China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/04/china_spying_on.html

by hsnewman • 7 years ago

150 51 7 years ago

EastToWest• 7 years ago

"As I have repeatedly said, we need to decide if we are going to build our future Internet systems for security or surveillance. Either everyone gets to spy, or no one gets to spy. And I believe we must choose security over surveillance, and implement a defense-dominant strategy."

Can't agree more!

w8vY7ER• 7 years ago

hear, hear

dogma11383• 7 years ago

Even if you encrypt all traffic they can still spy you can't prevent physical attacks nor can you prevent government spying trought warrants or by compromising the service and content providers.

It doesn't matter if Facebook is going to be accessible trough TOR only or not if the NSA or any other capable intelligence agency can compromise Facebook.

Even if you do somehow manage to put all physical transport links in the hands of some impenetrable organization the US and China would just send a sub to the ocean and tap the cables.

And just like it's granted that AT&T cables can be accessed by US authorities China can access anything that a Chinese company lays down and likely even with more ease.

dontbenebby3• 7 years ago

Even if you encrypt all traffic they can still spy you can't prevent physical attacks

Yes but a vast swathe of attacks are stopped with good encryption.

Recall for example that TLS ("HTTPS") provides integrity verification, not just encryption.

burfog• 7 years ago

It does seem odd that traffic between nations is apparently not encrypted by agreement of those nations, with nation-pair crypto keys.

For example, a link from Vatican City to San Marino should be protected from Italy. A link from Bolivia to Switzerland should be protected from all the other countries along the route.

ttul• 7 years ago

I wonder how much value there is in tapping undersea cables anymore. HTTPS is pretty well established and companies are encrypting traffic between data centers.

kitotik• 7 years ago

Metadata and DPI is still pretty informative.

dnautics• 7 years ago

it seems like the obvious solution would be to buy bandwidth on those and just send a continuous bytestream over the cable, as a transport layer, say between "2" and "3" and someone would just have to implement the standard protocols (tcp/udp) over a subscription service to the moving bytestream.

sgt101• 7 years ago

Depends where in the network you are and what transport you are using. WAN is a different game to access.

Gpetrium• 7 years ago

I will try to exemplify internet cables with a fisherman going into the ocean. The person can take a variety of strategies to achieve their goals, here are a few:

- Fisherman goes to X location because he knows at that time he will be able to catch tuna & mackerels.

- Fisherman goes to a random location capturing whatever he can. He can later decide what is of value or not, whether he will throw it back into the ocean or not is up to the captain.

- Fisherman goes to a random location and captures everything. There seems to be some stuff he doesn't know if it is edible or not, but it doesn't matter. He can store the catch and see if he can cook it later.

Some of the catches will spoil before you are able to figure out whether it is edible or not, others can be useful decades later.

TheSpiciestDev• 7 years ago

What could someone do if they were to store all the encrypted data and then wait for quantum computing to make the data usable?.. you could target certain streams of data, from certain periods of time, build a case and then decide on the next course of action (target for more data or take physical action.)

HAL9000Ti• 7 years ago

I'm already being spyed on by the USA, and have been for probably decades, what's the difference?

DennisP2• 7 years ago

As the article says, "This shouldn't surprise anyone. For years, the US and the Five Eyes have had a monopoly on spying on the Internet around the globe. Other countries want in."

kurthr• 7 years ago

Yes, but now China can check to be sure that the data they have tunneled out of the Five Eyes stores are accurate... see that's getting real intelligence information :^)

dsl2• 7 years ago

Which has a bad taste of whataboutism.

The huge difference is the NSA collects to achieve political goals. China spies for political and economic benefit. Foreign businesses are frequently targeted with the singular goals of IP theft or gaining leverage in business negotiations.

penagwin3• 7 years ago

Depends on who you are. I am absolutely against this kind of surveillance. HOWEVER, as a US citizen I trust the US more with my data (or Germany or, etc.) then China.

thwg5• 7 years ago

China has a limited overseas power projection. China does not have the power to get you. But the US can pretty much get anybody. Congrats on being a US citizen.

envy2• 7 years ago

I feel exactly the opposite.

As a US citizen living in the US, even if the Chinese were to have every bit of my private data, they wouldn't really pose any threat to me as I'm not in their jurisdiction. The US, on the other hand, has a very real ability to use my data against me.

With very few exceptions (e.g. you are being explicitly targeted by a hostile nation-state for high-profile activities), surveillance by foreign governments will always pose less risk than surveillance by your own government.

BurningFrog• 7 years ago

I always wonder how big the spy traffic is?

How many times is the average packet on the internet copied for surveillance purposes, and how much does it slow down the net as a whole?

fisherwithac• 7 years ago

Security has been the red-headed stepchild of software and, in some cases, hardware innovation for a long time. And I agree that it's important to take steps to ensure that changes.

I think two simple principles should be remembered to facilitate this:

1. Most end users will choose convenience over security

2. Security without usability is a compromise to security

If developers of these innovative technologies take the time to implement tried-and-tested security/privacy controls while providing easy-to-undersatnd education for non-technical users, then I believe things can certainly improve.

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

I'm sure all large countries are spying on undersea internet cables.

chris_mc• 7 years ago

Are we just making China the Boogeyman now on hacker news? I'm not trying to be a whataboutist, but literally everything China is doing had been done for decades by everyone else capable of doing that thing. Why are we suddenly up in arms about China?

turtlecloud• 7 years ago

elites attempting to distract population and create scapegoat for impending economic/sociological/demographic crisis.

FakeComments• 7 years ago

Because the US is engaged in a strategic struggle with China over ideological dominance and influence on world events.

You can see the conflict spanning the South China see to trade relations and economic investment to accusations both directions of misconduct in technology manufacturing.

China has been getting more aggressive due to perceived US weakness, and this kind of PR is part of a multi-pronged US response. As are increased prosecutions for financial crimes and kicking up a fuss over the trade deal.

trpc• 7 years ago

much of the internet traffic is served over TLS these days, DPI and such equipment are becoming more and more useless. But hey, up to L4 is still plaintext!

Leary• 7 years ago

So where in the article does it say that China is spying on the cables?

sandworm101• 7 years ago

They aren't spying on "undersea cables". They aren't sending subs down to split fibers or plant taps. Those days are long gone.

They are perhaps tapping at point where cables leave the shore, but even that is old hat. With everything being encrypted, and the sheer volume of traffic, intel agencies these days find it much easier to go to the source. If the NSA or China want to read your email, they don't tap undersea cables. They go directly to your email/text/cell service and siphon only the data they want. Or, for things like meta data/location tracking, they can just buy the data like any other company. That is the real future: the commoditization of espionage.

smokeyj• 7 years ago

and siphon only the data they want

All of it.

If they can't decrypt it now they'll save it until they can.

onetimemanytime• 7 years ago

> If they can't decrypt it now they'll save it until they can.

Save it on what? Can someone do a back of the envelope calculation on what it takes to back "all of it" for an indeterminate amount of time?

dsl2• 7 years ago

If the NSA or China want to read your email, they don't tap undersea cables

It is naive to say that the NSA does or does not use a particular collection method. The truth is they use them all to varying levels of success.

Upstream collection (targeting the communication medium and infrastructure) has been confirmed dating back to the 70s and as recent as 2013 with the Snowden leaks. Even the PRISM program with its "direct access" to providers like Yahoo and Google was eventually discovered to be tapping the fiber optic links between the companies datacenters without their knowledge or consent.

dontbenebby3• 7 years ago

if you build it, they will tap

stebann• 7 years ago

How do they analyze the traffic? Is it possible to get something from these actions?

China Spying on Undersea Internet Cables

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