WASHINGTON: The USS Jimmy Carter, the latest submarine to join the US fleet, has some special capabilities – intelligence experts say it will be able to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them.
The US Navy has not acknowledged this capability in the US$3.2 billion submarine.
Communications worldwide are increasingly transmitted through fibre-optic lines rather than through satellites and radios.
-Associated Press
i’m sorry i don’t have a link to this, i typed it out verbatim from my local (Singapore) newspaper The Straits Times. there doesnt seem to be any link on the paper’s webpage
i suppose this could very well be possible, with the adapters and interface equipment in the sub’s new MMP multi-mission module. IMO the sub woudn’t dock with the cable itself, but would probably send out divers in heavy duty pressure suits or UUVs carrying interface cables to hook up with the undersea cables.
some interesting questions though:
1. wouldn’t cutting the insulation/seal of the undersea cables to reach the fibre-optics inside expose the fibre-optics to seawater and seabed water pressure and disrupt the flow of information going through, or at least make them vulnerable to much accelerated corrosion?
2. can you just simply hack into a fibre-optic cable, stick in some interface assembly and read what’s going through? can it be done just like tapping a phone?
3. even if the above two problems were solved you would have the problem of sorting through the massive jumble of information going through the cables. say they are tapping comms going from china to the US. there are only a few undersea cables running that route, it probably goes through japan as well. those would carry a large proportion of comms traffic from china to the US – everything from phone calls to faxes to internet downloads. how are you going to find those few classified chinese govt messages, to their Los Angeles embassy say?
you would need massive computing power. not sure if the SSN-23 can carry that.
hmmm it seems much harder than at first glance…
By: hallo84 - 23rd February 2005 at 00:34
some interesting questions though:
1. wouldn’t cutting the insulation/seal of the undersea cables to reach the fibre-optics inside expose the fibre-optics to seawater and seabed water pressure and disrupt the flow of information going through, or at least make them vulnerable to much accelerated corrosion?
2. can you just simply hack into a fibre-optic cable, stick in some interface assembly and read what’s going through? can it be done just like tapping a phone?
3. even if the above two problems were solved you would have the problem of sorting through the massive jumble of information going through the cables. say they are tapping comms going from china to the US. there are only a few undersea cables running that route, it probably goes through japan as well. those would carry a large proportion of comms traffic from china to the US – everything from phone calls to faxes to internet downloads. how are you going to find those few classified chinese govt messages, to their Los Angeles embassy say?
you would need massive computing power. not sure if the SSN-23 can carry that.
hmmm it seems much harder than at first glance…
1. Yes it would. So the USNavy is going to have a hard time explaining to the companies that funded the cable why the thing only lasted 20 years when it was supposed to last 50. and why the hell the cable is always being cut. When the cables are cut and comm lost the company loses a heck of alot of money each time. And these cables are periodically checked for damages by ROV robots that dive to the depths to fix broken cables. You’ll see the suprised looks on the operators when they find a SSN parked there.
2. Technically it is very hard to cut a optical cable and wire them through a assembly to read the simply because under sea lines are bundles of hundreds of cables that are not only non colour coded but also not numbered. Once you cut the fibre optics and there would be a heck of a hard time putting them together and not to mention that you don’t want anyone knowing you are eves dropping.
3. It would take a super computer and miles of wirering and system much like google that searches out key tags but it would still be technically challenging to sort through all these massive jumbo of junk that passes though every minute.
By: Hyperwarp - 21st February 2005 at 12:15
suppose the data is encrypted using a 2048 bit long AES private key. Can current technology break it ? I was reading even breaking a 512 bit AES keyed message is not feasible right now.
2048 bit AES key???? 😮 😮
information tapping in electrical form is much easier. there will be optical repeaters at places below the ocean..every 100-200km…at the landing points they become electrical signals to be demultiplexed and sent to various directions after reconversion to optical. So if the idea to catch faxes to the chinese embassy, why not just simplify the problem by simply
tapping it in the washington telephone exchange or ISP data center rather than prowling around trying to tap a cable with terabits of data hundreds of meters below the ocean ?
and how do they collect the data – does the jimmy carter rig up another
undersea cable to a shore point, does it stay there for months just listening
or leave behind a “hard disk array and computer” for pickup later. signals
cannot be transmitted fast from deep in water as the elf/vlf bandwidth limits show.
They are probably doing that right now…… 😀
By: Indian1973 - 21st February 2005 at 10:17
suppose the data is encrypted using a 2048 bit long AES private key. Can current technology break it ? I was reading even breaking a 512 bit AES keyed message is not feasible right now.
information tapping in electrical form is much easier. there will be optical repeaters
at places below the ocean..every 100-200km…at the landing points they become electrical signals to be demultiplexed and sent to various directions after reconversion to optical. So if the idea to catch faxes to the chinese embassy, why not just simplify the problem by simply
tapping it in the washington telephone exchange or ISP data center rather than prowling around trying to tap a cable with terabits of data hundreds of meters below the ocean ?
and how do they collect the data – does the jimmy carter rig up another
undersea cable to a shore point, does it stay there for months just listening
or leave behind a “hard disk array and computer” for pickup later. signals
cannot be transmitted fast from deep in water as the elf/vlf bandwidth limits show.
By: Arabella-Cox - 21st February 2005 at 08:41
It is my understanding that fibre optic cables can be tapped by bending them.
Regarding the computing power, yes it would be seriously demanding but the use of automated flagging for specific words… like bomb or arms contract… in several languages at once might have reduced the amount of data that needed to be captured for proper analysis.
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February 21, 2005 at 7:39 am