Before Snowden and Manning there was the more old fashioned Ronald Pelton who was just released from his 30 years in prison last year for revealing information about submarine phone tapping. His motives were different but he was still treated horribly by the US for revealing the truth.
America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
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Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#72Before Snowden and Manning there was the more old fashioned Ronald Pelton who was just released from his 30 years in prison last year for revealing information about submarine phone tapping. His motives were different but he was still treated horribly by the US for revealing the truth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Pelton
He sold state secrets to the Russians. He may have told the truth, but that's also treason.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Further, the individual traffic streams in a 10 gigabit per second circuit would be encrypted at layers 4 through 7. Assuming that people are using properly implemented public /private key cryptography, of course. Even so, the metadata of who is talking to who and traffic flow analysis is very valuable to the NSA.
That's why link-layer encryption adds value over higher-layer encryption - it also encrypts layer-3+ headers and metadata.
Anecdotally I don't know of a single ISP that buys N x 10 Gbps transpacific or transatlantic waves/transport (ex: one Wilshire to Equinix Tokyo) that uses link layer crypto. In my example the ISPs are customers of the organizations that actually run the DWDM terminals.
Highly redundant core routers like an asr9010 with 2nd/3rd gen line cards, or an mx960 are already expensive enough without making a 24-port 10GbE linecard twice as costly to buy by having crypto features. It is super rare to see such hardware in production for commercial ISPs.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#74Edward Snowden revealed a long time ago that the NSA also taps the undersea communications cables for mass surveillance (which obviously includes US citizens).
That was hardly a Snowden leak. The Russians have had one of the Ivy Bells listening taps on public display since 1999. The book Blind Man's Bluff details the taps and was published in 1998.
These days, tapping them isn't likely to be particularly useful. Anything sensitive transiting them is gonna be encrypted. Ivy Bells was possible because the Soviets thought it would be impossible to tap the cables - they were within Soviet waters and the tech used to finally do it was quite clever - so they didn't encrypt anything.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#75I'm calling BS on this. The stealthiness of a sub, it's only real purpose, is defeated the moment you start transmitting via a big antenna. It wouldn't happen. Subs no doubt are used for surveillance, but the concept of them sitting offshore and actively "hacking" communications is absurd. It would be a suicide mission with a billion-dollar asset. The OP reads like a funding request. It's a pitch for a world where ha…
If it's absurd, please explain p.26 of https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/... where we see the USS Annapolis being used for interactive operations ("Connection via: NEPTUNETHUNDER, BLINDDATE/HAPPYHOUR", "Successful exploits at 4, 6, ad 8 NM with 4 watt access point") and for man-on-the-side operations ("Inject using BLINDDATE/NITESTAND", "Successful inject at 4NM to 100mw client computer"). O…
So that's communication over 8 nautical miles, or 15 km, presumably line-of-sight. Consumer equipment (5 GHz wimax ac) can do that with a 20x20 cm directional antenna. Have a look at a Ubiquiti NanoStation, for instance. Sticking up a pole with a 20x20 cm fiberglass antenna on it won't give a radar return distinguishable from wave noise even at calm seas.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discovered by who? I'm pretty sure the CIA/NSA will just "disappear" anyone who tries to report the anomaly.
You're pretty sure?
Let me rephrase that: I'm positive the CIA has in the past and will continue to make people disappear.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't put it beyond the capabilities of a nation state to tap fiber by putting a kink in it and processing the light that leaks out.
Hence the name PRISM.
PRISM is just a frontend to a database.
If I was to build a queryable database, I'd grab something like Lucene, and stick that on top of something like Postgres. The next step would be to build an interface so my non-technical business partners don't have to write SQL or some other query and manually send that to the server, but instead can ask stupid questions like "how long are Trumps fingers" and get results. That last part is PRISM.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is even a "laser razor" kickstarter that utilizes the effect. When a beard hair goes near the fiber, the light escapes from the fiber, and burns the hair, cutting it.
Hoax tho
That one didn't seem like a hoax, just a neat idea that wasn't really possible to make into an actual product. (as in, it kind-of worked but wasn't going to be physically possible to make into a remotely satisfying product)
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#79If this sort of stuff interets you, I highly recommend the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage". [0] It tells the story of Cold War espionage from the submarine warfare point of view. The book also covers "Operation Ivy Bells" which was a joint Navy/CIA/NSA mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War. [1] Sub placed…
A tangential story mentioned in Simon Singh's 'Code' (excellent read) is that a mole was caught sending secrets to the Soviets based on intel from the taps. They didn't want to tip the Russians off though so he was never prosecuted. Instead they fed him with phony documents to keep the taps secret.
A similar plot point occurs in The Imitation Game, the Turing biopic that was released last year or so.
Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's possible to find the approximate location of a break by looking at its influence on reflections. A double break, as you're suggesting, would eventually be noticed. (If that wasn't possible, then repairing cable breaks would be insanely expensive.)
Right. And if the US has been doing this for a decade or more, you'd think that at least one of the taps would have been discovered.
Who says they haven't?
As far as spying goes, the game has evolved to the point where it's not really embarrassing any more. Everybody knows that everybody does it, and there's pretty strong resistance to going public. If anything did get discovered it'd probably be used for disinformation or behind-the-scenes political capital if not just destroyed. Finding a box of electronics at the bottom of the sea isn't quite the same as capturing an enemy pilot in a spy plane [1] and it's gotten to the point that embarrassing yourself for being spied on is just as bad as embarrassing an adversary (or friend) for doing the spying. Plus, how are you going to attribute blame anyway?