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America uses stealthy submarines to hack other countries’ systems

washingtonpost.com

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

#111

Post by vacri »

stygiansonic wrote: post #93
pavel_lishin wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Opera…

Another way the Allies misdirected the D-Day landing sites was to do a lot of reconnaissance flights to the southern coast of Bretagne (northern bit of the west coast of France). Of course, a lot these recce flights also 'just happened' to also overfly the actual location of the D-Day landings...

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

jedc wrote: post #105
mmaunder wrote: post #69

"...mast-mounted antennas and collection systems atop the conning tower, some of them one-of-a-kind devices made for hard to reach or specific targets, all of them black boxes of future war." That's a quote in the article from a source who is another pair of journalists writing for Gawker. RF doesn't propagate well through water - in fact VLF is best and only goes to about 20 meters depth. Subs are most vulnerable wh…

Former navy submarine officer here. So SIGINT is absolutely a capability of US submarines, but isn't necessarily a primary purpose. But there are absolutely times and places where the ideal source of intelligence for the US government is a submarine offshore of country X with very small masts sticking out of the water gathering SIGINT. Satellites don't/can't catch everything.

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by wildmusings »

dekhn wrote: post #99
Inconel wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. The state of military aircraft is extremely valuable information to an adversary that is trying to size up your forces.

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

#114

Post by wildmusings »

Hondor wrote: post #106
gozur88 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pelton was just your garden variety spy. He wasn't acting out of any concern for the general welfare.

Sure he was more traditional and self interested. But his actions were nonetheless essentially "good" in the same way He informed people that they were having their telecommunications secretly listened to. Just because it was for the benefit of Russians instead of Americans doesn't make it wrong. They're people too.

You've got to be kidding me. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian/authoritarian expansionist empire that carried out pervasive surveillance of all of its people, and used gathered information to identify and silence dissenters by shipping them off to gulags or executing them. And you're here praising a guy who was helping them because you think he was concerned about their privacy.

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

#115

Post by bwoj »

nstj wrote: post #98
yompers888 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/its-official-shar...

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

#116

Post by dekhn »

wildmusings wrote: post #113
dekhn wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. The state of military aircraft is extremely valuable information to an adversary that is trying to size up your forces.

While I agree (and actually support the concept of State Secrets), I want my Supreme Court cases and the precedences they establish to be grounded in cases where the facts actually support the idea that the government is protecting a state secret, rather than covering up its own problems. The secret documents in the Reynolds case were declassified later, and showed that it was unlikely their exposure would have damaged state secrecy (the russians had already cloned the B29, the accident report didn't give any details on the confidential equipment on board), and a fairly strong argument can be made they showed the government was trying to apply the privilege to hide their own failures in maintaining the aircraft, rather than protect critical secrets).

In short: privilege should be applied sparingly and the precedence for it should be unimpeachable. In this case, the precedence is not unimpeachable; the specific case is still considered contentious.

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

#117

Post by j1vms »

azernik wrote: post #54
walrus01 wrote: post #53

Earlier 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.

Reading through the comment tree, I'd say general consensus is that, in the case of a long distance underwater cable, link encryption is technically feasible.

However, while technically feasible (so as to protect metadata, who's talking to whom, etc.), due to the political weight & financial heft of certain state actors, tapping at the cable link endpoints would remain a strong possibility. This would obviate the actual need to link encrypt except of course for "optics"/marketing to data center customers.

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

#118

Post by knowaveragejoe »

tw04 wrote: post #76
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're pretty sure?

Let me rephrase that: I'm positive the CIA has in the past and will continue to make people disappear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site

Well, that's different than what you said. I agree with that completely.

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

#119

Post by knowaveragejoe »

rasz_pl wrote: post #92
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're pretty sure?

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

Sounds fascinating but is there a tl;dr? I'm not doubting the CIA disappears people, I'm doubting that they would need to in the above scenario.

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

#120

Post by wildmusings »

dekhn wrote: post #116
wildmusings wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. The state of military aircraft is extremely valuable information to an adversary that is trying to size up your forces.

While I agree (and actually support the concept of State Secrets), I want my Supreme Court cases and the precedences they establish to be grounded in cases where the facts actually support the idea that the government is protecting a state secret, rather than covering up its own problems. The secret documents in the Reynolds case were declassified later, and showed that it was unlikely their exposure would have damag…

My point though is that a failure to maintain military aircraft is sensitive information that could be used by the enemy. You don't want your enemy to know your weak spots. I'm happy for the courts to give the government broad deference in these cases, especially when constitutional principles are not hanging in the balance.

Don't forget the time period that this happened in. The Soviets had tested their first nuke only a few years prior, Eastern Europe had fallen behind the Iron Curtain, communist movements were on the rise in the rest of Asia and had succeeded in taking China. The prospect of total war was very real. That you're doing a bad job of maintaining a certain class of warplane is very sensitive information in such an environment.

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