anonymousDan8 hours ago
One important question that I'm unclear on is how long it takes to fix one of these cables. If it takes months then that is quite a wide window in which an attacker could incrementally take down cables.
mcfedran hour ago
Certainly worth blowing up some russian ships to make sure it doesn't happen again
amelius8 hours ago
They could even blow up all cables at once. Maybe the explosives have already been placed.
TheMiddleMan8 hours ago
This is a great video on undersea cables https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFt9le2ytW0
"Sabatoge" and repair is discussed at 11:45
booi8 hours ago
Generally it can be fixed in days. They raise it from the sea floor and splice in a new cable section.
scheme2714 hours ago
True but ships and crews with the equipment to do the repairs are limited. It's possible to overwhelm the repair capacities. Also, it takes time to physically travel between cuts so while cuts in the Baltic might take a week or two to fix, a cut in the Atlantic and one in the Baltic may take a week or two just for travel.
shmerl4 hours ago
If someone will try to overwhelm the repair capacities for integral communications, they'll be dealt with like pirates - simply sunk and be done with.
LtWorf2 hours ago
As if they know which ship did this…
shmerl2 hours ago
They already know. The captain will probably end up in prison for a long time, and company which owns the ship will pay for the deliberate damage. Would be good too if they can crack who from the crew works for Russian saboteurs besides the captain. Unlikely it's just one person.
mistyvales8 hours ago
Crazy that you can splice optical cable..
UltraSane7 hours ago
They actually have very cool devices that will automatically align and fuse two fibers and estimate the loss of the bond.
ahnick5 hours ago
how much do one of those bad boys cost?
UltraSane4 hours ago
The cheapest ones are surprisingly cheap at less than $1,000 and the highest end ones are $10,000
neom7 hours ago
Today, we're going to talk to John Owens and learn about the process of splicing fiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zN20ZVInfU
dgfitz8 hours ago
I mean… they get terminated somehow, right?
dmoy7 hours ago
True, but splicing without leaving behind a powered repeater is different from the final termination with active electronics on the end.
It's pretty cool tech
dgfitz6 hours ago
I’m saying you can terminate cleanly without needing a repeater.
To be clear, I’m saying to terminate each end of the cut cable to a terminating device that continues the flow of light, not just the termination at the beginning/end of the line. Sorry if that wasn’t obvious.
PhasmaFelis8 hours ago
In this particular case, it seems like the attackers were trying for plausible deniability (making it look like an accident with an anchor). A comprehensive series of "accidents" wouldn't fit that goal.
(And if they decide they don't care about plausible deniability, they could use sub-deployed timed mines to take out every cable at once.)
alisonatwork7 hours ago
Even if these "accidents" are a state sponsored (or at least condoned) action, it seems certain states have realized they can happen over and over again without consequences[0].
The frustrating part of this kind of petty tactic is that bullies can do just enough to annoy and inconvenience their targets, while never quite doing enough to make it worth expending the political capital to hold them to account. From the bully's perspective there's no downside. And if legitimate accidents or rogue actions get portrayed as deliberate then all the better - that just reinforces the bully's reputation as an actor to be feared while further eroding trust in the international institutions that may one day challenge it.
chgs8 hours ago
And then once they are fixed take them out again
JumpCrisscross8 hours ago
> once they are fixed take them out again
In an actual war, you hit the repair equipment and personnel [1].
(As to the Geneva Conventions note, we're discussing a hypothetical war with Russia. The status quo, including rules of war, are going to be rewritten by the victors.)
lxgr6 hours ago
Shhh, or somebody will realize how much slack there is in the system (for very good reasons, as evidenced here) and "optimize" it away...
jmward016 hours ago
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Slack took up 50% of the bandwidth on those cables considering how many notifications and channels I alone get spammed with from work.
lexlambda8 hours ago
Can anyone explain why there wasn't any BGP activity on the Finland-Germany systems when the cable broke, while for Lithuania there was a massive spike?
Unfortunately it's been a long time since I learned about BGP, if anyone could help out here I'd be grateful.
wmf8 hours ago
Each BGP hop represents an ISP so when an ISP reroutes traffic internally there's no need for changes to external BGP announcements. Clearly ISPs in the Baltic region have multiple paths and don't depend on any one cable.
ChoHag6 hours ago
[dead]