Russian ship loitering near undersea cables | Hacker News Reader

Russian ship loitering near undersea cables

hisutton.com

102 pointswillvarfar62 comments

Neal Stephenson wrote a bit about this in Cryptonomicon; laying new undersea cable is both expensive and time consuming, but the cost of cutting existing ones is fairly low. So if any sufficiently-funded individual, corporation, or nation-state wanted to hold a gun to the world's head, cutting undersea data cables wouldn't be a bad way to do it.

The problem is, you can't make that kind of threat in a subtle way, so to consider something like it you would have to be some kind of international pariah with a warmongering streak and a history of 'lying in plain sight' about your own nefarious deeds.

Edit: Okay, we're in better shape today than we were in the '90s and cutting off Cyprus' internet wouldn't cripple the world, but we still don't have THAT many cables running across the Atlantic and Pacific.

I'm less concerned about denial of service via cutting cables, and more concerned about the tapping of cables for wholesale data snarfing.

I don't think you have to choose.

Exactly... tap whichever ones you want, cut the rest. Two birds, one insane stone.

Is that a realistic threat model? What does the technology look like to tap into 800Gbit/s of fiber traffic - under water?

This, and if you can even capture that much traffic, all the good stuff is going to be encrypted anyway ;-)

The USS Jimmy Carter submarine is equiped to do it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_tapping

The USA were caught tapping cables in the cold war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells

Now this doesn't mean that the Russians are right now tapping these cables; they could be simply mapping their precise location etc for later or using them as a training exercise.

The Russians have submarines for this kind of thing, and I bet they're regretting they sent a surface ship. See a list of some of the submarines used for tapping cables at the bottom of the Yandar article.

...and the RV Yantar is part of the 29th Special Squadron of the Northern Fleet; the same group that operates those secret cable tapping subs. Probably not a coincidence.

Why regret? The intent is to be noticed.

This is like killing a person with polonium, which is made in just a handful of facilities around the world. Russia wants to cause worry. They want "respect", which mainly means fear.

Unlike the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210 (to show agents don't defect and live), unlike military exercises in plain view of your adversary (to show your military prowess), and unlike displaying new shiny hardware at a parade (to make your adversary wonder about their capabilities); covertly tapping (or cutting) cables is done covertly, and as someone else mentioned has been going on by "both sides" for decades. If it was done overtly, the country who was being spied on would be tipped off and stop using that means of communication. I think willvarfar is closer to correct, they are probably mapping and looking for things, for future use, not exploiting things right now. I still think one of the things they're looking for, if they're actually over the cables, are other taps that have been placed by others before, or maybe looking for static ASW equipment laid there to detect subs.

Either tapping, as the US does, or cutting the US tap off.

The greek research network ran a number of high speed cables that were not infrequently cut off by careless fishermen. Used to mean a day of slow network until they find the damage and fix.

"Backhoe fade" (whether occasioned by backhoes or otherwise) is categorically different from a state actor deliberately cutting another state's undersea cables.

That's a pretty pointless threat and not at all "holding a gun to the world's head." Even cutting all cables would harm the actor as much as anybody else and have no impact on military comms etc. And this reminds me that I need to write a Greasemonkey script to hide comments mentioning Neal Stephenson or Douglas Adams.

Neil Stephenson wrote a heck of a whole lot about undersea cables in 1996. Highly, highly recommended. https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Oh yeah, I forgot about that article - I think that it's actually printed in the back of some ebook versions of Cryptonomicon now. It's a great read.

Also in his book of essays, Some Remarks.

The US famously spied on Russian underseas cables in Operation Ivy Bells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells during the cold war. A spy sold the secret to the Russians and they recovered the recorders.

Of course they used submarines, so there was no plot on normal publicly-accessible marine maps..

The Russians have several subs with mini-subs too and are building more; there is a good list of links at the bottom of the article!

Russia is doing a lot of fearmongering in the run-up to the US elections. I stumbled across some agitprop on Twitter yesterday, where I read that Russia was recalling all students who were studying abroad. Out of curiosity (to say the least) I tracked down the source article, which was a) not available in English, and b) just Russians criticizing privileged Russians who sent their kids abroad to study. Looking around the rest of the agitprop stuff that I could find at a cursory glance, there is a ton of literal FUD going around right now, to the tune of "WWIII imminent."

Wonder who they're trying so hard to influence?

Seems like I see a lot more fearmongering ABOUT Russia.

given this is "Russia sub ship loitering near Syrian undersea cables."

its probably fud aimed at the strong russian syrian government relationship.

And yet American citizens were unable to influence either party enough to have them submit a viable candidate.

Or, the interplay of all relevant existing processes and system dynamics do not easily facilitate "viable candidates"[1] from being nominated.

Of course, this doesn't tell us what is need to repair these processes and system dynamics. Hopefully we eventually achieve some new breakthroughs in governmental systems in the coming decades.

[1] insert personal definition of "viable candidate" here

What amazes me is that they think that getting the far right in power in the West is going to be good for Russia. Because, you know, things went so well for Russia the last time these people were in power...

Actually it did went ok for Russia - they got half of Europe and became one of world's two dominating powers.

Then collapsed into poverty, recovered slightly, got put under harsh sanctions, and are currently experiencing poverty again.

And there was that whole "20 million dead during the war" bit. I'd think they'd want to play it safe!

(Edit: I guess that by "they" I mean "Putin and company" -- they have a lot of popular support, but it's hard to say how much is real and how much is self-seeking or the like.)

Wait, so a garbled story that tries to convince people Russia is threatening ends up in western media (not just Twitter) ... and that's Russias fault?

Putin recalled Russian military family members. For those that don't understand Russian culture that's Defcon 3.

The western media has been fed a story that Russian diplomats' families have been recalled. No proof of that yet. No leaked emails, memos, letters, boarding passes of families, people moving out of their apartments, motorcades of diplomatic people rushing to the airports... nothing.

Who benefits from putting that story out there?

Why would you believe that story?

I have read some translated-from-Russian media that the recalling's stated purpose was to reduce the ability of foreign intelligence services to recruit young college age Russians.

I am not fluent in Russian so I can't confirm.

Looks like the ship is currently off the coast of Lebanon.

You can watch/follow this ship in semi-real time as long as it's transponder is active/in-range of a receiver (and not being spoofed):

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:121...

Looks like the site is down. Mirror: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Iq7DDCu...

That was fast (site going down)... and suspicious perhaps, considering the ship is basically purpose built for SIGINT and being able to find, loiter and muck around with whatever it wants in terms of undersea cables.

[0] - http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-prese...

Link from site to marinetraffic site showing the ship and location:

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:121...

Another mirror: http://archive.is/XRILW

I'm a daily user of the marinetraffic site, and it's pretty fragile at any time.

Seems like at this point you're really depending on encryption to keep your data safe. You have to assume one or more entities is poring through your bits looking for interesting information.

and also logging the bits forever so that they can reinterpret what is "interesting" at a future date.

Does anyone else feel like if there's enough evidence that a public site is noticing this ship loitering, that intelligence agencies the world over are plenty aware of it already? What are the chances this website has a "scoop" here that governments aren't aware of? If the intent of this site isn't to make government agencies aware of the loitering, what is the goal? What should members of the public do with such information?

I don't think it was intended as a call to action. Do you think all non-actionable information is worthless?

Ars Technica had a great piece on how these undersea cables: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...

Ships do not "loiter" in international waters. "Loiter" implies the loiterer is violating some rights the accuser imagines himself to have. Russia may be simply legally installing its surveillance equipment on cables it found in international waters. There's no 'loitering' involved here.

I invite you to study the speeches of Anson Chan, less you believe that this irritating political weasel-wording we are so used to currently is universal.

> Loiter" implies the loiterer is violating some rights the accuser imagines himself to have

That's not what my dictionary says.

To stand about without any aim or purpose; to stand about idly; to linger; to hang around.

Used appropriately by source.

> Russia may be simply legally installing its surveillance equipment on cables it found in international waters.

I'm fairly certain active communications cables don't fall under marine salvage.

edit: http://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Beckman-... states "Articles 113-115 of UNCLOS provide for the protection of submarine cables beneath the high seas. These articles are also applicable in the EEZ because of article 58(2)." Russia has signed and ratified https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_on_t....

"Loiter" is especially used in military and strategic contexts to mean simply holding position. No implication of violation or anything. Aircraft loiter over a waypoint, etc.

The story now has coverage from motherboard.vice.com

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-theory-about-a-russian...

How hard - or detectable - is one tapping on an underwater fiber?

I suspect it's very hard to tap and easily detectable.

the ship appears between lebanon/syria and cyprus, not turkey and cyprus.

Cyprus must have an extremely good internet connection :)

For the benefit of a certain low-key UK military base:

    http://espresso.repubblica.it/inchieste/2013/11/04/news/the-history-of-british-intelligence-operations-in-cyprus-1.139978?refresh_ce

Well, how accurate are those cable lines?

There are very accurate maps available publicly.

When a ship lays anchor it's not just the end but can end up being a mile of chain as the real holding force(with the ship bouncing around). Fishermen are able to damage cables as well

If you could source that very accurate map that's available publicly I'd be very appreciative; I can only find the paper version for sale and don't want to pay $100 for something that will only arrive in a few weeks. The lines on the images that are being circulated are not accurate in the least, they are very rough estimates.

Paper and $100 is still very public, we're just spoiled. It's also going to cost you less time contacting/accessing each website individually.

You might have some luck with RL social networking.

Or could settle for info graphic form(and link/contact info) at submarinecablemap.com

That's the problem. SubmarineCableMap.com and similar web sites show logical, not physical, representations of the underwater cables. Cables are not that neat and tidy. A proper nautical chart would; I'll pay for it, if I find a downloadable digital one for sale.

I apreciate @CovertShores's diagram showing a general area where cables are believed to be, but we can do better with a nautical chart showing exactly where the cables are, to prove or disprove the RV Yantar is over top of them.

RV Yantar's slow methodical movements suggest they're doing something, but I don't know that it suggests they're tapping cables. It looks more like a search pattern using underwater equipment that moves very slowly.

Towed sonar arrays can usually move ~4kn, so I don't think it's towed sonar. I believe it's a remote operated vehicle sniffing along the ocean's floor, on a tether, and they need to move the ship slowly, at 0.5kn to "keep up" with the ROV at the end of the line.

Are they looking for the cables themselves? Maybe. Are they looking for pre-existing taps on those cables? If they're doing anything to do with underwater cables, I think so. Are they putting their own taps on the lines? Maybe, I can't disprove that, but I'd like charts to show exactly where those underwater cables are, to see if they're even doing something cable related - which is total speculation at this point.

If the cables are shown to be 10 miles away, they're clearly looking at something else.

Isn't it possible the Russians want you to think they're looking at cables, and not helping a stuck submarine, or other unmentioned possibility?

There is no evidence that the Russians are "tapping" or "sabotaging" undersea cables; the Americans and Israelis would also tap those cables, and I think it's far more likely the Russians are doing counter-espionage of taps on Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese cables, to win favour with their governments.

Here are all the coordinates of where they've been since October 7th, so if you have access to more precise data about where those cables go, you can plot the coordinates with your own GIS software.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WFIX0PAK1SJq35usKwR4znbeS8...

You provide no evidence why one scenario is far more likely than the other. There are much more direct ways that Russia is winning favour with those governments such as fighting Syria's wars for them or signing a gas pipeline deal with Turkey.

If Russia was tapping Syrian cables... they'd do so on shore. They don't need to do it at the bottom of the ocean; it's the same way the United States taps cables in many allied countries.

It is rumoured that Russian SIGINT tipped off the Erdogan government of the coup, not American SIGINT, which would suggest that Americans were complicit with the coup. To win further favour with the Erdogan government Russia would love to pants the United States by showing they are tapping their "ally's" telecom infrastructure. You may remember the NSA also tapped Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, an ally. You may also remember the NSA tapped all Greek telecom as well; also an Ally. Do you think the United States isn't tapping the Turkish telecom lines?

The Israelis clearly have the Lebanese telecom system tapped in about a hundred different ways, from buried taps on shore to underwater taps at sea. Do you doubt that too? Wouldn't it be in Russia and Syria's best interest to help Hezbollah?

I think you may have misunderstood the grandparent comment's use of the word "evidence".

Why would Russia tap Turkey's telecom? Why would Russia tap Syria's telecom? Why would Russia tap Lebanon's telecom?

I've offered up motive for why they would be looking to un-do taps that are already there, but haven't heard any competing explanation to why Russia would tap commercial undersea cables.

The American military does not use commercial undersea cables for their trans-continental communications, by the way. So, if the RV Yantar is not near commercial cables, they could be near secret military cables, or Anti-Submarine Warfare equipment set up by the Americans, Israelis, Greeks - who knows.

I'm trying to point out that latching onto the idea that they're loitering above and tapping/sabotaging underwater commercial cables is only one of many things they could be doing. Since we don't even know the location of those cables, it's extremely speculative to say they're loitering above them to begin with.

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