[liberationtech] Are undersea cables tapped before they get to ISP's? [was Re: Security over SONET/SDH]

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists at gmail.com> -----

Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:38:30 -0400
From: Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists at gmail.com>
To: "Dobbins, Roland" <rdobbins at arbor.net>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: Re: Are undersea cables tapped before they get to ISP's? [was Re: Security over SONET/SDH]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Dobbins, Roland <rdobbins at arbor.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 25, 2013, at 8:15 PM, Leo Bicknell wrote:
>
>> Which made me immediately realize it would be far simpler to strong arm the cable operators to split off all channels before connecting them to the customer.
>
> It's potentially a lot simpler than that:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells>

this involved, I think, just intuiting signals from the nearfield
effects of the cable, no? 'drop a large sensor ontop-of/next-to the
cable, win!'

> <http://defensetech.org/2005/02/21/jimmy-carter-super-spy/>

this I thought included the capabilities to drag the fiber/line into
the hull for 'work' to be done... I'd note that introducing signal
loss on the longhaul fiber seems 'risky', you'd have to know (and this
isn't hard I bet) the tolerances of the link in question and have a
way to stay inside those tolerances and not introduce new
splice-points/junctions/etc and be careful for the undersea cable
power (electric) requirements as well.

fun stuff!

and yea, why not just work with the landindstation operators to use
the existing monitoring ports they use? (or get a copy of the monitor
ports)

-chris


----- End forwarded message -----
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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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