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Comment by malandrew | Hacker News Reader

Can you tap fiber? I thought it was only possible to tap underwater cables that emit electromagnetic waves?

If you can get access to the cable then it is possible to splice into it using fairly standard techniques. Here [1] is an article from 10 years ago that looks at what was going on back then. There is speculation [2] that the US Navy has submarines equipped with 'splicing chambers' and cable laying equipment for this purpose.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/news/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-cabl... [2] http://defensetech.org/2005/02/21/jimmy-carter-super-spy/

Wouldn't someone notice if the cable went out of commission for 10 minutes while they spliced?

If your underwater fibre goes down for 10 minutes would international espionage really be the first thing that comes to mind?

If it comes back, then yes. I don't think fiber can have a "loose connection". It either works or it does not.

That may be true of the fiber, but it's not true of the network equipment driving the fiber. Like all computers, these occasionally need hardware or software upgrades too.

You could also arrange for your subsea tapping to be at the same time as an attack (IP or electrical) on the shore station, if you really want it to be difficult to detect. Or do a real cut in one place (with a trawler), while tapping at another place. And possibly cut 5 cables at the same time...

Anyone with real security requirements assumes long-haul cables and the general Internet are monitored. Point to point crypto on links is one of the easier problems to solve.

(the harder problem is doing something once you've tapped -- you either need to build a multi-wave analysis box and low-bitrate exfiltration solution over an IRU you've purchased, or run your own big cable to the tap location. Much easier to tap at the cable landing site.)

Probably. But what would the cable operator do about it? Even assuming they could locate the section of cable that sent down, sending a ship out to it and either sending divers down or (more likely) hoisting the cable up for inspection would be incredibly expensive.

Edit: And if they did somehow find a tap, its hard to know what they would they do then. Snip it off and trigger an 'incident', or leave it in-place and forget they ever saw it. My guess is that the share holders would rather didn't look in the first place.

Maybe the tap could be done covertly before commissioning.

You just come ten miles behind the cable laying ship and splice it before it's ever terminated. I don't know if cable laying ships keep a connection to land over the cable as it's laid, but even if they do, you just place somebody on the ship to notify you when they're asleep or to tamper with the monitoring system.

You may be able to tap the repeater units.

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