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Neal 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 i
by leggomylibro 10y ago
Neal 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 ;-)
- willvarfar 10y agoThe USS Jimmy Carter submarine is equiped to do it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping The USA were caught tapping cables in the cold war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells Now this doesn't mean that the Russians are right now tapping these cables; they could be simply mapping their precise location etc for later or using them as a training exercise. The Russians have submarines for this kind of thing, and I bet they're regretting they sent a surface ship. See a list of some of the submarines used for tapping cables at the bottom of the Yandar article.
- xXx_swat21_xXx 10y ago...and the RV Yantar is part of the 29th Special Squadron of the Northern Fleet; the same group that operates those secret cable tapping subs. Probably not a coincidence.
- tropo 10y agoWhy regret? The intent is to be noticed. This is like killing a person with polonium, which is made in just a handful of facilities around the world. Russia wants to cause worry. They want "respect", which mainly means fear.
- xXx_swat21_xXx 10y agoUnlike the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 (to show agents don't defect and live), unlike military exercises in plain view of your adversary (to show your military prowess), and unlike displaying new shiny hardware at a parade (to make your adversary wonder about their capabilities); covertly tapping (or cutting) cables is done covertly, and as someone else mentioned has been going on by "both sides" for decades. If it was done overtly, the country who was being spied on would be tipped off and stop using that means of communication. I think willvarfar is closer to correct, they are probably mapping and looking for things, for future use, not exploiting things right now. I still think one of the things they're looking for, if they're actually over the cables, are other taps that have been placed by others before, or maybe looking for static ASW equipment laid there to detect subs.
- rurban 10y agoEither tapping, as the US does, or cutting the US tap off.
- return0 10y agoThe greek research network ran a number of high speed cables that were not infrequently cut off by careless fishermen. Used to mean a day of slow network until they find the damage and fix.
- rosser 10y ago"Backhoe fade" (whether occasioned by backhoes or otherwise) is categorically different from a state actor deliberately cutting another state's undersea cables.
- thesmallestcat 10y agoThat's a pretty pointless threat and not at all "holding a gun to the world's head." Even cutting all cables would harm the actor as much as anybody else and have no impact on military comms etc. And this reminds me that I need to write a Greasemonkey script to hide comments mentioning Neal Stephenson or Douglas Adams.
- gcr 10y agoNeil Stephenson wrote a heck of a whole lot about undersea cables in 1996. Highly, highly recommended. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
- leggomylibro 10y agoOh yeah, I forgot about that article - I think that it's actually printed in the back of some ebook versions of Cryptonomicon now. It's a great read.
- Y201K 10y agoAlso in his book of essays, Some Remarks.