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Russian Submarines are 'Prowling Around' Undersea Internet Cables (thehill.com)
An anonymous reader quotes The Hill:
Russian submarine activity around undersea cables that provide internet and other communications connections to North America and Europe has raised concerns among NATO officials, according to The Washington Post. NATO officials say an unprecedented amount of Russian deep-sea activity, especially around undersea internet lines, constitutes a newfound "vulnerability" for NATO nations. "We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don't believe we have ever seen," said NATO submarine forces commander and U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Andrew Lennon. "Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations' undersea infrastructure."
"The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the cables," reports the Washington Post, adding that "prowling around" the cables "could give the Kremlin the power to sever or tap into vital data lines, officials said."
They cite the commander of NATO's submarine forces, who says "We know that these auxiliary submarines are designed to work on the ocean floor, and they're transported by the mother ship, and we believe they may be equipped to manipulate objects on the ocean floor."
"The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the cables," reports the Washington Post, adding that "prowling around" the cables "could give the Kremlin the power to sever or tap into vital data lines, officials said."
They cite the commander of NATO's submarine forces, who says "We know that these auxiliary submarines are designed to work on the ocean floor, and they're transported by the mother ship, and we believe they may be equipped to manipulate objects on the ocean floor."
I'm astonished: either the news-makers are amazingly stupid (the US has more or less openly discussed their task-specific subs capable of tapping such cables for twenty years...which means they've been able to do it for at least thirty), or this is another mendacious effort to paint the Russians as some sort of special bogeyman (they're still our primary strategic competitor, as they have been more or less for decades even after the cold war...an idea the previous president openly mocked, I'll remind everyone).
Either way this isn't news: it's either ignorant or manipulative. In neither case is it worth listening to.
-Styopa
The US used to (still does, I bet) tap Russian cables. Turnabout is fair play?
Read "Blind Man's Bluff" for stories of us playing all sorts of crazy sub games against the Russians.
Kinda feels like we've got a new Cold War, don't it? Only now it's an Information / Data / Commerce thing, not a Nukes thing.
There are two problems. Russia is attacking and succeeding in destabilizing our country is one. The second is the number of people that are complicit in it, either because the don't want to accept the truth, or because being complicit actively put them in an advantageous position, or advanced positions they favored. In short a lot of people, whether they say it or not believe the ends justify the means. They don't. They never have.
The same problems apply to other countries. No one should expect that Russia or other bad actors are suddenly going to become good. The fact that the US at times has not been innocent doesn't excuse it either. That is the world we are in.
You can't really secure undersea cables, beyond detecting tampering to some extent. Encrypt both ends and hand carry updated keys daily if you have to. You can also simply use a true random number generator to fill a hard drive and clone it then hand carry that. Change keys periodically till you run out of keys. Hand carry with as much security as necessary.
In short there is no good reason not to secure the endpoints. Sure it may take custom expensive hardware, but compared to the cost of a new undersea cable that is nothing. You probably can't prevent Russia from cutting a cable, but you can make any tap useless.
Can we have a method to filter out all the Russia stories?