and from memory it was quite an interesting read

------
ckozlowski
I'm a little skeptical about this process given the other, much easier methods
available to the NSA.

The one thing that isn't discussed here is data retention. Quite simply, how
do you get the information to shore, where it can be processed, in a timely
fashion? We're talking about thousands of TB or PB (or greater). You can't
just simply send that up on a radio link, and a recorder device would have to
be enormous. Processing and analysis cannot be realistically done on the
submarine, and frequent trips back to the site would tie up a tremendous naval
asset. I cannot in any sense see the Navy agreeing to the NSA's continued use
of its submarines for tapping civilian traffic when its primary focus lies
elsewhere (such as performing special operations in the Pacific.)

It's an open secret that the Jimmy Carter was built specifically to tap cables
and perform other special missions, but the technical facets of tapping a
major transatlantic cable for bulk data collection sounds too unrealistic when
better alternatives exist; specifically, the major routing and landing points
on US soil where equipment can be installed via cohersion of the owner.

~~~
chaz
This is my skepticism about these highly technical, complex theories as well.
I don't know enough to discount them based on technical merit, and they all
certainly sound feasible, however unlikely. It's _possible_ that the NSA can
be tapping fibers, running its own fibers back to Utah, storing the data in a
massive storage network, running millions of CPUs to decrypt it all, reverse-
engineering the ever-changing application protocols, running very deep
analysis against the results, and then coming up with the targets'
communications patterns. It just seems much easier, cheaper, and faster for
them to drop a secret, legal order on the involved companies and let the data
come to them. It's the ultimate hack.

------
samstave
Anyone recall the inet cuts to (Egypt?) about two years ago? (Damn, sorry - I
just recall how the undersea cables were "cut" and there was a lot of
speculation as to who/why... I think we have a culprit. [posting from my
phone, ill try to search for a reference when I get to a machine]

~~~
_djo_
I highly doubt it. The NSA has been tapping undersea cables for decades,
there's no reason they'd have suddenly become so sloppy as to cut two cables
in the same region. Especially as a cable will be inspected if cut and any
surveillance equipment will be discovered.

I think it's more likely that those outages really were caused by ship
anchors.

~~~
dnautics
it could be a less sophisticated nation's tapping attempt.

------
beloch
Unfortunately, this article includes pretty much everything _but_ how the NSA
taps fiber at the bottom of the ocean. I'm actually a bit curious about this
myself...

If you want to tap a classical signal traveling down a fiber, you want to turn
that fiber into a beam splitter. A beam splitter probabilistically reroutes
photons from the data stream down a different fiber. Since a single bit
traveling down a fiber optic cable is represented by millions of photons in an
identical optical state and fiber-optic lines are lossy, a few won't be
missed. A 99/1 splitter (i.e. 99% one way, 1% the other) would be pretty hard
to detect in a fiber optic line that is subject to fluctuating loss caused by
bending, temperature change, etc..

The trick, according to this article, is to avoid cutting the fiber and
splicing in a beam splitter. This is because, immediately after the fiber goes
dark, the company running it will want to know where the fault is and hook up
an OTDR to the line. In the simplest terms possible, this is a device that
sends light down the fiber and looks at what gets reflected back. Any break in
the fiber will reflect light back the way it came. Time how long the round-
trip takes and you can pinpoint where the break is and send out a repair crew.
If the operators are fast this can take mere seconds to do. Naturally, the NSA
doesn't want repair crews finding their tap-in points!

So how do you turn a piece of fiber into a beam-splitter without cutting and
splicing? Well, that's surprisingly easy. One way to create a fiber beam
splitter is to take two fibers and fusion-combine them. Basically, you put
them right next to each other and heat them up so that they melt together just
a little bit. If you did this to a line in service it would never have to be
cut. This is dead easy to do... to one fiber... in a lab. Doing it to a bundle
of fibers in the deep sea is challenging! However, it's certainly feasible.
Given that the NSA's budget dwarfs the entire scientific research budget of
many nations, it's reasonable to expect they could get pretty good at it given
a couple of decades.

They probably aren't doing this. I've done a little in free-space optics, but
fiber really isn't in my bailiwick. There are probably other, much easier
ways. However, based on a few minutes of thought I'm convinced the claims of
the article are beyond merely feasible. I'd be shocked if the NSA, and _every_
other nation out there with subs, doesn't have the same capability.

The real trick, of course, is getting the data back home (and processing it).
The article suggests that the Jimmy Carter has the ability to lay fiber lines,
presumably to take their purloined bits back to the nearest NSA processing
center. The amplifiers spoken of are unlikely to be used to boost the signal
that continues on the original fiber back to the people being spied upon,
simply because a good method of tapping in should be indistinguishable from
fiber loss, plus components like amplifiers spliced into the line are
detectable! No, those amplifiers are likely there to boost the signal going
down the NSA's pirate lines. What I don't understand is how the NSA keeps
their lines from being detected. Wouldn't, for example, Russia patrol it's
fiber back-bones (while tapping other nations fiber) and cut the NSA's lines?
There may very well be an underwater struggle going on day-to-day that we're
entirely unaware of!

~~~
dnautics
No, they are probably using evanescent wave technology. Fiber optics works by
reflecting the light down a channel - when light hits an interface between
media with two different speed of lights, there is a reflective component and
a refractive component. If you solve snell's law for a very shallow beam
hitting a less dense media, you get an imaginary value for the angle of the
refractive component. One way to interpret this is that zero of the light
energy is reflected. But if you solve a wave function cos(x) with an complex
value x, that is equivalent to a function with a complex exponential,
potentially with nonzero, real preexponential.

That is what an evanescent wave is. There is light that decays exponentially
"bleeding" off the reflective surface[1]. The snell's law solution is sort of
a hack, what is really going on has to do with the quantum wavefunction of the
photon ensembles, but the result is the same.

Biologists use evanescent waves to do microscopy - you can illuminate an area
of low density underneath your coverslip, and effectively a very very thin
layer of flourescence is illuminated right above the coverslip.

It would seem reasonable that the NSA would use exactly this technology to tap
fiber optic cables without splicing them, and it should be nearly
undetectable. There will be a nonzero loss of photons if you tap it, but it
should be relatively negligible.

[1]note - the photonic energy is just 'there' as in the wavefunction has
nonzero amplitude in that spatial region. It's 'bleeding' into the space
outside of the fiber optic channel, but it's not actually bleeding energy,
there is no energy loss from this 'spatial bleeding', unless there is
something in that zone that is capable of absorbing that photonic energy.

~~~
harshpotatoes
If I understand both you and the parent correctly, you are describing the same
process. When you melt two fibers together, the cores aren't really becoming
one. Really, they melt together such that light from one core partially
evanescently couples into the core of the adjacent fiber.

[http://www.goochandhousego.com/products/passive-fiber-
optic-...](http://www.goochandhousego.com/products/passive-fiber-optic-
components/fiber-laser-components/PEC%200178i1.pdf)

~~~
dnautics
I wouldn't have assumed you need to do any sort of melting to capture
evanescent photons.

------
elq
[http://cryptome.org/eyeball/mmp/jimmy-
carter.htm](http://cryptome.org/eyeball/mmp/jimmy-carter.htm)

~~~
buro9
[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20submarine.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20submarine.html)

    
    
        "The capacity of fiber optics is so much greater than other communications media
        or technologies, and it's also immune to the stick-up-an-antenna type of
        eavesdropping," said Jeffrey Richelson, an expert on intelligence technologies.
    
        To listen to fiber-optic transmissions, intelligence operatives must physically
        place a tap somewhere along the route. If the stations that receive and transmit
        the communications along the lines are on foreign soil or otherwise inaccessible,
        tapping the line is the only way to eavesdrop on it.
    
        The intelligence experts admit there is much that is open to speculation, such
        as how the information
        recorded at a fiber-optic tap would get to analysts at the National Security
        Agency for review.

~~~
car
_The intelligence experts admit there is much that is open to speculation,
such as how the information recorded at a fiber-optic tap would get to
analysts at the National Security Agency for review._

How about another fiber in the same bundle?

Also, during the telco bust, there was a lot of 'dark' (i.e. unlit) fiber,
probably prophylactically tapped by NSA.

~~~
visarga
Or the "dark" fiber was the return line for the tapped data.

~~~
buro9
You'd still need to terminate at the surface point, in which case what are you
gaining by sending a modified sub to the bottom of the ocean?

------
malandrew
Is there anyway for the signal to be bulk encrypted in realtime and have the
cryptographic key between two end points automatically cycled and exchanged
via means other than that cable?

I would imagine that making a cryptographically secure wired connection
impervious to eavesdropped would be a thing by now.

~~~
visarga
> Is there anyway for the signal to be bulk encrypted in realtime and have the
> cryptographic key between two end points automatically cycled and exchanged
> via means other than that cable?

They could use one time pads (two identical lists of pregenerated random
numbers) at the ends. Then XOR the traffic with those. It's unbreakable. They
"key" could be terabytes long.

~~~
jordanthoms
A terabyte of shared secret would run out in seconds on these links. (and if
you reuse it, it's extremely insecure). It's totally possible (but possibly
prohibitively expensive) to encrypt the traffic going through a link like this
but a OTP is _not_ how you would do it.

------
synthos
I think everyone is overestimating the complexity here. There a stations
underwater that contain optical amplifiers that necessarily boost the signal.
A lot of optical amplifiers include monitor ports (splitters) built into the
equipment.

------
kenrikm
[http://randomdrake.com/2008/02/13/google-maps-version-of-
the...](http://randomdrake.com/2008/02/13/google-maps-version-of-
the-2008-submarine-cable-cuts/)

------
dfc
Where is this from? Google did not turn anything up when I searched for Thomas
Gutschker and submarine.

------
visarga
The cable operators need to encrypt all traffic going through the fibers -
problem solved. In fact what goes through the backbone should be encrypted
many times over - by the backbone operator, by the company leasing the
backbone bandwidth and by the end user.

~~~
zimbatm
Technologically I was in the impression that the end-points where barely able
to route the traffic that's going trough these cables. Encrypting the traffic
in real-time might not be possible.

~~~
phire
Not possible in software, but you can do it in hardware.

------
zimbatm
So how does the submarine know where the target traffic is going to be routed
? Unless it's greenland there are many ways your traffic could go:
[http://submarinecablemap.com/](http://submarinecablemap.com/)

------
Achshar
OP, what is the source? The only source on google is this paste.

~~~
car
This was published in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" this
weekend. It's behind a paywall. They make it really hard to find, this is the
only link I could come up with:
[http://fazarchiv.faz.net/?q=menschenrechte+daten&dosearch=ne...](http://fazarchiv.faz.net/?q=menschenrechte+daten&dosearch=new#hitlist)

Original is in german, sorry for the crappy Google translation.

Little info on Wikipedia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter)

EDIT: original article in german:
[http://pastebin.com/Sy8q4gmT](http://pastebin.com/Sy8q4gmT)

------
bkruse
Whenever this is actually figured out, wall street will beat the NSA to doing
it - I am sure of that!

------
andrewcooke
do they need to tap fiber? snowden has said that they can hack backbone
routers.

[https://www.google.cl/search?q=snowden+backbone+routers](https://www.google.cl/search?q=snowden+backbone+routers)

~~~
ihsw
Maybe they tapped fiber before hacking backbone servers (or vice versa), and
they can do both now. Why stop now?

------
nulagrithom
This is very poorly written and lacks credibility. Interesting though.

~~~
DrStalker
It also doesn't say much except that the submarine can launch a little vehicle
that goes down and taps the cables; tapping an already-installed 192 strand
fibre cable without breaking any of the strands or disrupting communications
would be impressive even even on land and there's no hint as to how the NSA is
able to do this once they reach the cable.

~~~
zalzane
Trying to install a tap on an active fiber cable sounds like a very much
impossible feat for any kind of modern technology.

If I was the poor EE they laid this problem on, I would have the submarine
install the tap while the cable is still being laid, before it's connected to
any data streams.

Without knowing how long it takes to install the tap, it would also be
possible to sabotage cables, install the tap while the cable is down, and make
the sabotage out to be the doings of any number of semi-rogue countries in
your targeted part of the world.

------
chid
How do they transmit and store the intercepted data?

