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America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

363 points by Jerry2 10y ago

nstj 10y ago
Did you know that the subsea fiber optic cables which the submarines hack are only 17mm thick? [0]. Great companion story at ARS from a while back worth a read. [0]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/2/#h2 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  I was going to reply that this was surely nonsense and I've seen the thick cables the size of a man's leg, but as the article says these images we've seen are only for shallow areas and the majority of the cable really is just the size of a marker pen, shielded with just a few millimetres of plastic.
  - josh2600 10y ago
    http://mikesenese.com/DOIT/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Undersea-cable-580x553.jpg http://mikesenese.com/DOIT/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Unders... ^undersea cables are typically made up of a central fiber line, which look like human hairs in a small tube, and a shell of insulation and copper. You need power to send the signal across the ocean floor and, as we do not generate electricity underwater, all of the current needs to be sent from one end to the other to power all of the repeaters along the way. The fiber optic cable is 17mm, but the cable itself can't be because of the power constraint (unless I'm missing something deep; feel free to correct me if so).
    - nstj 10y ago
      > The nearer to the surface you get, the more protection—armour—you need to withstand potential disturbances from shipping. Trenches are dug and cables buried in shallow waters coming up onto shore. At greater depths, though, areas such as the West European Basin, which is almost three miles from the surface, there’s no need for armour, as merchant shipping poses no threat at all to cables on the seabed http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/2/#h2 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...
      - ptha 10y ago
        Fishing trawlers are more likely to cause damage: By far the most common problems, however—accounting for about 60 percent of cut cable incidents—are dropped anchors and fishing nets. The cables are on sea charts so this can be avoided, but that won't stop deliberate saboteurs. The strategy for safeguarding undersea cables has been described as “security through obscurity.” http://www.wired.com/2015/10/undersea-cable-maps/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/undersea-cable-maps/
        yxhuvud 10y ago
        Not very obscure if you can find them on a sea chart.
    - yuubi 10y ago
      In normal power distribution, much of the cost is in generating the electricity, and the cable is cheap and readily accessible and you can easily take several truckloads of heavy cable to the many sites. Undersea cable is different, and I suspect that nobody cares if 99.9% of the power is wasted to heat the power wire as long as enough gets to the repeaters. Kirchhoff's law says that if your wire is insulated, ask the current that goes in one end comes out the other. The only thing is that you need to provide sufficient voltage to push it through the long wire.
  - yompers888 10y ago
    They actually used to be thinner, especially at shallow depths, but they had to add some extra sheathing because sharks were attracted. They'd go down to fix a break and find shark teeth embedded in it.
    - nstj 10y ago
      That's super interesting. Any kind of link perhaps?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - yompers888 10y ago
        I recommend searching "sharks eating the internet"so it can become part of your Google history. I searched and found some videos of sharks biting, and some people discounting it.
      - bwoj 10y ago
        http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/its-official-sharks-no-longer-a-threat-to-subsea-internet-cables/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/its-official-shar...
gormo2 10y ago
>But despite the rising prominence of Russian hackers in this news cycle — and Chinese hackers before that — it's worth pointing out that the United States has grown fairly proficient in cyberspace, too. How am I not surprised that in an article about US espionage the American s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ media makes sure to remind yet again us how bad, bad, bad the Russians are.
- peyton 10y ago
  The context of the article is recent comments by political candidates about Russian cyber warfare. The subs' capabilities were revealed at a conference three weeks ago.
- mlvljr 10y ago
  Cause we are!!
- gwern 10y ago
  It reads the exact opposite to me. 'You know how everyone's upset about Russian/Chinese hacking lately? Remember that the US did it first and on a far larger scale than them.'
  - finid 10y ago
    But who's going to impose sanctions on us?
  - gormo2 10y ago
    Difference in this case is there's actually evidence rather than hearsay.
  - gormo2 10y ago
    Difference in this case is there's actually evidence rather than hearsay.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  It's more like: "So you stole emails from a political campaign? That's cool -- remember that conversation with your mistress in 2005? No? We do."
benevol 10y ago
Edward Snowden revealed a long time ago that the NSA also taps the undersea communications cables for mass surveillance (which obviously includes US citizens).
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  That was hardly a Snowden leak. The Russians have had one of the Ivy Bells listening taps on public display since 1999. The book Blind Man's Bluff details the taps and was published in 1998. These days, tapping them isn't likely to be particularly useful. Anything sensitive transiting them is gonna be encrypted. Ivy Bells was possible because the Soviets thought it would be impossible to tap the cables - they were within Soviet waters and the tech used to finally do it was quite clever - so they didn't encrypt anything.
chinathrow 10y ago
Assume all oceanic cables rigged. The CIA has been doing this for decades. Added: https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/006097771X https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...
- stephengillie 10y ago
  Welcome to the fish bowl. But don't worry too much. As recent terrorist acts have shown, our intelligence communities retain their efficacy in the face of modern technological advances.
  - awqrre 10y ago
    They don't use this information for preventing terrorist attacks... it is more to gain an economic advantage.
Jerry2 10y ago
If this sort of stuff interets you, I highly recommend the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage". [0] It tells the story of Cold War espionage from the submarine warfare point of view. The book also covers "Operation Ivy Bells" which was a joint Navy/CIA/NSA mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War. [1] Sub placed a listening and recording devices over Soviet cables and was able to capture their communications. The device was fairly large as can be seen from this picture [2]. I'm sure they're smaller now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untold_Story_of_American_Submarine_Espionage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untol... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells [2] http://www.therebreathersite.nl/11_Closed%20Circuit%20Rebreathers/images/GE%20MK10/UnderseaEspionage.jpg http://www.therebreathersite.nl/11_Closed%20Circuit%20Rebrea...
- sandworm101 10y ago
  >>> I'm sure they're smaller now. I'm betting not. Ivy Bells was back in the days of copper wires being tapped by external sensors placed atop undersea cables. Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. Normal procedure for such work involves hauling the cable to a surface ship where it can be picked apart by hand. A sub would have to somehow pull the cable inside its pressure hull, a very dangerous task. Any sub equipped for such an operation would surely be noticed (massive doors, reconfigured interior spaces, special station-keeping thrusters etc). Maybe they do it in very shallow water, but then you would still need a dry environment. You would have to deal with the current passing through the cable, somehow without detection or cooperation from the cable's operators. There are just too many difficulties to make splicing-by-submarine practical.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    I wouldn't count it out, but obviously all the specifics are highly classified. The USS Jimmy Carter is the sub (or one of?) we probably use for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter It is 100' longer than other subs in the same class thanks to special equipment "which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces".
sandworm101 10y ago
I'm calling BS on this. The stealthiness of a sub, it's only real purpose, is defeated the moment you start transmitting via a big antenna. It wouldn't happen. Subs no doubt are used for surveillance, but the concept of them sitting offshore and actively "hacking" communications is absurd. It would be a suicide mission with a billion-dollar asset. The OP reads like a funding request. It's a pitch for a world where hackers will live inside submarines close to the action, when we know from experience that even when submarines were used to tap lines that the submarine did nothing other than install the tap and scurry away. (They also retrieved the recorders, but then too scurried away asap.) You don't risk something like a sub, and the lives onboard, on information management that can be done from afar. A drone capable of operating untethered far away from the mother ship might as well be controlled from thousands of miles away. The sub may launch the hacker-drone, but no matter the navy's fantasy, subs won't be at the center of the flowchart.
- brudgers 10y ago
  A parabolic antenna can create a narrow beam. That beam can be aimed at a satellite. It is only necessary for the antenna but not the submarine to be at the surface. The long usage history of sonobuoys and underwater decoys in submarine warfare seems reason to suppose that the use of similar sacrificial systems within the realm of possible tactics to further avoid detection of a submarine.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    (1) A parabolic antenna is a huge radar target for anyone hunting submarines. (2) A parabolic antenna, or any other very directional antenna, requires a stable platform. Either it's on a huge inflatable raft, or the sub is rigidly attached. Either way, the operation will be noticed. (3) Sacrificial systems in submarine warfare are rare. They exist but, like aircraft launching flares, they draw attention and are therefor only used once the sub has been somehow detected. Subs don't like anything that draws attention unless things are already hitting the fan.
    - billbail 10y ago
j1vms 10y ago
Which is amusing if you consider that a very long-distance, underwater cable which would be difficult to physically monitor (e.g. with cameras), would make a perfect use case for link encryption (at just above the physical layer). I do not see why that wouldn't be technically possible, unless someone cares to comment.
- packetslave 10y ago
  Because encrypting a 60Tb/sec data stream in real-time is computationally hard?
  - jauer 10y ago
    There isn't a single 60Tb/sec datastream though so it is quite feasible (and I'd be shocked if people aren't doing it, especially after the post-Snowden rush to MACsec). Undersea cables are DWDM systems where you have N x 10G,40G,100G waves. 100G MACsec is available in merchant silicon and out of the box on switches from Cisco & Arista (off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others). You wouldn't even encrypt the undersea cables specifically, you'd encrypt your transport links before they leave your datacenter, that way you don't need to trust your carrier, the cable consortium, or anyone else (aside from your switch vendor...)
    - russell_h 10y ago
      https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal-network/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googl...
    - walrus01 10y ago
      Further, the individual traffic streams in a 10 gigabit per second circuit would be encrypted at layers 4 through 7. Assuming that people are using properly implemented public /private key cryptography, of course. Even so, the metadata of who is talking to who and traffic flow analysis is very valuable to the NSA.
willvarfar 10y ago
The Russians also have a long history of "special purpose" submarines, and are currently expanding their fleet of them again. Lots and lots of details eg largish "mini" submarines that dock on the underside of massive subs at http://www.hisutton.com http://www.hisutton.com
arethuza 10y ago
On a related note I can strongly recommend The Silent Deep which goes into a lot of detail about what Royal navy submarines got up to in the Cold War: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0171SWRGI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0171SWRGI/ref=dp-kindle-redirec... e.g. Operation Barmaid, where a nuclear submarines was equipped with a giant set of cutters to allow it to cut and steal the towed sonar array from a Warsaw Pact vessel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Conqueror_(S48)#Operation_Barmaid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Conqueror_(S48)#Operation_...
gravypod 10y ago
Who would have thought War Driving would turn into War Diving?
ommunist 10y ago
Because they can, or because Navy do not have access to Shodan?
zaroth 10y ago
Reading the first few paragraphs of this story reminds me how much I really can't stand WP's coverage of Trump. It's complete editorial and bordering on fabrication. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference at one of his South Florida resorts. He added later, “They probably have them. I’d like to have them released.” That's the actual quote. What WP turns that into? "PHILADELPHIA — Republican nominee Donald Trump pleaded directly Wednesday with the Russian government to meddle in the U.S. presidential election by finding and releasing tens of thousands of private emails from his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton — an extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented maneuver in American politics." And then this... "When Donald Trump effectively called for Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails Wednesday, the GOP nominee's remarks touched off a (predictable) media firestorm. Here was a presidential candidate from a major U.S. party encouraging a foreign government to target American interests with cyberspying — an act that could not only expose national security information but also potentially undermine the actual security infrastructure of the United States." What he actually said? "No, it gives me no pause. If they have them, they have them." I understand it's Bezos pushing his agenda. But at some point it's just not reporting anymore. There was absolutely no call to hack Hillary. The point was if they did hack her previously then they have the 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted before turning over the server. Hillary wipes her server and lies about having sent classified documents on her server, and the WP actually says Donald is the one undermining national security?! That is just too rich!
intrasight 10y ago
I would have thought that by now that the interesting stuff would be flowing through cables using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)
theCricketer 10y ago
> These days, some U.S. subs come equipped with sophisticated antennas that can be used to intercept and manipulate other people's communications traffic, particularly on weak or unencrypted networks. Isn't (most of) the communication over these links encrypted? What is the point of tapping into the information flow? Is it possible that they are able to decrypt it?
mmaunder 10y ago
"...mast-mounted antennas and collection systems atop the conning tower, some of them one-of-a-kind devices made for hard to reach or specific targets, all of them black boxes of future war." That's a quote in the article from a source who is another pair of journalists writing for Gawker. RF doesn't propagate well through water - in fact VLF is best and only goes to about 20 meters depth. Subs are most vulnerable when on the surface. So the idea that we'd be using underwater manned platforms at a cost of $1.7 billion each to monitor enemy radio from the conning tower (without even using a buoy) seems a bit absurd to me. The NRO has launched 3 spy satellites already this year. They're monitoring signals from within 150 miles using high gain antennas without the constraints of salt water, risk of detection and negative effects of a low altitude antenna and a tiny radio horizon. I too want to believe we have badass hacker subs, but this feels like laying the groundwork for a budget request.
- grkvlt 10y ago
  The UK and US have been using submarines as SIGINT platforms for a long time. Don't discount the ability to sneak into coastal waters a mile offshore from a missile testing facility, pop up an antenna and listen for telemetry, radar or other comms. The book I am currently reading about GCHQ describes such missions, for example: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l9i5bt1-7HYC&lpg=PA6&vq=submarines%20navy%20sigint&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l9i5bt1-7HYC&lpg=PA6&vq=...
- jedc 10y ago
  Former navy submarine officer here. So SIGINT is absolutely a capability of US submarines, but isn't necessarily a primary purpose. But there are absolutely times and places where the ideal source of intelligence for the US government is a submarine offshore of country X with very small masts sticking out of the water gathering SIGINT. Satellites don't/can't catch everything.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
Hondor 10y ago
Before Snowden and Manning there was the more old fashioned Ronald Pelton who was just released from his 30 years in prison last year for revealing information about submarine phone tapping. His motives were different but he was still treated horribly by the US for revealing the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Pelton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Pelton
- berberous 10y ago
  He sold state secrets to the Russians. He may have told the truth, but that's also treason.
- gozur88 10y ago
  Pelton was just your garden variety spy. He wasn't acting out of any concern for the general welfare.
  - Hondor 10y ago
    Sure he was more traditional and self interested. But his actions were nonetheless essentially "good" in the same way He informed people that they were having their telecommunications secretly listened to. Just because it was for the benefit of Russians instead of Americans doesn't make it wrong. They're people too.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      You've got to be kidding me. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian/authoritarian expansionist empire that carried out pervasive surveillance of all of its people, and used gathered information to identify and silence dissenters by shipping them off to gulags or executing them. And you're here praising a guy who was helping them because you think he was concerned about their privacy.
    - gozur88 10y ago
      >But his actions were nonetheless essentially "good" in the same way... No. He gave US security information to the government USSR, not to the Russian people. By your definition any spy anywhere is "good". Just because moral distinctions can be difficult to make doesn't mean we throw up our hands and say all actions are equally moral.
transfire 10y ago
I first learned about this when I read about a patent dispute. Someone (I don't recall the name) invented a coupler that could be used to easily splice a fiber optic cable (e.g. under water) and tap into all it's signal undetected. The inventor was denied patent rights and lost all control of his invention b/c the U.S. government claimed States Secrets, thus no court case on the matter could proceed.
- Inconel 10y ago
  Based on what you described I found this old Wired article from 2005. It sounds like this could be the case you're remembering. http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68894?currentPage=all http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68...
  - dekhn 10y ago
    Ooh, this lead to all sorts of interesting reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege """The privilege was first officially recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953). A military airplane, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, crashed. The widows of three civilian crew members sought accident reports on the crash but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission ... ... In 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released, and it was found that the assertion that they contained secret information was fraudulent. The reports did, however, contain information about the poor condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case.""" So a Supreme Court case established precedence based on false claim of secret privilege from the government. That's pretty awful- if correct, it's a huge abuse of privelege. Incidentally, I was not surprised to see Lucent mentioned in the Wired article- its predecessor, Bell Labs, had a very strong relationship with national security (The Idea Factory showed that the head of Bell Labs and the head of AT&T both maintained "secret schedules" where they would go to DC and share a lot of AT&T's access with security agencies.
    - 10y ago
zitterbewegung 10y ago
There are many people who are saying that the NSA would use radio waves / only store the data. Why not forward the data to another fiber optic connection which is friendly to you to a datacenter.

363 points by Jerry2 10y ago

nstj 10y ago

Did you know that the subsea fiber optic cables which the submarines hack are only 17mm thick? [0]. Great companion story at ARS from a while back worth a read. [0]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/2/#h2 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...

chrisseaton 10y ago
I was going to reply that this was surely nonsense and I've seen the thick cables the size of a man's leg, but as the article says these images we've seen are only for shallow areas and the majority of the cable really is just the size of a marker pen, shielded with just a few millimetres of plastic.
- josh2600 10y ago
  http://mikesenese.com/DOIT/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Undersea-cable-580x553.jpg http://mikesenese.com/DOIT/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Unders... ^undersea cables are typically made up of a central fiber line, which look like human hairs in a small tube, and a shell of insulation and copper. You need power to send the signal across the ocean floor and, as we do not generate electricity underwater, all of the current needs to be sent from one end to the other to power all of the repeaters along the way. The fiber optic cable is 17mm, but the cable itself can't be because of the power constraint (unless I'm missing something deep; feel free to correct me if so).
  - nstj 10y ago
    > The nearer to the surface you get, the more protection—armour—you need to withstand potential disturbances from shipping. Trenches are dug and cables buried in shallow waters coming up onto shore. At greater depths, though, areas such as the West European Basin, which is almost three miles from the surface, there’s no need for armour, as merchant shipping poses no threat at all to cables on the seabed http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/2/#h2 http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...
    - ptha 10y ago
      Fishing trawlers are more likely to cause damage: By far the most common problems, however—accounting for about 60 percent of cut cable incidents—are dropped anchors and fishing nets. The cables are on sea charts so this can be avoided, but that won't stop deliberate saboteurs. The strategy for safeguarding undersea cables has been described as “security through obscurity.” http://www.wired.com/2015/10/undersea-cable-maps/ http://www.wired.com/2015/10/undersea-cable-maps/
      - yxhuvud 10y ago
        Not very obscure if you can find them on a sea chart.
  - yuubi 10y ago
    In normal power distribution, much of the cost is in generating the electricity, and the cable is cheap and readily accessible and you can easily take several truckloads of heavy cable to the many sites. Undersea cable is different, and I suspect that nobody cares if 99.9% of the power is wasted to heat the power wire as long as enough gets to the repeaters. Kirchhoff's law says that if your wire is insulated, ask the current that goes in one end comes out the other. The only thing is that you need to provide sufficient voltage to push it through the long wire.
- yompers888 10y ago
  They actually used to be thinner, especially at shallow depths, but they had to add some extra sheathing because sharks were attracted. They'd go down to fix a break and find shark teeth embedded in it.
  - nstj 10y ago
    That's super interesting. Any kind of link perhaps?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - yompers888 10y ago
      I recommend searching "sharks eating the internet"so it can become part of your Google history. I searched and found some videos of sharks biting, and some people discounting it.
    - bwoj 10y ago
      http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/its-official-sharks-no-longer-a-threat-to-subsea-internet-cables/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/its-official-shar...

gormo2 10y ago

>But despite the rising prominence of Russian hackers in this news cycle — and Chinese hackers before that — it's worth pointing out that the United States has grown fairly proficient in cyberspace, too. How am I not surprised that in an article about US espionage the American s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ media makes sure to remind yet again us how bad, bad, bad the Russians are.

peyton 10y ago
The context of the article is recent comments by political candidates about Russian cyber warfare. The subs' capabilities were revealed at a conference three weeks ago.
mlvljr 10y ago
Cause we are!!
gwern 10y ago
It reads the exact opposite to me. 'You know how everyone's upset about Russian/Chinese hacking lately? Remember that the US did it first and on a far larger scale than them.'
- finid 10y ago
  But who's going to impose sanctions on us?
- gormo2 10y ago
  Difference in this case is there's actually evidence rather than hearsay.
- gormo2 10y ago
  Difference in this case is there's actually evidence rather than hearsay.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's more like: "So you stole emails from a political campaign? That's cool -- remember that conversation with your mistress in 2005? No? We do."

benevol 10y ago

Edward Snowden revealed a long time ago that the NSA also taps the undersea communications cables for mass surveillance (which obviously includes US citizens).

ceejayoz 10y ago
That was hardly a Snowden leak. The Russians have had one of the Ivy Bells listening taps on public display since 1999. The book Blind Man's Bluff details the taps and was published in 1998. These days, tapping them isn't likely to be particularly useful. Anything sensitive transiting them is gonna be encrypted. Ivy Bells was possible because the Soviets thought it would be impossible to tap the cables - they were within Soviet waters and the tech used to finally do it was quite clever - so they didn't encrypt anything.

chinathrow 10y ago

Assume all oceanic cables rigged. The CIA has been doing this for decades. Added: https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/006097771X https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...

stephengillie 10y ago
Welcome to the fish bowl. But don't worry too much. As recent terrorist acts have shown, our intelligence communities retain their efficacy in the face of modern technological advances.
- awqrre 10y ago
  They don't use this information for preventing terrorist attacks... it is more to gain an economic advantage.

Jerry2 10y ago

If this sort of stuff interets you, I highly recommend the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage". [0] It tells the story of Cold War espionage from the submarine warfare point of view. The book also covers "Operation Ivy Bells" which was a joint Navy/CIA/NSA mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War. [1] Sub placed a listening and recording devices over Soviet cables and was able to capture their communications. The device was fairly large as can be seen from this picture [2]. I'm sure they're smaller now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untold_Story_of_American_Submarine_Espionage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untol... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells [2] http://www.therebreathersite.nl/11_Closed%20Circuit%20Rebreathers/images/GE%20MK10/UnderseaEspionage.jpg http://www.therebreathersite.nl/11_Closed%20Circuit%20Rebrea...

sandworm101 10y ago
>>> I'm sure they're smaller now. I'm betting not. Ivy Bells was back in the days of copper wires being tapped by external sensors placed atop undersea cables. Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. Normal procedure for such work involves hauling the cable to a surface ship where it can be picked apart by hand. A sub would have to somehow pull the cable inside its pressure hull, a very dangerous task. Any sub equipped for such an operation would surely be noticed (massive doors, reconfigured interior spaces, special station-keeping thrusters etc). Maybe they do it in very shallow water, but then you would still need a dry environment. You would have to deal with the current passing through the cable, somehow without detection or cooperation from the cable's operators. There are just too many difficulties to make splicing-by-submarine practical.
- jonknee 10y ago
  I wouldn't count it out, but obviously all the specifics are highly classified. The USS Jimmy Carter is the sub (or one of?) we probably use for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter It is 100' longer than other subs in the same class thanks to special equipment "which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces".

sandworm101 10y ago

I'm calling BS on this. The stealthiness of a sub, it's only real purpose, is defeated the moment you start transmitting via a big antenna. It wouldn't happen. Subs no doubt are used for surveillance, but the concept of them sitting offshore and actively "hacking" communications is absurd. It would be a suicide mission with a billion-dollar asset. The OP reads like a funding request. It's a pitch for a world where hackers will live inside submarines close to the action, when we know from experience that even when submarines were used to tap lines that the submarine did nothing other than install the tap and scurry away. (They also retrieved the recorders, but then too scurried away asap.) You don't risk something like a sub, and the lives onboard, on information management that can be done from afar. A drone capable of operating untethered far away from the mother ship might as well be controlled from thousands of miles away. The sub may launch the hacker-drone, but no matter the navy's fantasy, subs won't be at the center of the flowchart.

brudgers 10y ago
A parabolic antenna can create a narrow beam. That beam can be aimed at a satellite. It is only necessary for the antenna but not the submarine to be at the surface. The long usage history of sonobuoys and underwater decoys in submarine warfare seems reason to suppose that the use of similar sacrificial systems within the realm of possible tactics to further avoid detection of a submarine.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  (1) A parabolic antenna is a huge radar target for anyone hunting submarines. (2) A parabolic antenna, or any other very directional antenna, requires a stable platform. Either it's on a huge inflatable raft, or the sub is rigidly attached. Either way, the operation will be noticed. (3) Sacrificial systems in submarine warfare are rare. They exist but, like aircraft launching flares, they draw attention and are therefor only used once the sub has been somehow detected. Subs don't like anything that draws attention unless things are already hitting the fan.
  - billbail 10y ago

j1vms 10y ago

Which is amusing if you consider that a very long-distance, underwater cable which would be difficult to physically monitor (e.g. with cameras), would make a perfect use case for link encryption (at just above the physical layer). I do not see why that wouldn't be technically possible, unless someone cares to comment.

packetslave 10y ago
Because encrypting a 60Tb/sec data stream in real-time is computationally hard?
- jauer 10y ago
  There isn't a single 60Tb/sec datastream though so it is quite feasible (and I'd be shocked if people aren't doing it, especially after the post-Snowden rush to MACsec). Undersea cables are DWDM systems where you have N x 10G,40G,100G waves. 100G MACsec is available in merchant silicon and out of the box on switches from Cisco & Arista (off the top of my head, I'm sure there are others). You wouldn't even encrypt the undersea cables specifically, you'd encrypt your transport links before they leave your datacenter, that way you don't need to trust your carrier, the cable consortium, or anyone else (aside from your switch vendor...)
  - russell_h 10y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googlers-say-f-you-to-nsa-company-encrypts-internal-network/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/googl...
  - walrus01 10y ago
    Further, the individual traffic streams in a 10 gigabit per second circuit would be encrypted at layers 4 through 7. Assuming that people are using properly implemented public /private key cryptography, of course. Even so, the metadata of who is talking to who and traffic flow analysis is very valuable to the NSA.

willvarfar 10y ago

The Russians also have a long history of "special purpose" submarines, and are currently expanding their fleet of them again. Lots and lots of details eg largish "mini" submarines that dock on the underside of massive subs at http://www.hisutton.com http://www.hisutton.com

arethuza 10y ago

On a related note I can strongly recommend The Silent Deep which goes into a lot of detail about what Royal navy submarines got up to in the Cold War: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0171SWRGI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0171SWRGI/ref=dp-kindle-redirec... e.g. Operation Barmaid, where a nuclear submarines was equipped with a giant set of cutters to allow it to cut and steal the towed sonar array from a Warsaw Pact vessel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Conqueror_(S48)#Operation_Barmaid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Conqueror_(S48)#Operation_...

gravypod 10y ago

Who would have thought War Driving would turn into War Diving?

ommunist 10y ago

Because they can, or because Navy do not have access to Shodan?

zaroth 10y ago

Reading the first few paragraphs of this story reminds me how much I really can't stand WP's coverage of Trump. It's complete editorial and bordering on fabrication. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said during a news conference at one of his South Florida resorts. He added later, “They probably have them. I’d like to have them released.” That's the actual quote. What WP turns that into? "PHILADELPHIA — Republican nominee Donald Trump pleaded directly Wednesday with the Russian government to meddle in the U.S. presidential election by finding and releasing tens of thousands of private emails from his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton — an extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented maneuver in American politics." And then this... "When Donald Trump effectively called for Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's emails Wednesday, the GOP nominee's remarks touched off a (predictable) media firestorm. Here was a presidential candidate from a major U.S. party encouraging a foreign government to target American interests with cyberspying — an act that could not only expose national security information but also potentially undermine the actual security infrastructure of the United States." What he actually said? "No, it gives me no pause. If they have them, they have them." I understand it's Bezos pushing his agenda. But at some point it's just not reporting anymore. There was absolutely no call to hack Hillary. The point was if they did hack her previously then they have the 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted before turning over the server. Hillary wipes her server and lies about having sent classified documents on her server, and the WP actually says Donald is the one undermining national security?! That is just too rich!

intrasight 10y ago

I would have thought that by now that the interesting stuff would be flowing through cables using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD)

theCricketer 10y ago

> These days, some U.S. subs come equipped with sophisticated antennas that can be used to intercept and manipulate other people's communications traffic, particularly on weak or unencrypted networks. Isn't (most of) the communication over these links encrypted? What is the point of tapping into the information flow? Is it possible that they are able to decrypt it?

mmaunder 10y ago

"...mast-mounted antennas and collection systems atop the conning tower, some of them one-of-a-kind devices made for hard to reach or specific targets, all of them black boxes of future war." That's a quote in the article from a source who is another pair of journalists writing for Gawker. RF doesn't propagate well through water - in fact VLF is best and only goes to about 20 meters depth. Subs are most vulnerable when on the surface. So the idea that we'd be using underwater manned platforms at a cost of $1.7 billion each to monitor enemy radio from the conning tower (without even using a buoy) seems a bit absurd to me. The NRO has launched 3 spy satellites already this year. They're monitoring signals from within 150 miles using high gain antennas without the constraints of salt water, risk of detection and negative effects of a low altitude antenna and a tiny radio horizon. I too want to believe we have badass hacker subs, but this feels like laying the groundwork for a budget request.

grkvlt 10y ago
The UK and US have been using submarines as SIGINT platforms for a long time. Don't discount the ability to sneak into coastal waters a mile offshore from a missile testing facility, pop up an antenna and listen for telemetry, radar or other comms. The book I am currently reading about GCHQ describes such missions, for example: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l9i5bt1-7HYC&lpg=PA6&vq=submarines%20navy%20sigint&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l9i5bt1-7HYC&lpg=PA6&vq=...
jedc 10y ago
Former navy submarine officer here. So SIGINT is absolutely a capability of US submarines, but isn't necessarily a primary purpose. But there are absolutely times and places where the ideal source of intelligence for the US government is a submarine offshore of country X with very small masts sticking out of the water gathering SIGINT. Satellites don't/can't catch everything.
- deleted 10y ago
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Hondor 10y ago

Before Snowden and Manning there was the more old fashioned Ronald Pelton who was just released from his 30 years in prison last year for revealing information about submarine phone tapping. His motives were different but he was still treated horribly by the US for revealing the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Pelton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Pelton

berberous 10y ago
He sold state secrets to the Russians. He may have told the truth, but that's also treason.
gozur88 10y ago
Pelton was just your garden variety spy. He wasn't acting out of any concern for the general welfare.
- Hondor 10y ago
  Sure he was more traditional and self interested. But his actions were nonetheless essentially "good" in the same way He informed people that they were having their telecommunications secretly listened to. Just because it was for the benefit of Russians instead of Americans doesn't make it wrong. They're people too.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    You've got to be kidding me. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian/authoritarian expansionist empire that carried out pervasive surveillance of all of its people, and used gathered information to identify and silence dissenters by shipping them off to gulags or executing them. And you're here praising a guy who was helping them because you think he was concerned about their privacy.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    >But his actions were nonetheless essentially "good" in the same way... No. He gave US security information to the government USSR, not to the Russian people. By your definition any spy anywhere is "good". Just because moral distinctions can be difficult to make doesn't mean we throw up our hands and say all actions are equally moral.

transfire 10y ago

I first learned about this when I read about a patent dispute. Someone (I don't recall the name) invented a coupler that could be used to easily splice a fiber optic cable (e.g. under water) and tap into all it's signal undetected. The inventor was denied patent rights and lost all control of his invention b/c the U.S. government claimed States Secrets, thus no court case on the matter could proceed.

Inconel 10y ago
Based on what you described I found this old Wired article from 2005. It sounds like this could be the case you're remembering. http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68894?currentPage=all http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68...
- dekhn 10y ago
  Ooh, this lead to all sorts of interesting reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege """The privilege was first officially recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953). A military airplane, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, crashed. The widows of three civilian crew members sought accident reports on the crash but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission ... ... In 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released, and it was found that the assertion that they contained secret information was fraudulent. The reports did, however, contain information about the poor condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case.""" So a Supreme Court case established precedence based on false claim of secret privilege from the government. That's pretty awful- if correct, it's a huge abuse of privelege. Incidentally, I was not surprised to see Lucent mentioned in the Wired article- its predecessor, Bell Labs, had a very strong relationship with national security (The Idea Factory showed that the head of Bell Labs and the head of AT&T both maintained "secret schedules" where they would go to DC and share a lot of AT&T's access with security agencies.
  - 10y ago

zitterbewegung 10y ago

There are many people who are saying that the NSA would use radio waves / only store the data. Why not forward the data to another fiber optic connection which is friendly to you to a datacenter.