Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
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Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
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Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#2Can anyone explain why there wasn't any BGP activity on the Finland-Germany systems when the cable broke, while for Lithuania there was a massive spike?
Unfortunately it's been a long time since I learned about BGP, if anyone could help out here I'd be grateful.
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#3One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#4Can anyone explain why there wasn't any BGP activity on the Finland-Germany systems when the cable broke, while for Lithuania there was a massive spike? Unfortunately it's been a long time since I learned about BGP, if anyone could help out here I'd be grateful.
Each BGP hop represents an ISP so when an ISP reroutes traffic internally there's no need for changes to external BGP announcements. Clearly ISPs in the Baltic region have multiple paths and don't depend on any one cable.
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#5One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
In this particular case, it seems like the attackers were trying for plausible deniability (making it look like an accident with an anchor). A comprehensive series of "accidents" wouldn't fit that goal.
(And if they decide they don't care about plausible deniability, they could use sub-deployed timed mines to take out every cable at once.)
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#6One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
In this particular case, it seems like the attackers were trying for plausible deniability (making it look like an accident with an anchor). A comprehensive series of "accidents" wouldn't fit that goal. (And if they decide they don't care about plausible deniability, they could use sub-deployed timed mines to take out every cable at once.)
And then once they are fixed take them out again
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#7One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
Generally it can be fixed in days. They raise it from the sea floor and splice in a new cable section.
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#8One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
They could even blow up all cables at once. Maybe the explosives have already been placed.
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this particular case, it seems like the attackers were trying for plausible deniability (making it look like an accident with an anchor). A comprehensive series of "accidents" wouldn't fit that goal. (And if they decide they don't care about plausible deniability, they could use sub-deployed timed mines to take out every cable at once.)
And then once they are fixed take them out again
> once they are fixed take them out again
In an actual war, you hit the repair equipment and personnel [1].
(As to the Geneva Conventions note, we're discussing a hypothetical war with Russia. The status quo, including rules of war, are going to be rewritten by the victors.)
Re: Europe's Internet resilience mitigates impact of submarine cable cuts
#10One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
This is a great video on undersea cables https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFt9le2ytW0
"Sabatoge" and repair is discussed at 11:45