Or even your own fiber (Google owns tens of thousands of miles of it). There's nothing to prevent the black-hat guys from digging down to a cable in the middle of nowhere and installing an optical tap. Especially if they did it before commissioning, after which signal levels would start being monitored.
If this haven't already I imagine they will be hiring security forces to patrol and inspect.
This is a threat to Google's international business. They have a vested financial interest in reducing the hacking against their systems.
“It’s an arms race,” said Eric Grosse, vice president for security engineering at Google, based in Mountain View, Calif. “We see these government agencies as among the most skilled players in this game.”
The risk of things going wrong when you're tapping cables is much less pronounced as far as I can see.
How can that guy be trusted with anything?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2347047/Former-Faceb...
1. Has the technical credentials and interviewing skills to get hired at Google (not easy). 2. Has a security clearance. 3. Wants to be a spy. 4. Can get themselves assigned to the team working on datacenter interconnects. 5. Can set up a tap on the interconnect without getting caught.
That sounds both hard and expensive to me.
Before the Snowden revelations came out, I'd have strongly considered Sally Smith to be a good fit for a position dealing with data center security. Who wouldn't have?! Years of experience at high levels securing data centers? Letters from generals and senior government officials attesting to her qualifications? Sign me up right away!
Post-Snowden, I'd start believing that Sally Smith is far more likely to be Sally Spook, an active NSA employee experienced in data center infiltration and with an impeccable cover story.
The only thing that keeps Sally Spook away from our data centers is Google's hiring processes & internal security, and is that really enough to stop a determined adversary with all the advantages of the NSA? I doubt it.
The NSA can do this. They have the resources and the time to try. The only question is if they want a mole inside Google. Hell, I'd be shocked if large internet companies (Google, Yahoo, etc.) don't have agents from foreign and domestic intelligence agencies working there right now.
Betting on a companies hiring process to catch agents of an advanced persistent attacker is betting against house money in Vegas. You aren't going to win in the long run.
It's the same reason why security through obscurity doesn't work: if you chain together 5 obfuscation layers that each keep out 80% of competent hackers, in total they probably keep out 85% or 90% of competent hackers if you're lucky, but certainly not 99.99%, because everyone who bypasses the first layer has a much higher probability of having the skills to bypass the other layers as well.
As for the internal mole, I'd imagine that any such individual's role would be highly focused. They'd be used to tackle specific target information rather than the wholesale siphoning tapped cables would provide. Aside from the simple logistic issues with the sheer amount of data they're tapping, I can't imagine how anyone could be in a physical position to do so across the entire Google network without tripping at least <i>one</i> internal safeguard?
For bulk collection, the taps enable surveillance without the possibility of detection unless the NSA screws the proverbial pooch. And if there's one thing history can tell us, it's that surveillance agencies will spend obscene amounts of money in pursuit of that undetectability. From the Project Azorian with the Glomar Explorer to the Berlin tunnels in Operation Gold, the Cold War alone proves the point.