
Pacific Fibre cable project sunk by US fears about Chinese espionage - steve19
http://www.interest.co.nz/business/60485/kiwi-pacific-fibre-cable-project-sunk-us-fears-about-chinese-investment-espionage-it-
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rdl
They have some right to block this if they feel there will be espionage, but
should have to pay all cost differentials required to not use Chinese
equipment and investment. (NSA is welcome to invest, since they'll be
wiretapping it anyway, and if European intelligence wants to subsidize ALU to
provide equipment, they can have their own monitoring.)

Realistically, any major fiber system is going to be monitored by virtually
all intelligence agencies of major powers -- at minimum the US plus the
endpoint nations, but I wouldn't be surprised if China, Russia, and maybe
eventually other countries established submarine tap technology, either in the
middle or at underwater branch/repeater units.

Angry and sad if this kills the project entirely -- I was really looking
forward to Pacific Fibre :(

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malandrew
Can you tap fiber? I thought it was only possible to tap underwater cables
that emit electromagnetic waves?

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andyjohnson0
If you can get access to the cable then it is possible to splice into it using
fairly standard techniques. Here [1] is an article from 10 years ago that
looks at what was going on back then. There is speculation [2] that the US
Navy has submarines equipped with 'splicing chambers' and cable laying
equipment for this purpose.

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/news/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-
cabl...](http://www.zdnet.com/news/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-cable/115877)
[2] <http://defensetech.org/2005/02/21/jimmy-carter-super-spy/>

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nopassrecover
Wouldn't someone notice if the cable went out of commission for 10 minutes
while they spliced?

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omh
If your underwater fibre goes down for 10 minutes would international
espionage really be the first thing that comes to mind?

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aw3c2
If it comes back, then yes. I don't think fiber can have a "loose connection".
It either works or it does not.

~~~
jrockway
That may be true of the fiber, but it's not true of the network equipment
driving the fiber. Like all computers, these occasionally need hardware or
software upgrades too.

~~~
rdl
You could also arrange for your subsea tapping to be at the same time as an
attack (IP or electrical) on the shore station, if you really want it to be
difficult to detect. Or do a real cut in one place (with a trawler), while
tapping at another place. And possibly cut 5 cables at the same time...

Anyone with real security requirements assumes long-haul cables and the
general Internet are monitored. Point to point crypto on links is one of the
easier problems to solve.

(the harder problem is doing something once you've tapped -- you either need
to build a multi-wave analysis box and low-bitrate exfiltration solution over
an IRU you've purchased, or run your own big cable to the tap location. Much
easier to tap at the cable landing site.)

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kiwidrew
It's very sad to see Pacific Fibre shut down, because they had done an
incredible amount of work to get the major corporate and political players on
board. They were basically putting forward the only credible plan to lay a new
cable, and it's now very unlikely that the Southern Cross cable will lose its
absolute monopoly (it's essentially the only connection that New Zealand has
to the outside world). It's a sad day for all technology-driven businesses
that want to start (or remain) in the country.

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ximeng
400MM USD project, of which from the map about 15% of the distance is AU-NZ,
85% is NZ-US. Population of NZ is 4.4MM people, so less than 100 USD per
person. Maybe a crowd sourcing effort could get some of the way there in
exchange for bandwidth, or wide equity investment in a project company.
Possibly some funding from users on the AU / US sides as well.

Also for the security concerns, can you do an external audit of the equipment?
How much does it cost for somebody to strip down some chips and do the
necessary reverse engineering? You would think this could be costed out as an
additional cost due to the trust gap between the countries, then the security
issue becomes one which can be resolved but at a cost that is potentially not
competitive rather than just a political issue where one side appears not to
have interest in free trade.

~~~
46Bit
It's not a case of some chips though. To be sure, you would have to do it to
every chip you used - and even then it'd be quite possible you've missed
something.

Realistically this is about power rather than espionage. In a similar way to
how the booming US displaced Britain of a lot of the major international
cables around the turn of the 1900s, so China will want to try it.

~~~
ximeng
Not sure what you mean about displacing Britain, but sounds interesting, can
you elaborate?

I would have thought you could structure a deal to maintain power where
necessary so that China can't come in and cut off your bandwidth, but maybe
not.

Regarding the chips, I wouldn't have thought you need to be 100% sure, 99.9%
might be good enough if you can get there by random sampling of significantly
less chips than 100%. In any case, that cost analysis is what's required and
that's the case e.g. Huawei are making here.

There are reasons to be careful in dealings with the Chinese, but it might be
better for both sides if some level of transparency can be maintained.

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jrockway
If only there was some way to scramble data transmissions so that they would
be unreadable to unauthorized adversaries...

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gojomo
I wonder: if accurately reported, does this objection signal that the USA
thinks commercially-available encryption _isn't_ sufficient to prevent Chinese
spying?

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retrogradeorbit
I think it may be more that commercially available encryption is not being
used widely enough, or in a strong enough form. You can use 4096 bit RSA keys,
but not many people do.

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squidsoup
New Zealand is currently undergoing a nationwide rollout of residential fibre
and ISPs are proudly promoting upcoming 'ultra-fast broadband' services. The
unfortunate reality is however that without investment in more overseas
bandwidth, the fibre is going to do little other than allow New Zealanders to
watch HD re-runs of Shortland Street.

~~~
jseliger
_the fibre is going to do little other than allow New Zealanders to watch HD
re-runs of Shortland Street._

On the other hand, it only takes one or two New Zealanders to download content
from foreign servers and mirror it, through bit torrent or other means, to
everyone else in NZ.

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mappu
Transfer caps are the norm here - we used to have zero-rated national traffic
but that was phased out by all ISPs some time in the early 2000s.

You're absolutely right, if all our piracy at least was kept on-shore via DC++
or similar, it would likely cut demand for international bandwidth in half
(the same goes for probably any country). As it stands there are substantial
caching servers employed by every ISP for most high-traffic static content
(Youtube, Steam, onshore broadcasting...)

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Volpe
I don't understand this... Haven't we solved this problem (i.e cryptography?)

Monitoring equipment in the cables don't help you solve math problems any
faster?

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beedogs
It's fair enough, really: the US wanted exclusive spying rights.

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mparlane
When will we finally get rid of the monopoly on bandwidth :(

I wish the government would just spend the money investing the difference. We
could sell our assets for something useful!

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raarky
This is pretty sad news.

In the 90's, I heard that ihug internet used to get their bandwidth via a
satellite to the USA.

Do options like this still exist? Would they even be feasible for todays
bandwidth requirements?

It would be interesting to know what kind of options exist that could provide
some much needed competition against the Southern Cross cable

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haakon666
Yes those options still exist, no they do not even come close to the bandwith
or the pricing available on submarine cable systems.

Pricing on Southern Cross cable dropped massively a few years back when PIPE's
PPC-1 went from Sydney to Guam. Ending the cosy duopoly between AJC1 and SSC.
It was also one of the first cables out of Australia that wasn't owned partly
by an incumbent telco (Telstra, Optus etc).

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raarky
It seems like a smart idea for another player step in and maybe build another
NZ-AUS only cable.

I must admit, the pacific was seemed hugely ambitious and I was wondering if
something would come in and derail it. I never thought that espionage reasons
would be one.

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ericgsmith
This is very disappointing.

[http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-
internaut/pacific-f...](http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-
internaut/pacific-fibre-plug-pulled-steven-joyce-sam-morgan-vikram-kumar/) \-
has a good summary of coverage on this issue from Radio NZ.

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SkyMarshal
Did they even try to approach Google about this investment? Article mentioned
a bunch of telecoms, but not Google, who is getting into fiber infrastructure
in a big way and for whom $400m is chump change.

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hnwh
that's right! Leave the spying on Americans for the US Govt..

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lwat
This sucks. The US tap cables all over the place but heaven forbid a new cable
goes down with even a hint of Chinese involvement!

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gadders
But surely there is a disctinction to be made between a liberal western
democracy, and an oppressive one that doesn't respect human rights?

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retrogradeorbit
'liberal western democracy'. That's actually quite funny.

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jrockway
Yeah, remember that thing with college students and tanks in Times Square?

Oh wait...

