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America Uses Stealthy Submarines To Hack Other Countries' Systems (washingtonpost.com)
When the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump asked Russia -- wittingly or otherwise -- to launch hack attacks to find Hillary Clinton's missing emails, it caused a stir of commotion. Russia is allegedly behind DNC's leaked emails. But The Washington Post is reminding us that U.S.'s efforts in the cyber-security world aren't much different. (could be paywalled; same article syndicated elsewhere From the report: The U.S. approach to this digital battleground is pretty advanced. For example: Did you know that the military uses its submarines as underwater hacking platforms? In fact, subs represent an important component of America's cyber strategy. They act defensively to protect themselves and the country from digital attack, but -- more interestingly -- they also have a role to play in carrying out cyberattacks, according to two U.S. Navy officials at a recent Washington conference. "There is a -- an offensive capability that we are, that we prize very highly," said Rear Adm. Michael Jabaley, the U.S. Navy's program executive officer for submarines. "And this is where I really can't talk about much, but suffice to say we have submarines out there on the front lines that are very involved, at the highest technical level, doing exactly the kind of things that you would want them to do."
The so-called "silent service" has a long history of using information technology to gain an edge on America's rivals. In the 1970s, the U.S. government instructed its submarines to tap undersea communications cables off the Russian coast, recording the messages being relayed back and forth between Soviet forces. (The National Security Agency has continued that tradition, monitoring underwater fiber cables as part of its globe-spanning intelligence-gathering apparatus. In some cases, the government has struck closed-door deals with the cable operators ensuring that U.S. spies can gain secure access to the information traveling over those pipes.) These days, some U.S. subs come equipped with sophisticated antennas that can be used to intercept and manipulate other people's communications traffic, particularly on weak or unencrypted networks. "We've gone where our targets have gone" -- that is to say, online, said Stewart Baker, the National Security Agency's former general counsel, in an interview. "Only the most security-conscious now are completely cut off from the Internet." Cyberattacks are also much easier to carry out than to defend against, he said.
The so-called "silent service" has a long history of using information technology to gain an edge on America's rivals. In the 1970s, the U.S. government instructed its submarines to tap undersea communications cables off the Russian coast, recording the messages being relayed back and forth between Soviet forces. (The National Security Agency has continued that tradition, monitoring underwater fiber cables as part of its globe-spanning intelligence-gathering apparatus. In some cases, the government has struck closed-door deals with the cable operators ensuring that U.S. spies can gain secure access to the information traveling over those pipes.) These days, some U.S. subs come equipped with sophisticated antennas that can be used to intercept and manipulate other people's communications traffic, particularly on weak or unencrypted networks. "We've gone where our targets have gone" -- that is to say, online, said Stewart Baker, the National Security Agency's former general counsel, in an interview. "Only the most security-conscious now are completely cut off from the Internet." Cyberattacks are also much easier to carry out than to defend against, he said.
Plenty to dislike about Trump. But why keep making stuff up? He didn't call for Russia to hack Clinton's email. He made a very tired joke (it's been made here and elsewhere for weeks) about maybe the Russians, if they can find her email in the stuff they already have, could turn it over to our FBI, who couldn't find most of what she deleted. Go after him for his abundant riches of nonsense, but don't make crap up. Makes this site look sillier than usual.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Wouldn't cause a brief outage, if they did that during a scheduled downtime of the cable.
You don't even have to cut it, just bend the strands enough so the some leaks out the side of the glass.
I've got a fiber tester here that does exactly that with normal fiber patch leads, and it can tell me which direction the light source is coming from, if there is modulated data on it, or if there is one of it's own light source ID modules on the end of the fiber.
Super handy for fiber test work and only $1000. Imagine what you can get when you've effectively got an unlimited black ops budget.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
The futurist in me wonders if they can latch onto a submarine cable, cut it, insert a passively recording hub, and leave with only having changed the impedance and signal time (a little) and caused a brief outage.
The futurist in you is 45 years behind the times:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
That is exactly what they do. It probably does cause a brief outage for fiber, but not for copper.
They have special subs for it. The summary seems pretty clueless. It has been widely reported for decades.
You don't even have to cut it, just bend the strands enough so the some leaks out the side of the glass.
This is exactly what they do. They have something like a diving bell that they can loop a submarine cable through and seal it. They can then transfer some technicians from the mother sub to the bell through an airlock where they can peel the armor off the cable, isolate individual fibers and wrap them around such optical couplers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Let's not get carried away with cutting cables, the idea is quite amusing when you consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... so not just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Obviously hacking into the repeaters makes a lot more sense and is of course exactly what they do and that is with the cooperation of the companies involved, so the hacks go in as the cable is being laid. So at the repeater they of course copy data, delete data and more importantly inject data, think questionable attacks from questionable sources. Likely the hardware is permanently locked in place and they only maintain it when it fails.
The catch with that is any claim they make about hacks is now questionable as they inherently can and will corrupt the evidence. We you set out to so publicly corrupt global infrastructure than you will no longer be believed for any claims you make that result from attacks on that infrastructure ie you are always the initial and most likely suspect for any attack. Much like the US Navy and it's policy of not declaring which vessels have nuclear weapons and which do not. Result is when ever a US naval vessels approaches a foreign country it is not just a naval vessel approaching but a first strike city destroying nuclear threat approaching and that is the US government approach when sending vessels upon that basis, they are in fact at that moment threatening the targeted nation with a first strike nuclear attack.
It is really a messy, arrogant approach, factually the number one suspect in any cyder attack must always be the NSA/CIA, they have the greatest capability, they have declared their intent to dominate every other countries internet infrastructure and US laws claim that US government departments are not bound by other countries laws and are free to break them at any time for any reason.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
And if they use BI fiber, it'll break before it bends enough to leak. Also, the bend is detectable, but not in a detection war. A bend enough to leak light will cause a loss of about 3 dB. Do that in a human-possible time frame, and the management server will detect the sudden loss as a critical event. So the tappers will make a machine to bend it slowly over a week, and tap in over a time that the management servers won't recognize as a significant critical event.
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