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Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

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Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#81

Post by ajross »

samatman wrote: post #70
ajross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it takes 1 person, in an isolated spot to ruin a whole chunk of a network. In point of fact no chunks of the network were ruined at all. Dynamic routing was a design point way back when DARPA funded IPv4, and for exactly this reason.

The topic was the telegraph network, which did not have that property.

Uh... no? The topic is "undersea internet cables", it's right there at the top of the page. It's true this subthread became a digression about telegraphs, and I thought it was important to bring things back to the actual subject being discussed, as it doesn't share the property that made telegraph sabotage a notable idea.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#82

Post by ajross »

gradientsrneat wrote: post #58
ajross wrote: post #16

Worth pointing out that articles like this were the goal of the sabotage. It makes Russia's[1] influence look outsized and threatening and is designed to increase the perceived costs of a strained relationship with Putin. But... it's shortsighted and wrong. Cables are cheap, as infrastructure goes, and the global internet is extremely robust. Yeah yeah, they cut two cables. How many Finns or Estonians had to go witho…

The article says it was likely a Chinese vessel, and a previous series of cable cuts affecting European internet was attributed to a Muslim terrorist organization. It's not just one country cutting cables, and there are multiple motivations geopolitically.

It was a "chinese" vessel in the sense of registration. It wasn't operating at the behest of the PRC government. Nor, obviously, would one expect literal espionage to be carried out only by identifiable government vessels of the nation doing the operation.

The really-quite-soundly-grounded consensus is that Russian spies rented this boat. But yes, that's not proven.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#83

Post by lxgr »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63
lxgr wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because it takes 1 person, in an isolated spot to ruin a whole chunk of a network. If that were true, we’d see a lot more sabotage.

> If that were true, we’d see a lot more sabotage It is true. There is a lot of critical infrastructure out in the open that a dude with a pick-up truck of fertiliser could trash. (I'm not even getting to our electrical or natural gas distribution systems.)

I don't doubt that for critical infrastructure in general, but telecommunication infrastructure in particular seems redundant enough to be resilient against physical layer attacks of that kind.

The last mile usually isn't, but recent events have shown that even cutting several cables doesn't have any noticeable impact on international traffic patterns: https://blog.cloudflare.com/resilient-internet-connectivity-...

I'm actually much more concerned about e.g. a logical attack against Cloudflare, which could actually bring down tons of services globally.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#84

Post by toast0 »

rkagerer wrote: post #19

Can someone explain this excerpt to me? NATO is currently investigating future internet backup routes through satellites in the case of undersea cable failures. But that technology is only in a preliminary, proof-of-concept stage and may be many years from real-world relevance. We already have satellite links and can configure our networks to route through them when a primary route disappears. Why are they saying thi…

Capacity is the issue. Undersea cables typically have terrabits per second of capacity. Newer cables are hundreds of tbps.

Satellites just don't have that kind of capacity at this point. Certainly, you can aggregate several satellites, and you may get to enough capacity for your needs, but it will be a lot less capacity than a cable and you may need to have significant usage restrictions in one form or another.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#85

Post by nradov »

amelius wrote: post #26
mrandish wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but at the same time it would also be worthwhile to look at ways to increase our detection and policing of shipping around these cables. I'm no expert but I imagine there are ways to speed up naval reaction times, tighten penalties for ships going dark (transponder off) and set new policy norms enabling rapid investigation. Basically things that make it harder for bad actors to maintain plausible deniability.…

I suspect the reaction time loses importance if the enemy can just attach an explosive payload with a timer. But perhaps it is somehow detectable.

Attaching an explosive to an undersea cable requires trained divers or an ROV, plus at least a little bit of specialized equipment and a few hours to work. It can be done but it's a lot harder than just dragging an anchor.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#87

Post by keybored »

ajross wrote: post #16

Worth pointing out that articles like this were the goal of the sabotage. It makes Russia's[1] influence look outsized and threatening and is designed to increase the perceived costs of a strained relationship with Putin. But... it's shortsighted and wrong. Cables are cheap, as infrastructure goes, and the global internet is extremely robust. Yeah yeah, they cut two cables. How many Finns or Estonians had to go witho…

Russia is both a puny country with a GDP the size of Italy and a country that could invade all its neighboring countries if given the tiniest chance.[1] Both of these things are said here in the West.

[1] Of course GDP in terms of international purchasing power isn’t the be-all-end-all for supplying your own military domestically. But people say the part about GDP as if Russia is nothing.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#88

Post by aguaviva »

keybored wrote: post #87
ajross wrote: post #16

Worth pointing out that articles like this were the goal of the sabotage. It makes Russia's[1] influence look outsized and threatening and is designed to increase the perceived costs of a strained relationship with Putin. But... it's shortsighted and wrong. Cables are cheap, as infrastructure goes, and the global internet is extremely robust. Yeah yeah, they cut two cables. How many Finns or Estonians had to go witho…

Russia is both a puny country with a GDP the size of Italy and a country that could invade all its neighboring countries if given the tiniest chance.[1] Both of these things are said here in the West. [1] Of course GDP in terms of international purchasing power isn’t the be-all-end-all for supplying your own military domestically. But people say the part about GDP as if Russia is nothing.

Both of these things are said here in the West.

Except they're not. No one says Russia is a "puny country", or that it could "invade all its neighboring countries" (which would have to include, for example, China).

You're definitely making some weird exaggerations here.

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#89

Post by cjblomqvist »

mrandish wrote: post #79
gruez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fact this Chinese ship was chased down and stopped before getting too far away was actually pretty lucky. Were they actually stopped? The linked Reuters article only says: "The ship now sits idle in international waters but inside Denmark's exclusive economic zone, closely watched by Danish military vessels." which makes it sound like it stopped of its own accord. It's also uncertain what, if anything Denmark or…

> Were they actually stopped? I think the broad, practical answer to that is 'almost certainly'. I'm pretty sure if warships hadn't shown up and asked to come over and have a chat, the ship wouldn't still be sitting there. There's also probably a very technical legal answer which may indicate they weren't "stopped" at all based on the precise wording actually communicated and relevant maritime law. Interestingly, a l…

As far as I'm aware, the ship still also have to go through the strait between Sweden/Denmark (or through pure Danish territory) to reach the Atlantic ocean, so there are plenty of waters ahead where these governments very well could do more if economic waters it's not enough.

So that probably also helps with not wanting to just escape. Where it's now it can at least escape through international water all the way to Russia if it wants to.

To me it feels like it's stuck between a hard rock and a stone...

Re: Protecting undersea internet cables is a tech nightmare

#90

Post by Aloisius »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #42
fpoling wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One ship with an anchor on the bottom can destroy 100 cables just as well as one.

You can also do the extra work to bury the cable.

The C-Lion1 cable that was cut was reported buried 1 meter below the seabed.

Unfortunately, that wasn't deep enough since heavy ship anchors which can dig in deeper than that.

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