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What are the odds that [insert your favorite boogeyman global power] has already seeded every submarine communications cable with "robotic beavers", patiently a

What are the odds that [insert your favorite boogeyman global power] has already seeded every submarine communications cable with "robotic beavers", patiently awaiting an activation signal? It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global networks appears to be.

throwaway823882 6y ago
Gentle reminder that multiple countries around the world have almost accidentally started a nuclear holocaust. I'm not that bothered by Netflix going down.
- nwiswell 6y ago
  For what it's worth, that's exactly why it seems like something that is likely to actually happen. It's one thing to threaten mutual nuclear destruction and quite another to give the order to actually kill hundreds of millions of people and almost certainly end or ruin your own life. Since that basically excludes any intentional act by a moral or rational actor, my understanding is that the closest calls were usually cases of mistaken intent. A global internet outage would be devastating for economic and possibly humanitarian reasons, but would not have the degree of practical and moral deterrence that exists for nuclear weapons.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Friendly reminder that it's a lot easier to be talked into hating an "other" when there's no ability to communicate and only the agitators on either side get heard.
Sebb767 6y ago
> It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global networks appears to be. Protecting miles and miles of cable running through the wilderness is an herculean task, especially since usually nobody attempts to attack it. One can of course do a three-way fallback of landline/direct radio link/satellite, but that would be insane cost for, again, basically no benefit and no bandwidth. Two fiber lines is really the best thing you're going to get if you want good and fast internet speeds at reasonable prices.
- great_reversal 6y ago
  Unless you opt for SpaceX's Starlink. Still expensive, but bandwidth is usually better than without it in remote regions.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Well, yes. Current satellite is pretty awful by all accounts. And many places (like my house 40 miles outside of Boston) don't get great cellular reception--which has effective bandwidth caps in any case. In those situations, StarLink looks like a pretty good option, such as at my dad's house where he had 1 Mbps DSL. But probably not so great for the crowd that thinks they can't live without 1 Gbps and TBs of data/month.
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    Yes and no. Starlink is definitely a solution for very small village or remote cabins, but economy of scale kicks in pretty fast. Doing napkin math, the village has 2k people, so let's assume 400 households. If each of those wants 100 Mbit/s, we'd need a 40 Gbit/s link. Maybe 10 Gbit/s with over-provisioning. So that's basically a satellite only for this village. Not to mention that satellites have their own set of vulnerabilities. Probably easier to just lay a redundant fiber liner and use star link for emergencies, in case the robotic beavers take over :)
- wang_li 6y ago
  > especially since usually nobody attempts to attack it. Don’t tell the folks at UMN, they’ll look at it and think, “OMG! It would be so easy to cut with an axe. Such a massive security vulnerability. Bet I could write a paper about this. Where’s my axe?”
lolinder 6y ago
Can we just have a chuckle about a humorous event for once, without someone introducing fear?
- monkeybutton 6y ago
  I sort of assume there's lots of stuff like this that exists and people constantly bringing it up at every opportunity is kind of tiring. The converse where "everyone knows" but doesn't acknowledge it isn't necessarily any better though. Anyways, the mental image of robot beaver drones with glowing red eyes causing havoc makes up for it.
lostlogin 6y ago
> It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global networks appears to be. Is it? I have access pretty much all the time and can’t name an outage (that wasn’t caused by me), ever. When something gets broken somewhere, presumably my data gets routed around the issue.
- nwiswell 6y ago
  > Is it? I have access pretty much all the time and can’t name an outage (that wasn’t caused by me), ever. I think that's because the system is designed to be resilient to random failures (e.g., disgruntled beaver). Submarine cables fail all the time and there are repair boats constantly fixing breakages caused by fishing, wildlife, etc. All of the submarine cables failing at the same time (e.g., terrorist beavers) is most definitely not a random failure and would, I suspect, cause some proper havoc and take months to fix.
- asdff 6y ago
  It blows my mind that you've never once had an internet outage. This is like a monthly to weekly occurrence for me.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    With crap ADSL I had plenty of times where it got slow, and painfully so (1-2mbps). Now that it’s all fibre it’s been rock solid. Masses of investment went into the fibre roll out here in New Zealand and the limiting thing now seems to be the connection to the wider world and the distances involved. 2gbps and 4gbps plans are available, but while attractive, I don’t use all my 1gbps plan and struggle to think of a home use that would. The home infrastructure required would also be significant.
tshaddox 6y ago
Couldn’t they just restrict the communication on that cable at one of the buildings on either end of the cable? Seems likely that they’d still want to use the cable for some approved communications and would have no trouble controlling things without resort to a robotic cable-chewer.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  This is so that country A can prevent communications between country B and country C in case of war. I'm not sure it is an especially valuable war tactic, because while you can probably take out some cat videos for a few hours, serious military and political communications will be redirected over satellite links quite quickly.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Sure, in a total war situation I suppose cutting all long-distance communications would obviously be on the table. But it wouldn’t be up there on my list of concerns, cuz nukes and stuff. I’d see it as a larger concern in the context of terrorism or very asymmetric warfare.
don-code 6y ago
I won't disagree that the physical security of the last mile is quite fragile, but I'm not sure the same holds true for the global Internet. There's no single topology of the Internet, but if I had to try and sum it up: it approaches a mesh at the core, and approaches a star at the edge. Backbones peer with thousands of providers; businesses may have a primary and backup ISP; home users are lucky to even have a second ISP offering service in their area.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
merlinsky 6y ago
Hi, I am a beaver.AMA
- walrus01 6y ago
  if nine out of ten dentists recommend a specific toothpaste, do you agree with them?
  - merlinsky 6y ago
    Hey walrus01, short answer is - no. You should always do your homework and check it by yourself. Anyway, I am not at the dentist very often.
- bushbaba 6y ago
  How do you avoid cavities?
  - merlinsky 6y ago
    I eat no added sugar whatsoever. Only what's in the bark of a tree.
- FridayoLeary 6y ago
  will you donate your fur to science after you die?
  - merlinsky 6y ago
    Probably - yes.
protoman3000 6y ago
> Robotic Beavers > Cut submarine cables You don’t need any of that to break havoc on the internet. Just use BGP to advertise bogus routes to any prefixes.
- mort96 6y ago
  How are you gonna train the beavers to advertise bogus BGP routes?
  - protoman3000 6y ago
    Injecting training data into the brain https://mobile.twitter.com/axios/status/1382696186684014592 https://mobile.twitter.com/axios/status/1382696186684014592
  - netflixandkill 6y ago
    If we can demonstrate to the beavers that BGP blocks running water, they may train themselves.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  That's something that can be cleaned up much faster though.
- kortilla 6y ago
  BGP from where? Hijacking for any extended period of time is a good way to get dropped by your peers. The average outage from these fiber cuts is orders of magnitude longer than the most catastrophic bgp hijacks.
amelius 6y ago
Perhaps we should be more afraid of the connection being there than it not being there.
WalterBright 6y ago
> fragile the physical security of global networks The easiest way to defeat a burglar alarm is with an axe through the power/communication cable. (A better system has a battery backup and uses the cellular network, but the latter is expensive and has bandwidth problems.)

throwaway823882 6y ago

Gentle reminder that multiple countries around the world have almost accidentally started a nuclear holocaust. I'm not that bothered by Netflix going down.

nwiswell 6y ago
For what it's worth, that's exactly why it seems like something that is likely to actually happen. It's one thing to threaten mutual nuclear destruction and quite another to give the order to actually kill hundreds of millions of people and almost certainly end or ruin your own life. Since that basically excludes any intentional act by a moral or rational actor, my understanding is that the closest calls were usually cases of mistaken intent. A global internet outage would be devastating for economic and possibly humanitarian reasons, but would not have the degree of practical and moral deterrence that exists for nuclear weapons.
Lammy 6y ago
Friendly reminder that it's a lot easier to be talked into hating an "other" when there's no ability to communicate and only the agitators on either side get heard.

Sebb767 6y ago

> It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global networks appears to be. Protecting miles and miles of cable running through the wilderness is an herculean task, especially since usually nobody attempts to attack it. One can of course do a three-way fallback of landline/direct radio link/satellite, but that would be insane cost for, again, basically no benefit and no bandwidth. Two fiber lines is really the best thing you're going to get if you want good and fast internet speeds at reasonable prices.

great_reversal 6y ago
Unless you opt for SpaceX's Starlink. Still expensive, but bandwidth is usually better than without it in remote regions.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Well, yes. Current satellite is pretty awful by all accounts. And many places (like my house 40 miles outside of Boston) don't get great cellular reception--which has effective bandwidth caps in any case. In those situations, StarLink looks like a pretty good option, such as at my dad's house where he had 1 Mbps DSL. But probably not so great for the crowd that thinks they can't live without 1 Gbps and TBs of data/month.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  Yes and no. Starlink is definitely a solution for very small village or remote cabins, but economy of scale kicks in pretty fast. Doing napkin math, the village has 2k people, so let's assume 400 households. If each of those wants 100 Mbit/s, we'd need a 40 Gbit/s link. Maybe 10 Gbit/s with over-provisioning. So that's basically a satellite only for this village. Not to mention that satellites have their own set of vulnerabilities. Probably easier to just lay a redundant fiber liner and use star link for emergencies, in case the robotic beavers take over :)
wang_li 6y ago
> especially since usually nobody attempts to attack it. Don’t tell the folks at UMN, they’ll look at it and think, “OMG! It would be so easy to cut with an axe. Such a massive security vulnerability. Bet I could write a paper about this. Where’s my axe?”

lolinder 6y ago

Can we just have a chuckle about a humorous event for once, without someone introducing fear?

monkeybutton 6y ago
I sort of assume there's lots of stuff like this that exists and people constantly bringing it up at every opportunity is kind of tiring. The converse where "everyone knows" but doesn't acknowledge it isn't necessarily any better though. Anyways, the mental image of robot beaver drones with glowing red eyes causing havoc makes up for it.

lostlogin 6y ago

> It is frightening how fragile the physical security of global networks appears to be. Is it? I have access pretty much all the time and can’t name an outage (that wasn’t caused by me), ever. When something gets broken somewhere, presumably my data gets routed around the issue.

nwiswell 6y ago
> Is it? I have access pretty much all the time and can’t name an outage (that wasn’t caused by me), ever. I think that's because the system is designed to be resilient to random failures (e.g., disgruntled beaver). Submarine cables fail all the time and there are repair boats constantly fixing breakages caused by fishing, wildlife, etc. All of the submarine cables failing at the same time (e.g., terrorist beavers) is most definitely not a random failure and would, I suspect, cause some proper havoc and take months to fix.
asdff 6y ago
It blows my mind that you've never once had an internet outage. This is like a monthly to weekly occurrence for me.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  With crap ADSL I had plenty of times where it got slow, and painfully so (1-2mbps). Now that it’s all fibre it’s been rock solid. Masses of investment went into the fibre roll out here in New Zealand and the limiting thing now seems to be the connection to the wider world and the distances involved. 2gbps and 4gbps plans are available, but while attractive, I don’t use all my 1gbps plan and struggle to think of a home use that would. The home infrastructure required would also be significant.

tshaddox 6y ago

Couldn’t they just restrict the communication on that cable at one of the buildings on either end of the cable? Seems likely that they’d still want to use the cable for some approved communications and would have no trouble controlling things without resort to a robotic cable-chewer.

londons_explore 6y ago
This is so that country A can prevent communications between country B and country C in case of war. I'm not sure it is an especially valuable war tactic, because while you can probably take out some cat videos for a few hours, serious military and political communications will be redirected over satellite links quite quickly.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  Sure, in a total war situation I suppose cutting all long-distance communications would obviously be on the table. But it wouldn’t be up there on my list of concerns, cuz nukes and stuff. I’d see it as a larger concern in the context of terrorism or very asymmetric warfare.

don-code 6y ago

I won't disagree that the physical security of the last mile is quite fragile, but I'm not sure the same holds true for the global Internet. There's no single topology of the Internet, but if I had to try and sum it up: it approaches a mesh at the core, and approaches a star at the edge. Backbones peer with thousands of providers; businesses may have a primary and backup ISP; home users are lucky to even have a second ISP offering service in their area.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

merlinsky 6y ago

Hi, I am a beaver.AMA

walrus01 6y ago
if nine out of ten dentists recommend a specific toothpaste, do you agree with them?
- merlinsky 6y ago
  Hey walrus01, short answer is - no. You should always do your homework and check it by yourself. Anyway, I am not at the dentist very often.
bushbaba 6y ago
How do you avoid cavities?
- merlinsky 6y ago
  I eat no added sugar whatsoever. Only what's in the bark of a tree.
FridayoLeary 6y ago
will you donate your fur to science after you die?
- merlinsky 6y ago
  Probably - yes.

protoman3000 6y ago

> Robotic Beavers > Cut submarine cables You don’t need any of that to break havoc on the internet. Just use BGP to advertise bogus routes to any prefixes.

mort96 6y ago
How are you gonna train the beavers to advertise bogus BGP routes?
- protoman3000 6y ago
  Injecting training data into the brain https://mobile.twitter.com/axios/status/1382696186684014592 https://mobile.twitter.com/axios/status/1382696186684014592
- netflixandkill 6y ago
  If we can demonstrate to the beavers that BGP blocks running water, they may train themselves.
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
That's something that can be cleaned up much faster though.
kortilla 6y ago
BGP from where? Hijacking for any extended period of time is a good way to get dropped by your peers. The average outage from these fiber cuts is orders of magnitude longer than the most catastrophic bgp hijacks.

amelius 6y ago

Perhaps we should be more afraid of the connection being there than it not being there.

WalterBright 6y ago

> fragile the physical security of global networks The easiest way to defeat a burglar alarm is with an axe through the power/communication cable. (A better system has a battery backup and uses the cellular network, but the latter is expensive and has bandwidth problems.)