News US FCC to update undersea cable regulations amid suspected cable sabotage incidents — proposals include restricting Chinese companies from building...

[Admin]

The FCC is working on a new set of rules that will help protect the more than 400 undersea cables connecting the globe from disruption.

US FCC to update undersea cable regulations amid suspected cable sabotage incidents — proposals include restricting Chinese companies from building... : Read more

 

[tamalero]

Didn't the US also cut Iran's and some other fiber connections using their special tech subs?

 

[bolweval]

What they need to do is install a copper conductor in the cable with a 100kv's on it. If someone try's to cut that we'll know who it is because they will still be stuck to it, or floating on the water above it.

 

[bolweval]

Didn't the US also cut Iran's and some other fiber connections using their special tech subs?

I hadn't heard about that, link?

 

[ivan_vy]

how restricting companies from building undersea cables protects from being cut? it will be make them more expensive to make, maintain, repair and replace. USA is growing paranoid and protectionist by each passing day ... or the USA companies trying to protect their business? free market is not a good thing when you are losing on your own game.
Guess who will have to pay for the rising costs?

 

[bit_user]

having used the same technique against the Soviets during the Cold War

That would've been an electrical cable, not fiber optic. Data rates, back then, were probably like kilobits/sec, not Tb/s rates we're getting into now.

 

[bit_user]

how restricting companies from building undersea cables protects from being cut?

It doesn't. That's to address another threat, which is that a cable is owned by an entity that can be subjected to another (potentially hostile) government's interests. Those interests could include eavesdropping, traffic filtering, or even ceasing operations. If the remote endpoint shuts down, it's effectively the same as if the cable was physically cut.

 

[jg.millirem]

Regarding tapping cables, there seems to be amnesia here about the Edward Snowden revelations, all the spying that the US does on international and domestic traffic, not acknowledged in this article. China and other actors are merely trying to copy what the US has long done.

 

[USAFRet]

And this is beginning to stray into off topic political junk.

That stops here.

Deal?

 

[tamalero]

I hadn't heard about that, link?

Hard to find now with the insane amount of news repeating the information from the baltic cables being cut "possibly by Russian submarines".
But it was between 2015-2020 after a supposed internet collapse affecting India and many Asian nations. And it was located in an undersea cable that connected near Iran.

That would've been an electrical cable, not fiber optic. Data rates, back then, were probably like kilobits/sec, not Tb/s rates we're getting into now.

Supposedly the next generation of spy tools splices the fiber optic, set up a listening device, then "fix"while the sub moves the data..

Regarding tapping cables, there seems to be amnesia here about the Edward Snowden revelations, all the spying that the US does on international and domestic traffic, not acknowledged in this article. China and other actors are merely trying to copy what the US has long done.

This!

US has had backdoors on many network devices for their intelligence services.
Hence why the US fears chips from HuaWei and similar are using similar technology to have backdoors for China.

Let 's not even mention the firewalls and antivirus having to forcibly give the master keys to the intelligence services in the US if they want to even sell their products there. XD

 

[ivan_vy]

It doesn't. That's to address another threat, which is that a cable is owned by an entity that can be subjected to another (potentially hostile) government's interests. Those interests could include eavesdropping, traffic filtering, or even ceasing operations. If the remote endpoint shuts down, it's effectively the same as if the cable was physically cut.

I think the traffic hijacking is easier to be done in the servers side more than the cable itself, this looks like trying to piggyback on the situation injecting FUD to accomplish another goal: monopolizing the cable industry.

 

[bit_user]

Supposedly the next generation of spy tools splices the fiber optic, set up a listening device, then "fix"while the sub moves the data..

I'm no expert on fiber optic communications, but it just seems to me like a stretch to suggest you can tap it well enough to properly decode the DWDM signals and not impede the signal quality in a way that people are going to notice at one or both endpoints. I doubt the design tolerances in these systems would accommodate something like that.

Not to mention that we're talking about doing this deep under water and not exactly in laboratory conditions.

 

[newtechldtech]

It doesn't. That's to address another threat, which is that a cable is owned by an entity that can be subjected to another (potentially hostile) government's interests. Those interests could include eavesdropping, traffic filtering, or even ceasing operations. If the remote endpoint shuts down, it's effectively the same as if the cable was physically cut.

Building the cable does not mean owning it .

 

[tamalero]

I'm no expert on fiber optic communications, but it just seems to me like a stretch to suggest you can tap it well enough to properly decode the DWDM signals and not impede the signal quality in a way that people are going to notice at one or both endpoints. I doubt the design tolerances in these systems would accommodate something like that.

Not to mention that we're talking about doing this deep under water and not exactly in laboratory conditions.

No expert in this matter too. But It was on the news years ago and it popped up again because of the current climate.
I assume the tech has advanced quite a bit. But I agree on the signal degradation ( or brightness variation).

 

[P.Amini]

Didn't the US also cut Iran's and some other fiber connections using their special tech subs?

Never heard of it but I know there were several internet slow downs and shut downs by Iran's own government, like this one (from Wikipedia):

The 2019 Internet blackout in Iran was a week-long total shutdown of the Internet in Iran. It was ordered by the Supreme National Security Council and imposed by the Ministry of ICT. The blackout was one of the Iranian government's efforts to suppress the 2019–2020 protests.

 

[tamalero]

Never heard of it but I know there were several internet slow downs and shut downs by Iran's own government, like this one (from Wikipedia):

The 2019 Internet blackout in Iran was a week-long total shutdown of the Internet in Iran. It was ordered by the Supreme National Security Council and imposed by the Ministry of ICT. The blackout was one of the Iranian government's efforts to suppress the 2019–2020 protests.

Oh yeah, but the one I specifically remember was a much wider outage.
Affecting large swats of Asia (specially India)