If this sort of stuff interets you, I highly recommend the book "Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage". [0] It tells the story of Cold War espionage from the submarine warfare point of view. The book also covers "Operation Ivy Bells" which was a joint Navy/CIA/NSA mission whose objective was to place wire taps on Soviet underwater communication lines during the Cold War. [1] Sub placed a listening and recording devices over Soviet cables and was able to capture their communications. The device was fairly large as can be seen from this picture [2]. I'm sure they're smaller now.
I'm betting not. Ivy Bells was back in the days of copper wires being tapped by external sensors placed atop undersea cables. Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. Normal procedure for such work involves hauling the cable to a surface ship where it can be picked apart by hand. A sub would have to somehow pull the cable inside its pressure hull, a very dangerous task. Any sub equipped for such an operation would surely be noticed (massive doors, reconfigured interior spaces, special station-keeping thrusters etc).
Maybe they do it in very shallow water, but then you would still need a dry environment. You would have to deal with the current passing through the cable, somehow without detection or cooperation from the cable's operators. There are just too many difficulties to make splicing-by-submarine practical.
A tangential story mentioned in Simon Singh's 'Code' (excellent read) is that a mole was caught sending secrets to the Soviets based on intel from the taps. They didn't want to tip the Russians off though so he was never prosecuted. Instead they fed him with phony documents to keep the taps secret.
"...mast-mounted antennas and collection systems atop the conning tower, some of them one-of-a-kind devices made for hard to reach or specific targets, all of them black boxes of future war."
That's a quote in the article from a source who is another pair of journalists writing for Gawker.
RF doesn't propagate well through water - in fact VLF is best and only goes to about 20 meters depth. Subs are most vulnerable when on the surface.
So the idea that we'd be using underwater manned platforms at a cost of $1.7 billion each to monitor enemy radio from the conning tower (without even using a buoy) seems a bit absurd to me.
The NRO has launched 3 spy satellites already this year. They're monitoring signals from within 150 miles using high gain antennas without the constraints of salt water, risk of detection and negative effects of a low altitude antenna and a tiny radio horizon.
I too want to believe we have badass hacker subs, but this feels like laying the groundwork for a budget request.
The UK and US have been using submarines as SIGINT platforms for a long time. Don't discount the ability to sneak into coastal waters a mile offshore from a missile testing facility, pop up an antenna and listen for telemetry, radar or other comms. The book I am currently reading about GCHQ describes such missions, for example: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=l9i5bt1-7HYC&lpg=PA6&vq=...
Former navy submarine officer here. So SIGINT is absolutely a capability of US submarines, but isn't necessarily a primary purpose. But there are absolutely times and places where the ideal source of intelligence for the US government is a submarine offshore of country X with very small masts sticking out of the water gathering SIGINT. Satellites don't/can't catch everything.
Did you know that the subsea fiber optic cables which the submarines hack are only 17mm thick? [0]. Great companion story at ARS from a while back worth a read.
I was going to reply that this was surely nonsense and I've seen the thick cables the size of a man's leg, but as the article says these images we've seen are only for shallow areas and the majority of the cable really is just the size of a marker pen, shielded with just a few millimetres of plastic.
e.g. Operation Barmaid, where a nuclear submarines was equipped with a giant set of cutters to allow it to cut and steal the towed sonar array from a Warsaw Pact vessel:
The Russians also have a long history of "special purpose" submarines, and are currently expanding their fleet of them again. Lots and lots of details eg largish "mini" submarines that dock on the underside of massive subs at http://www.hisutton.com
Which is amusing if you consider that a very long-distance, underwater cable which would be difficult to physically monitor (e.g. with cameras), would make a perfect use case for link encryption (at just above the physical layer).
I do not see why that wouldn't be technically possible, unless someone cares to comment.
But don't worry too much. As recent terrorist acts have shown, our intelligence communities retain their efficacy in the face of modern technological advances.
Edward Snowden revealed a long time ago that the NSA also taps the undersea communications cables for mass surveillance (which obviously includes US citizens).
That was hardly a Snowden leak. The Russians have had one of the Ivy Bells listening taps on public display since 1999. The book Blind Man's Bluff details the taps and was published in 1998.
These days, tapping them isn't likely to be particularly useful. Anything sensitive transiting them is gonna be encrypted. Ivy Bells was possible because the Soviets thought it would be impossible to tap the cables - they were within Soviet waters and the tech used to finally do it was quite clever - so they didn't encrypt anything.
>But despite the rising prominence of Russian hackers in this news cycle — and Chinese hackers before that — it's worth pointing out that the United States has grown fairly proficient in cyberspace, too.
How am I not surprised that in an article about US espionage the American s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ media makes sure to remind yet again us how bad, bad, bad the Russians are.
It reads the exact opposite to me. 'You know how everyone's upset about Russian/Chinese hacking lately? Remember that the US did it first and on a far larger scale than them.'
The context of the article is recent comments by political candidates about Russian cyber warfare. The subs' capabilities were revealed at a conference three weeks ago.
I first learned about this when I read about a patent dispute. Someone (I don't recall the name) invented a coupler that could be used to easily splice a fiber optic cable (e.g. under water) and tap into all it's signal undetected. The inventor was denied patent rights and lost all control of his invention b/c the U.S. government claimed States Secrets, thus no court case on the matter could proceed.
I'm calling BS on this. The stealthiness of a sub, it's only real purpose, is defeated the moment you start transmitting via a big antenna. It wouldn't happen. Subs no doubt are used for surveillance, but the concept of them sitting offshore and actively "hacking" communications is absurd. It would be a suicide mission with a billion-dollar asset.
The OP reads like a funding request. It's a pitch for a world where hackers will live inside submarines close to the action, when we know from experience that even when submarines were used to tap lines that the submarine did nothing other than install the tap and scurry away. (They also retrieved the recorders, but then too scurried away asap.) You don't risk something like a sub, and the lives onboard, on information management that can be done from afar. A drone capable of operating untethered far away from the mother ship might as well be controlled from thousands of miles away. The sub may launch the hacker-drone, but no matter the navy's fantasy, subs won't be at the center of the flowchart.
If it's absurd, please explain p.26 of https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/... where we see the USS Annapolis being used for interactive operations ("Connection via: NEPTUNETHUNDER, BLINDDATE/HAPPYHOUR", "Successful exploits at 4, 6, ad 8 NM with 4 watt access point") and for man-on-the-side operations ("Inject using BLINDDATE/NITESTAND", "Successful inject at 4NM to 100mw client computer").
Or to p.27 with a flowchart of the "Afloat Computer Network Operations", which uses Fleet Comms to connect to the Annapolis, which connects to a set of antennas?
You wrote "subs won't be at the center of the flowchart", but the sub literally is the closest box to the center of that flowchart.
(This is from an April 2012 document which is part of the Snowden leak.)
A parabolic antenna can create a narrow beam. That beam can be aimed at a satellite. It is only necessary for the antenna but not the submarine to be at the surface.
The long usage history of sonobuoys and underwater decoys in submarine warfare seems reason to suppose that the use of similar sacrificial systems within the realm of possible tactics to further avoid detection of a submarine.
I think you are just misreading the article. Nobody said anything about big antennas on submarines transmitting. The only new information contined is from a speech by the head of submarine operations saying that submarines are important to signals intelligence with very little detail. (Yes this is PR for submarines.) The rest is old news and somewhat confused speculation.
In reality this non-story appears to simply be something convenient for the WP to tack on 2 paragraphs of Trump attacks. Kinda weird.
Before Snowden and Manning there was the more old fashioned Ronald Pelton who was just released from his 30 years in prison last year for revealing information about submarine phone tapping. His motives were different but he was still treated horribly by the US for revealing the truth.
> These days, some U.S. subs come equipped with sophisticated antennas that can be used to intercept and manipulate other people's communications traffic, particularly on weak or unencrypted networks.
Isn't (most of) the communication over these links encrypted? What is the point of tapping into the information flow? Is it possible that they are able to decrypt it?
There are many people who are saying that the NSA would use radio waves / only store the data. Why not forward the data to another fiber optic connection which is friendly to you to a datacenter.
[+] [-] Jerry2|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man%27s_Bluff:_The_Untol...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
[2] http://www.therebreathersite.nl/11_Closed%20Circuit%20Rebrea...
[+] [-] sandworm101|9 years ago|reply
I'm betting not. Ivy Bells was back in the days of copper wires being tapped by external sensors placed atop undersea cables. Today's undersea cables are optical. You'd need to splice in, or at least open up a cable to get at the individual fibers to install similar taps. I cannot see how that would be done in the pressurized world of submarines. Normal procedure for such work involves hauling the cable to a surface ship where it can be picked apart by hand. A sub would have to somehow pull the cable inside its pressure hull, a very dangerous task. Any sub equipped for such an operation would surely be noticed (massive doors, reconfigured interior spaces, special station-keeping thrusters etc).
Maybe they do it in very shallow water, but then you would still need a dry environment. You would have to deal with the current passing through the cable, somehow without detection or cooperation from the cable's operators. There are just too many difficulties to make splicing-by-submarine practical.
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmaunder|9 years ago|reply
That's a quote in the article from a source who is another pair of journalists writing for Gawker.
RF doesn't propagate well through water - in fact VLF is best and only goes to about 20 meters depth. Subs are most vulnerable when on the surface.
So the idea that we'd be using underwater manned platforms at a cost of $1.7 billion each to monitor enemy radio from the conning tower (without even using a buoy) seems a bit absurd to me.
The NRO has launched 3 spy satellites already this year. They're monitoring signals from within 150 miles using high gain antennas without the constraints of salt water, risk of detection and negative effects of a low altitude antenna and a tiny radio horizon.
I too want to believe we have badass hacker subs, but this feels like laying the groundwork for a budget request.
[+] [-] grkvlt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nstj|9 years ago|reply
[0]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-th...
[+] [-] chrisseaton|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|9 years ago|reply
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0171SWRGI/ref=dp-kindle-redirec...
e.g. Operation Barmaid, where a nuclear submarines was equipped with a giant set of cutters to allow it to cut and steal the towed sonar array from a Warsaw Pact vessel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Conqueror_(S48)#Operation_...
[+] [-] willvarfar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j1vms|9 years ago|reply
I do not see why that wouldn't be technically possible, unless someone cares to comment.
[+] [-] packetslave|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chinathrow|9 years ago|reply
Added: https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/...
[+] [-] stephengillie|9 years ago|reply
But don't worry too much. As recent terrorist acts have shown, our intelligence communities retain their efficacy in the face of modern technological advances.
[+] [-] benevol|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ceejayoz|9 years ago|reply
These days, tapping them isn't likely to be particularly useful. Anything sensitive transiting them is gonna be encrypted. Ivy Bells was possible because the Soviets thought it would be impossible to tap the cables - they were within Soviet waters and the tech used to finally do it was quite clever - so they didn't encrypt anything.
[+] [-] gormo2|9 years ago|reply
How am I not surprised that in an article about US espionage the American s̶t̶a̶t̶e̶ media makes sure to remind yet again us how bad, bad, bad the Russians are.
[+] [-] gwern|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peyton|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|9 years ago|reply
"So you stole emails from a political campaign? That's cool -- remember that conversation with your mistress in 2005? No? We do."
[+] [-] mlvljr|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] transfire|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Inconel|9 years ago|reply
http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/09/68...
[+] [-] sandworm101|9 years ago|reply
The OP reads like a funding request. It's a pitch for a world where hackers will live inside submarines close to the action, when we know from experience that even when submarines were used to tap lines that the submarine did nothing other than install the tap and scurry away. (They also retrieved the recorders, but then too scurried away asap.) You don't risk something like a sub, and the lives onboard, on information management that can be done from afar. A drone capable of operating untethered far away from the mother ship might as well be controlled from thousands of miles away. The sub may launch the hacker-drone, but no matter the navy's fantasy, subs won't be at the center of the flowchart.
[+] [-] dalke|9 years ago|reply
Or to p.27 with a flowchart of the "Afloat Computer Network Operations", which uses Fleet Comms to connect to the Annapolis, which connects to a set of antennas?
You wrote "subs won't be at the center of the flowchart", but the sub literally is the closest box to the center of that flowchart.
(This is from an April 2012 document which is part of the Snowden leak.)
[+] [-] brudgers|9 years ago|reply
The long usage history of sonobuoys and underwater decoys in submarine warfare seems reason to suppose that the use of similar sacrificial systems within the realm of possible tactics to further avoid detection of a submarine.
[+] [-] spikels|9 years ago|reply
In reality this non-story appears to simply be something convenient for the WP to tack on 2 paragraphs of Trump attacks. Kinda weird.
[+] [-] gravypod|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hondor|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Pelton
[+] [-] berberous|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gozur88|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theCricketer|9 years ago|reply
Isn't (most of) the communication over these links encrypted? What is the point of tapping into the information flow? Is it possible that they are able to decrypt it?
[+] [-] intrasight|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zitterbewegung|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ommunist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaroth|9 years ago|reply
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