Here's a much better source: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-04-20/an-underwater-hack-and-the-digital-ripple-effects" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-04-20/an-und...</a> in particular, it makes it clearer that this was a cyberattack, rather than a physical attack.
So it wasn't "undersea cables off Hawaii" that were targeted, but rather servers <i>on</i> Hawaii that service those undersea cables. I expected submarine antics, which would have a much smaller list of suspects. It sounds like this <i>might</i> not even be state-funded.
I used to be involved in repairs for undersea fiber...<p>Undersea fiber breaks all the time. When it breaks, you can send signals from the ends to find out where the break is. You then dispatch a ship to repair it.<p>However, if the cable breaks in two places at once, you cannot then detect a <i>third</i> break between the two you know about. That means someone who wants to tap your cable needs to break it in three places so that you aren't aware where they put the tap.<p>Surprisingly, it was <i>substantially</i> more frequent than random chance that a cable broke in two places in quick succession. To me that's good evidence that these cables were being tapped.<p>We also encrypted the data on the glass with dedicated per-link encryption units. I don't know if the adversary was hoping to break the encryption or had some way to extract the keys, or was just tapping the cable in case the data was unencrypted. I guess I'll never know.
Will Manidis: "These attacks are a stark reminder that our internet infrastructure is at incredible risk. A constant reminder that our continued freedom rests on an increasingly vulnerable set of infrastructure that is only waiting to be attacked. And our adversaries know it."<p>Also Will Manidis: <i>tells the story of Operation Ivy Bells, where the US tapped another country's transmission lines</i><p>Sauce for the goose, right?
Interview with Frank Pace, Hawaii office of Homeland Security, from when this was news a month and half ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190990" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31190990</a>
It's 2022 and theres still a goldmine of unencrypted data flowing on the public internet and under the ocean.<p>WHY?!?!?<p>It's time some backbone providers just started publishing a sample of plaintext info they see flowing over their networks. A simple tap of 0.0001% of traffic directed through a filter to look for words like "password" and stick it up on a webpage ought to do the trick.<p>Journalists would have a field day for a while trying to write an article about every insecure company, but before long everyone would properly encrypt their traffic to avoid the embarrassment at a minimum!
>While it is likely we will never know who attempted the breach, it is clear that the security of our cables are of key interest of the great power adversaries.<p>>and this wouldn't be the first time Russia has been linked to a cable attack.<p>Was it Russia? The long stream of tweets fails to mention that in a clear way.