5 ms·
The likelihood miles and miles of cabling, much of it presumably leased, will be compromised is nowhere near comparable to the likelihood a normal, single-locat
by mapgrep 13y ago
The likelihood miles and miles of cabling, much of it presumably leased, will be compromised is nowhere near comparable to the likelihood a normal, single-location office/home ethernet LAN will be compromised. (And if you think both are easily compromised, that only adds to my original point.)
- SkyMarshal 13y agoFwiw Micheal Crighton wrote about this ("piggyback slurp") in Congo: http://goo.gl/KSf78p http://goo.gl/KSf78p
- DannyBee 13y ago"much of it presumably leased," This is a very interesting assumption http://www.howstuffworks.com/tech-myths/5-myths-about-google5.htm http://www.howstuffworks.com/tech-myths/5-myths-about-google... http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=633236 http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=633236
- outworlder 13y agoFiber optic links are not so easily compromised. Not without service interruption, which will raise quite a few eyebrows.
- ck2 13y agoThe US has submarines which are entirely designed to splice fiber optics without interruption. They literally bring part of the cable into the sub and work on it from there.
- chubot 13y agoCitation for that? Seems plausible but I'm interested in any details.
- jellicle 13y agohttp://cryptome.org/eyeball/mmp/jimmy-carter.htm http://cryptome.org/eyeball/mmp/jimmy-carter.htm Apparently the procedure is to position the USS Jimmy Carter over the cable, send out a remote vehicle to grab the cable and pull it up to the sub, splice in tapping equipment, and then drop the cable. Intercontinental cables are less than one inch in diameter in deep water. If the sub plants the tap in deep water, it's extremely unlikely that anyone would ever discover it. There are a few cable repair ships that pull broken cables to the surface and fix them, but other than that... No one can reach it and no one will bother it. The most interesting thing is actually getting the data back to the U.S. Do they run a separate cable alongside the existing cable? Getting SMALL bits of data back to the U.S. is easy, can just broadcast it. But LARGE amounts of data? Tricky.
- jlgreco 13y ago> There are a few cable repair ships that pull broken cables to the surface and fix them, but other than that... No one can reach it and no one will bother it. Even if you pull the cable up to repair it, it is unlikely that you would discover the tap. The device used in Operation Ivy Bells was designed to detach from the cable if the cable was lifted. Non-intrustive tapping might not be possible with fiber (it isn't, as far as I know), but I expect they have other mechanisms to avoid discovery. Perhaps lifting the cable would cause the cable to "snap" on either side of the tap, before the device could be lifted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/ic2000/ivy_bells_pod.jpg http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/ic2000/ivy_bells_pod.jpg
- spunky 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/undersea-cable-surveillance-is-easy-its-just-a-matter-of-money http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/undersea-cable-surveillance...