Undersea Cables Off Hawaii Targeted by Malicious Actors
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The article and link should be changed, imo.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narco-submarine
They have already taken several cell-towers, why wouldn't they add some fiber...
I think your sense of geography may be off a bit.
However, organized crime using unmanned true submersibles might [soon, or presently] be feasible. The expertise needed to actually attack a cable in a constructive manner would be a significant barrier to clear, but not inconceivable for crime organizations that can kidnap and coerce tech professionals. The ability to splice fiber underwater with a drone submersible seems extremely advanced though. I think only a few nations might presently have such a capability.
Nice summary of narco subs from HI Sutton: http://www.hisutton.com/Narco%20Subs%20101.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR18qhnGEpM
I also learned from the YT comments that there is a theory that the Phoenecians might have crossed the Atlantic to South America, and that they might have brought back cocaine that was used by upper-class Egyptians. I expected this to be some kind of fringe conspiracy theory, but the Wikipedia page (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Phoenician_discove...) suggests that anthropologists think it's totally possible, but lacking in actual archaeological evidence to support it. Cool!
It looks like this happened back in April and Homeland Security blamed "an international hacking ring" which always sounds like a nation-state organization to me.
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/04/13/hsi-agents-honolulu...
Even if an attacker seemed like they were a private individual, I'd lean toward assuming they were acting at the behest of some nation-state and just managed to cover their tracks well.
For criminal motive: I've read claims that some cartels have infiltrated telecom companies before, to track down informants or keep tabs on investigations. But from this angle, attacking cellular networks makes more sense than undersea cables.
Undersea fiber breaks all the time. When it breaks, you can send signals from the ends to find out where the break is. You then dispatch a ship to repair it.
However, if the cable breaks in two places at once, you cannot then detect a third break between the two you know about. That means someone who wants to tap your cable needs to break it in three places so that you aren't aware where they put the tap.
Surprisingly, it was substantially more frequent than random chance that a cable broke in two places in quick succession. To me that's good evidence that these cables were being tapped.
We also encrypted the data on the glass with dedicated per-link encryption units. I don't know if the adversary was hoping to break the encryption or had some way to extract the keys, or was just tapping the cable in case the data was unencrypted. I guess I'll never know.
> HSI is not disclosing the name of the private company in Hawaii targeted, the country where the suspect was arrested or the name of the suspect.
and then directly after that implies that Russia is behind the attack:
> While it is likely we will never know who attempted the breach, it is clear that the security of our cables are of key interest of the great power adversaries. and this wouldn't be the first time Russia has been linked to a cable attack.
The operation was apparently rolled up by an informant. Personally, I would expect better from Russia. They can send their hitmen all over the world to kill dissidents without getting ratted out, but a little cable tapping is too much for someone to hold in?
Well, you have to account for the individual. Suppose this informant is an ethnic Russian working for the targeted company and was approached by Russian intelligence who presumed his ethnic ties would make him a sympathetic collaborator. They might have simply misjudged his character. And obviously an informant can only inform on things he's aware of. A tech worker might be approached as a collaborator for a tech espionage plot, while obviously never being told anything about polonium assassinations.
Also Will Manidis: tells the story of Operation Ivy Bells, where the US tapped another country's transmission lines
Sauce for the goose, right?
WHY?!?!?
It's time some backbone providers just started publishing a sample of plaintext info they see flowing over their networks. A simple tap of 0.0001% of traffic directed through a filter to look for words like "password" and stick it up on a webpage ought to do the trick.
Journalists would have a field day for a while trying to write an article about every insecure company, but before long everyone would properly encrypt their traffic to avoid the embarrassment at a minimum!
For instance, bgp hijacking has been used to obtain valid certificates by hijacking domain names. Yes there are mitigations for this, but not everyone enforces them.
>and this wouldn't be the first time Russia has been linked to a cable attack.
Was it Russia? The long stream of tweets fails to mention that in a clear way.
Then again, I'm also allergic.