America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems • Hacker News Board

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#91

Post by mirimir » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 10:00 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #80

mirimir wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Well, Russia did eventually exhibit the Ivy Bells one. And Google staff did react to news that NSA was tapping its traffic. I'm not arguing that cables aren't being tapped. It just seems odd that none of the major cable operators have revealed anything. But as you say, there's arguably resistance to going public.

I wonder how many reported cable breaks were in fact screwed up tap installs ;)

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#92

Post by rasz_pl » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 10:20 AM UTC

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #68

tw04 wrote: post #58

Earlier 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?

yes https://theintercept.com/2015/09/28/death-athens-rogue-nsa-o...

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#93

Post by stygiansonic » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 10:46 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #79

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Britain had an entire program during WWII designed to identify, capture and turn German agents to get them to feed disinformation to their superiors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Cross_System

It was used in a clever manner to subtly suggest to the Germans an incorrect location (Pas-de-Calais) for D-Day.

WWII produced some of the most interesting (now publicly known) espionage operations. My favourite is Operation Mincemeat:

https://www.damninteresting.com/mincemeat-and-the-imaginary-...

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#94

Post by Nursie » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #16

Jerry2 wrote: post #7

If 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…

>>> I'm sure they're smaller now. I'm betting not. Ivy Bells was back in the days of copper wires being tapped by external sensors placed atop undersea cables. Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. Normal procedure for such work involv…

Remember about 10 years ago when a whole bunch of.middle eastern optical links went down, temporarily, a few days apart? Due to a strangely coordinated set of accidents with boat anchors?

Something's going on

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#95

Post by nzjrs » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 11:23 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #78

jacobush wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

So a hoax, no?

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#96

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 12:34 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #22

jonknee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't count it out, but obviously all the specifics are highly classified. The USS Jimmy Carter is the sub (or one of?) we probably use for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Jimmy_Carter It is 100' longer than other subs in the same class thanks to special equipment "which allows launch and recovery of ROVs and Navy SEAL forces".

No doubt people have discussed the concept. If I were a navy looking for funding, or just another use for an existing sub, I would definitely propose it. But I don't see the practicality of going through all that effort for rather limited gain. If this is an enemy cable, it will be encrypted. If it is a privately-owned cable (internet) then it can more easily be tapped on land or via a standard ship. I suspect that e…

[deleted]

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#97

Post by yompers888 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 1:07 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #9

nstj wrote: post #2

Did you know that the subsea fiber optic cables which the submarines hack are only 17mm thick? [0]. Great companion story at ARS from a while back worth a read. [0]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...

I was going to reply that this was surely nonsense and I've seen the thick cables the size of a man's leg, but as the article says these images we've seen are only for shallow areas and the majority of the cable really is just the size of a marker pen, shielded with just a few millimetres of plastic.

They actually used to be thinner, especially at shallow depths, but they had to add some extra sheathing because sharks were attracted. They'd go down to fix a break and find shark teeth embedded in it.

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#98

Post by nstj » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 3:40 PM UTC

yompers888 wrote: post #97

chrisseaton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to reply that this was surely nonsense and I've seen the thick cables the size of a man's leg, but as the article says these images we've seen are only for shallow areas and the majority of the cable really is just the size of a marker pen, shielded with just a few millimetres of plastic.

They actually used to be thinner, especially at shallow depths, but they had to add some extra sheathing because sharks were attracted. They'd go down to fix a break and find shark teeth embedded in it.

That's super interesting. Any kind of link perhaps?

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#99

Post by dekhn » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

Inconel wrote: post #85

transfire wrote: post #83

I first learned about this when I read about a patent dispute. Someone (I don't recall the name) invented a coupler that could be used to easily splice a fiber optic cable (e.g. under water) and tap into all it's signal undetected. The inventor was denied patent rights and lost all control of his invention b/c the U.S. government claimed States Secrets, thus no court case on the matter could proceed.

Based on what you described I found this old Wired article from 2005. It sounds like this could be the case you're remembering. http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68...

Ooh, this lead to all sorts of interesting reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_secrets_privilege """The privilege was first officially recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1 (1953). A military airplane, a B-29 Superfortress bomber, crashed. The widows of three civilian crew members sought accident reports on the crash but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission ...

...

In 2000, the accident reports were declassified and released, and it was found that the assertion that they contained secret information was fraudulent. The reports did, however, contain information about the poor condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case."""

So a Supreme Court case established precedence based on false claim of secret privilege from the government. That's pretty awful- if correct, it's a huge abuse of privelege.

Incidentally, I was not surprised to see Lucent mentioned in the Wired article- its predecessor, Bell Labs, had a very strong relationship with national security (The Idea Factory showed that the head of Bell Labs and the head of AT&T both maintained "secret schedules" where they would go to DC and share a lot of AT&T's access with security agencies.

Re: America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

#100

Post by digler999 » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

Jerry2 wrote: post #26

sandworm101 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> I'm sure they're smaller now. I'm betting not. Ivy Bells was back in the days of copper wires being tapped by external sensors placed atop undersea cables. Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. Normal procedure for such work involv…

> Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. That's an excellent point but I think they have a way to lift the cable off the seabed and make a splice even though it's hard. NSA are masters of making the impossible work. What I can't figure…

> so how do you store & transmit it back for analysis?

complete guess, but probably just chop it and quickly install another "repeater" that does everything the existing repeaters do, in addition to copying the information into their own system.

Now, how do they filter out and find what they're looking for ? who knows. probably run a secondary fiber line to an underwater "server room" and/or to a buoy with an antenna for remote control ?