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Russian ship loitering near undersea cables
- xXx_swat21_xXx 10y agoThere 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.
- xXx_swat21_xXx 10y agoHere are all the coordinates of where they've been since October 7th, so if you have access to more precise data about where those cables go, you can plot the coordinates with your own GIS software. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WFIX0PAK1SJq35usKwR4znbeS8M&usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WFIX0PAK1SJq35usKwR4znbeS8...
- guelo 10y agoYou 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 10y agoIf 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 10y agoI think you may have misunderstood the grandparent comment's use of the word "evidence".
- xXx_swat21_xXx 10y agoWhy 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.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aw3c2 10y agoWell, how accurate are those cable lines?
- lithos 10y agoThere 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 10y agoIf 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 10y agoPaper 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 10y agoThat'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?
- kbuck 10y agoLooks like the site is down. Mirror: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iq7DDCul7nAJ:www.hisutton.com/Yantar.html&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iq7DDCu...
- emmelaich 10y agoLink from site to marinetraffic site showing the ship and location: http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:1215053/mmsi:273546520/vessel:YANTAR http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:121...
- dfsegoat 10y agoThat was fast (site going down)... and suspicious perhaps, considering the ship is basically purpose built for SIGINT and being able to find, loiter and muck around with whatever it wants in terms of undersea cables. [0] - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-prese...
- r721 10y agoAnother mirror: http://archive.is/XRILW http://archive.is/XRILW
- dbdoug 10y agoI'm a daily user of the marinetraffic site, and it's pretty fragile at any time.
- okket 10y agoCyprus must have an extremely good internet connection :)
- kafkaesq 10y agoFor 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
- leggomylibro 10y agoNeal 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 10y agoI'm less concerned about denial of service via cutting cables, and more concerned about the tapping of cables for wholesale data snarfing.
- CyberDildonics 10y agoI don't think you have to choose.
- M_Grey 10y agoExactly... tap whichever ones you want, cut the rest. Two birds, one insane stone.
- Bdiem 10y agoIs that a realistic threat model? What does the technology look like to tap into 800Gbit/s of fiber traffic - under water?
- mikeweiss 10y agoThis, and if you can even capture that much traffic, all the good stuff is going to be encrypted anyway ;-)
- platz 10y agothe ship appears between lebanon/syria and cyprus, not turkey and cyprus.
- willvarfar 10y agoThe 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!
- adriancooney 10y agoArs Technica had a great piece on how these undersea cables: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...
- dfsegoat 10y agoLooks 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:1215053/mmsi:273546520/vessel:YANTAR http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:121...
- themodelplumber 10y agoRussia 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?
- rdiddly 10y agoSeems like I see a lot more fearmongering ABOUT Russia.
- mSparks 10y agogiven this is "Russia sub ship loitering near Syrian undersea cables." its probably fud aimed at the strong russian syrian government relationship.
- smoyer 10y agoAnd yet American citizens were unable to influence either party enough to have them submit a viable candidate.
- dwaltrip 10y agoOr, the interplay of all relevant existing processes and system dynamics do not easily facilitate "viable candidates"[1] from being nominated. Of course, this doesn't tell us what is need to repair these processes and system dynamics. Hopefully we eventually achieve some new breakthroughs in governmental systems in the coming decades. [1] insert personal definition of "viable candidate" here
- clock_tower 10y agoWhat amazes me is that they think that getting the far right in power in the West is going to be good for Russia. Because, you know, things went so well for Russia the last time these people were in power...
- gozur88 10y agoSeems 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 10y agoand also logging the bits forever so that they can reinterpret what is "interesting" at a future date.
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- ageofwant 10y agoShips 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.
- Steko 10y ago> Loiter" implies the loiterer is violating some rights the accuser imagines himself to have That's not what my dictionary says. To stand about without any aim or purpose; to stand about idly; to linger; to hang around. Used appropriately by source.
- ceejayoz 10y ago> Russia may be simply legally installing its surveillance equipment on cables it found in international waters. I'm fairly certain active communications cables don't fall under marine salvage. edit: http://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Beckman-PDF-ISIL-Submarine-Cables-rev-8-Jan-10.pdf http://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Beckman-... states "Articles 113-115 of UNCLOS provide for the protection of submarine cables beneath the high seas. These articles are also applicable in the EEZ because of article 58(2)." Russia has signed and ratified https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_t....
- 6502nerdface 10y ago"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.
- rbanffy 10y agoHow hard - or detectable - is one tapping on an underwater fiber? I suspect it's very hard to tap and easily detectable.
- habitue 10y agoDoes 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 10y agoI don't think it was intended as a call to action. Do you think all non-actionable information is worthless?
- xXx_swat21_xXx 10y agoThe story now has coverage from motherboard.vice.com http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-theory-about-a-russian-ship-tapping-syrian-internet-is-weird http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-theory-about-a-russian...