5 ms·

I know there are many of these cables that have been around for years, but I am curious how are they physically secured? Especially where they transit from ocea

I know there are many of these cables that have been around for years, but I am curious how are they physically secured? Especially where they transit from ocean to land? Is there some long underground/sea tunnel of conduit that the cable is routed through to the basement of some building? Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some building near the shore? I also wonder what kind of permissions and licenses you need to seek to run a cable across the ocean floor?

sandworm101 6y ago
>> Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some building near the shore? It is generally buried either under the sand or inside concrete. But yes, there are places where you can get very close to these things if you know what you are looking at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_landing_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_landing_point Here is a pic of the landing for the US base in Cuba. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/186633/uct-1-unit-choice-gtmo-cable-landing https://www.dvidshub.net/news/186633/uct-1-unit-choice-gtmo-...
chasd00 6y ago
I’ve wondered the same, you can image search and find some pictures. They just sort of come out of the water and go up the beach (I guess what else would happen? Hah) https://media.wired.com/photos/59546c71be605811a2fdcfd0/191:100/pass/TumonBayCableLanding.jpg https://media.wired.com/photos/59546c71be605811a2fdcfd0/191:...
- tyingq 6y ago
  Guessing this would be more typical: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/2019/07/25/Transatlantic_cables_cross_section_gfx_large02.png https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/201...
grandpa_yeti 6y ago
You’re spot on. Most of the cables are either laid on the sea floor and up to a beach, or buried underneath beaches. The following link has some good background on what goes into laying cables and how they terminate. https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables... As for physical security, there isn’t much on the sea floor. There are various instances of nation states tapping cables due to the ease of access when it comes to actually “listening” to the data. Obviously the issue there is getting to the undersea cable. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th...
BelenusMordred 6y ago
> how are they physically secured Multiple nations have specialised subs to tap into them. I doubt you'd find anyone willing to make such a guarantee. They are impossible to secure in any way and you need to rely on security assurances at different layers instead.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  This was done in the 70s/80s, but I doubt it's worth the effort now. It only worked because the Soviets assumed the cables were inaccessible. End-to-end encryption is a thing even for the general public now. Now we just compromise the servers/routers. https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-actually-intercepted-packages-to-put-backdoors-1491169592 https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-actually-intercepted-packages-to...
  - BelenusMordred 6y ago
    > I doubt it's worth the effort now It's very much still happening. Metadata is enough for intel purposes, storage is ridiculously cheap and post-quantum breaks of key exchange is forever 20 years away like fusion. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-pres... https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th... https://www.zdnet.com/article/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-cable/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-...
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      The first link describes attacking cables - severing internet access for entire continents. The second is from 2013; Google and others encrypted those comms shortly afterwards after Snowden revealed those taps. 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... > "The traffic shown in the slides is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ staff did on understanding it, ruined." The third link is twenty years old, and no longer very doable for the same reasons as above. Anyone still sending unencrypted stuff along these cables deserves to get stung.
mcmatterson 6y ago
A number of the first trans-atlantic cables landed in the tiny village of Heart's Content, Newfoundland. I drove through there on a road trip about a decade ago & stopped at the excellent museum in the old cable station, and was excited to make my way across the highway to the beach to see this exact thing. It turns out that the old cables are just.... left to rust on the beach. It's really amazing that these cables, originally a technological wonder & a bridge between entire continents, are just left to the elements once their useful life is over. https://goo.gl/maps/Ku9FtfbMupApZthJA https://goo.gl/maps/Ku9FtfbMupApZthJA
- nine_k 6y ago
  Pulling such a cable from Atlantic would be hard, expensive, and potentially dangerous to other cables. And there are likely laws about not obstructing the shoreline.
jaywalk 6y ago
I'd imagine that the permissions/licensing/whatever only applies to the ends of the cables, when you're out of international waters.
fulafel 6y ago
There's a lot of documented cold war era espionage stuff about tapping undersea cables. Eg https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/intelligence-coup-how-one-us-nuclear-submarine-tapped-russian-undersea-cables-159086 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/intelligence-coup-how...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
felixc 6y ago
I'll take any chance I can get to link to this wonderfully sprawling 1996 article from novelist Neal Stephenson about the laying and landing of transoceanic cables: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ Yes it's long, but it's so worth it!
- ttul 6y ago
  From back when Wired was a really great magazine. I threw out all my 1990s Wired magazines. What a shame.
paul_f 6y ago
What's more amazing than laying a transatlantic cable today? Doing it in 1858! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable
alexhutcheson 6y ago
http://dls.virginia.gov/commission/materials/subseacables.pdf#page=11 http://dls.virginia.gov/commission/materials/subseacables.pd...
cuonic 6y ago
As for physical security, some are only protected by simple manhole covers before reaching the actual technical building, here's an example in Marseille, France where SeaMeWe-4 (and others) lands: 43.261938, 5.37276 [0] but the landing points aren't exactly secret [1]. Here are some photos [2][3] and a video [4] of Dunant's arrival in France. [0] https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte?c=5.372494831681247,43.26191320939307&z=21&l0=ORTHOIMAGERY.ORTHOPHOTOS::GEOPORTAIL:OGC:WMTS(1)&permalink=yes https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte?c=5.372494831681247,43.... [1] https://www.sigcables.com/index.php/cableliste/fiche_cable/52/60 https://www.sigcables.com/index.php/cableliste/fiche_cable/5... [2] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238414261774401537 https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238414261774401537 [3] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238433769935319042 https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238433769935319042 [4] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238479381145751553 https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238479381145751553

sandworm101 6y ago

>> Or if you are walking along the beach somewhere is there just some cable running out of the ocean along the beach to some building near the shore? It is generally buried either under the sand or inside concrete. But yes, there are places where you can get very close to these things if you know what you are looking at. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_landing_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_landing_point Here is a pic of the landing for the US base in Cuba. https://www.dvidshub.net/news/186633/uct-1-unit-choice-gtmo-cable-landing https://www.dvidshub.net/news/186633/uct-1-unit-choice-gtmo-...

chasd00 6y ago

I’ve wondered the same, you can image search and find some pictures. They just sort of come out of the water and go up the beach (I guess what else would happen? Hah) https://media.wired.com/photos/59546c71be605811a2fdcfd0/191:100/pass/TumonBayCableLanding.jpg https://media.wired.com/photos/59546c71be605811a2fdcfd0/191:...

tyingq 6y ago
Guessing this would be more typical: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/2019/07/25/Transatlantic_cables_cross_section_gfx_large02.png https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/.e/interactive/html5-video-media/201...

grandpa_yeti 6y ago

You’re spot on. Most of the cables are either laid on the sea floor and up to a beach, or buried underneath beaches. The following link has some good background on what goes into laying cables and how they terminate. https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea-cables... As for physical security, there isn’t much on the sea floor. There are various instances of nation states tapping cables due to the ease of access when it comes to actually “listening” to the data. Obviously the issue there is getting to the undersea cable. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th...

BelenusMordred 6y ago

> how are they physically secured Multiple nations have specialised subs to tap into them. I doubt you'd find anyone willing to make such a guarantee. They are impossible to secure in any way and you need to rely on security assurances at different layers instead.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ceejayoz 6y ago
This was done in the 70s/80s, but I doubt it's worth the effort now. It only worked because the Soviets assumed the cables were inaccessible. End-to-end encryption is a thing even for the general public now. Now we just compromise the servers/routers. https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-actually-intercepted-packages-to-put-backdoors-1491169592 https://gizmodo.com/the-nsa-actually-intercepted-packages-to...
- BelenusMordred 6y ago
  > I doubt it's worth the effort now It's very much still happening. Metadata is enough for intel purposes, storage is ridiculously cheap and post-quantum breaks of key exchange is forever 20 years away like fusion. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-pres... https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-long-standing-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/th... https://www.zdnet.com/article/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-cable/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-...
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    The first link describes attacking cables - severing internet access for entire continents. The second is from 2013; Google and others encrypted those comms shortly afterwards after Snowden revealed those taps. 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... > "The traffic shown in the slides is now all encrypted and the work the NSA/GCHQ staff did on understanding it, ruined." The third link is twenty years old, and no longer very doable for the same reasons as above. Anyone still sending unencrypted stuff along these cables deserves to get stung.

mcmatterson 6y ago

A number of the first trans-atlantic cables landed in the tiny village of Heart's Content, Newfoundland. I drove through there on a road trip about a decade ago & stopped at the excellent museum in the old cable station, and was excited to make my way across the highway to the beach to see this exact thing. It turns out that the old cables are just.... left to rust on the beach. It's really amazing that these cables, originally a technological wonder & a bridge between entire continents, are just left to the elements once their useful life is over. https://goo.gl/maps/Ku9FtfbMupApZthJA https://goo.gl/maps/Ku9FtfbMupApZthJA

nine_k 6y ago
Pulling such a cable from Atlantic would be hard, expensive, and potentially dangerous to other cables. And there are likely laws about not obstructing the shoreline.

jaywalk 6y ago

I'd imagine that the permissions/licensing/whatever only applies to the ends of the cables, when you're out of international waters.

fulafel 6y ago

There's a lot of documented cold war era espionage stuff about tapping undersea cables. Eg https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/intelligence-coup-how-one-us-nuclear-submarine-tapped-russian-undersea-cables-159086 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/intelligence-coup-how...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

felixc 6y ago

I'll take any chance I can get to link to this wonderfully sprawling 1996 article from novelist Neal Stephenson about the laying and landing of transoceanic cables: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ Yes it's long, but it's so worth it!

ttul 6y ago
From back when Wired was a really great magazine. I threw out all my 1990s Wired magazines. What a shame.

paul_f 6y ago

What's more amazing than laying a transatlantic cable today? Doing it in 1858! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telegraph_cable

alexhutcheson 6y ago

http://dls.virginia.gov/commission/materials/subseacables.pdf#page=11 http://dls.virginia.gov/commission/materials/subseacables.pd...

cuonic 6y ago

As for physical security, some are only protected by simple manhole covers before reaching the actual technical building, here's an example in Marseille, France where SeaMeWe-4 (and others) lands: 43.261938, 5.37276 [0] but the landing points aren't exactly secret [1]. Here are some photos [2][3] and a video [4] of Dunant's arrival in France. [0] https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte?c=5.372494831681247,43.26191320939307&z=21&l0=ORTHOIMAGERY.ORTHOPHOTOS::GEOPORTAIL:OGC:WMTS(1)&permalink=yes https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte?c=5.372494831681247,43.... [1] https://www.sigcables.com/index.php/cableliste/fiche_cable/52/60 https://www.sigcables.com/index.php/cableliste/fiche_cable/5... [2] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238414261774401537 https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238414261774401537 [3] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238433769935319042 https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238433769935319042 [4] https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238479381145751553 https://twitter.com/jlvuillemin/status/1238479381145751553