The Swedish cabin on the frontline of a possible hybrid war

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/23/swedish-cabin-frontline-possible-hybrid-war-undersea-cables-sabotage

by Sami_Lehtinen • 2 years ago

211 86 2 years ago

theguardian.com

fifilura• 2 years ago

Tangential, after reading the description of the archipelago.

Sweden is the country with most islands in the world, followed by Norway and Finland.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the...

yoavm3• 2 years ago

If you've never visited the Stockholm archipelago, I highly recommend it. In fact, I think it's perhaps the best thing about Stockholm, and one of the most beautiful places in the world in general — if you're into sailing, islands and seas. It's almost too easy to find an island just for yourself for the weekend, and "Allemansrätten", the law that grants people the right to access wilderness, only makes it even more accessible. Going there at the midst of winter or during summer are both very different experiences, but both are very charming.

casenmgreen2• 2 years ago

Also, the superb torpedo museum!

pimeys3• 2 years ago

Same with Helsinki and Turku archipelago. We've been spending the whole Christmas in my parent's cabins near Helsinki in a small island. It was a bit tricky to come here with a small boat due to the ice, but when we got here, we just heated up the sauna and started enjoying a very quiet island life.

ionwake• 2 years ago

Is it legal to camp overnight on them?

I’m from Europe and when I saw the islands on the ferry to Helsinki’s from Stockholm I have to say I was amazed at the beauty so much so I’d love own property there now. Truly astonishing seeing kids on tiny row boats chilling on random rocks in the estuary

eesmith5• 2 years ago

Do they use the same methods to define "island"?

The section for Australia seems very broad: "Australia itself dominates the islands around its coastal fringe, which range in size from smaller rocks that are not covered by water at high tide to ..."

While it says the US has 18,617 islands, I struggle to find an official source for that very precise number.

I also see how https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Florida says "The U.S. state of Florida has a total of 4,510 islands that are ten acres or larger", suggesting that ten acres is the minimum sized used for "island" in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Maine says "Maine is home to over 4,600 coastal islands, ranging from large landmasses like Mount Desert Island to small islets and ledges exposed above mean high tide."

Clearly these are not using the same definitions.

I managed to find the Global Islands data set at https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/63bdf25dd34e92aad3c... with an explorer at https://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/gie/ which should have exactly what I want, except 1) it only lists ocean islands, not inland ones, and 2) I can't figure out how to get the data by country.

It categories things as "Big Islands (greater than 1 km2), Small Islands (less than or equal to 1 km2 and greater than or equal to 0.0036 km2), and Very Small Islands (less than 0.0036 km2)." "There are 21,818 big islands in the database. The remaining 318,868 islands are all less than 1 km2 and are classed as small islands.'

I give up.

Etheryte• 2 years ago

I don't think that quote implies a limit for the definition in any way. It just says that this is the count below a given threshold. It doesn't say anything about that threshold being a standard or anything of that sort.

LtWorf3• 2 years ago

In sweden if you dig a canal around some land, they call the result an island.

CPLX2• 2 years ago

There’s just literally no possible way that Sweden has an order of magnitude more islands than the US or Canada.

Open up Google Earth and scan around northern coastlines of all these countries and you’ll laugh at the premise of this article.

With that said I wouldn’t be surprised if they have the most documented/counted islands. That’s another thing entirely and also sort of interesting I suppose.

sandworm101• 2 years ago

Part of it is based on population density. It is an island if it has a name and someone living on it. Canada has thousands, hundreds of thousands, of unnamed "islands" with nobody on them. Wherever land is relatively flat, every water body will have a few.

Canada's north is so vast that even unique features remain unnamed, such as the "Island in a Lake on an Island in a Lake on an Island".

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/85342/island-in-a-l...

tester756• 2 years ago

Why write about it then?

Even if you assume that enemies' intelligence already knows about it, then doesnt it just show that it doesn't work?

Or maybe it is just fake cabin?

23B1• 2 years ago

There's no mystery to infra being both vulnerable and accessible, especially to belligerent world powers. It's all just degrees of consequence for attacking those components.

Additionally, a journalist would probably (reasonably) argue that writing about it exposes just how little consideration governments give to protecting this infra.

mrbluecoat• 2 years ago

Good thing they have a giant neon green spindle of fiber optic cable right next to the discreet cabin to help it blend in..

LtWorf3• 2 years ago

I'd bet it's done this way to blend with the landscape, not to be a big secret.

ninalanyon2• 2 years ago

Why doe it need to blend in? It's not a secret installation. The cabin is discreet simply because the red paint is the traditional colour for pretty much all rural plank clad non-residential buildings in Scandinavia. I doubt that any thought went into the colour scheme.

unwind• 2 years ago

It's called Falu red [1], btw. Made from mining residual products and originally liked because it resembled luxurious brick.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red

dghlsakjg• 2 years ago

Undersea cables are also marked explicitly on all nautical charts. If a rented pleasure boat can, with plausible deniability as to intentionality, drag a hook across the sea floor and easily get away, the cabin isn’t the issue.

This isn’t the main weak point.

wasmitnetzen2• 2 years ago

And the nautical charts are published by the responsible Swedish agency as well: https://geokatalog.sjofartsverket.se/kartvisarefyren/

Undersea cables are the squiggly lines.

leobg• 2 years ago

[T]he Guardian was given exclusive access to the Stockholm datacentre site. […] Daniel Aldstam, the chief security officer at GlobalConnect, which transports 50% of the internet capacity of the Nordics and runs the centre, described the approach to its location and ordinary outward appearance as “security through obscurity”.

How do you do that facepalm emoji on HN?

lostlogin• 2 years ago

This is a good point.

askonomm• 2 years ago

Probably a stupid question, but why don't we encase the (undersea) cable in some metal container or something so that it would not be so easy to break? Is it due to economics? Is the constant fixing in the end cheaper than making it hard to break, or perhaps it needs maintenance anyway often enough to make it a hassle?

sandermvanvliet• 2 years ago

Because it would need to be pretty beefy in order to stop an anchor dragged by a big(-ish) ship and would be uneconomical.

If it does get damaged then repair would also be more expensive than current methods

chiph• 2 years ago

They are armored when they get close to land. But at depth they are not because of weight & economics. Even if a cable were armored for the full length - I'm not sure it would withstand an intentional anchor-dragging.

Someone needs to do an A/B test. (no not really)

gruez• 2 years ago

You have to encase the entire length of the cable, which can be hundreds of miles, but the attacker only needs to attack a single spot. The nordstream pipeline attacks have shown that planting explosives on undersea infrastructure isn't exactly hard, so you end up paying an enormous price to add a knee-high barrier for a would-be attacker.

efnx• 2 years ago

They mention at the end that it makes it heavier and harder to deploy, as well as how rare it is that they get damaged.

But I think this is the point of the article - that we start thinking with “a wartime mindset”. Which is a shame, but maybe necessary given the state of the world.

nradov• 2 years ago

The other approach that can work in some areas is to use a plough to bury the undersea cable in a trench. This is much slower, more expensive, and damaging to the marine environment.

https://www.royalihc.com/offshore-energy/offshore-equipment/...

wkat4242• 2 years ago

It would cost so much material. I think it would be more economical to just bury it. With an automated robot of course. It would also make it a hell of a lot harder for an attacker to locate the cable. But I don't know if these already exist.

lazide• 2 years ago

The undersea terrain in many areas can be quite varied and rocky. In others, endless mud.

It’s not the easiest terrain to bury anything in.

And it’s always hard to access or even see reliably.

amelius• 2 years ago

A better approach may be to dig a few more tunnels like the Channel tunnel, and run some fiber through them.

chuckadams• 2 years ago

The North Sea is quite a bit deeper and wider than the English Channel.

singleshot_• 2 years ago

This would only be a stupid question if it had been explicitly addressed in the article linked.

bookofjoe• 2 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42498928

pvaldes2• 2 years ago

I wonder if sea cables could be designed with some mechanism that could stand being dragged and even crossed somewhere but returning later to its position automatically with a click. Something like a giant karabiner.

rajamaka• 2 years ago

I'm sure it could, but whether it's cheaper than the existing cable and repairs is probably the question mark

pvaldes2• 2 years ago

The main expenses aren't so much the value of the cable as the disruption in communication and intelligence that could be sensible. Arranging the cable like a V ending in a karabiner in the angle could catch the anchors on a big area and redirect it toward the point of breaking and release anchor at the angle. If the ship would take a long detour from the shortest path to attack the cable in a different area, that would coast then gas money, so a possible boycott is not free anymore making the process less desirable.

That also would eliminate the plausible deniability of the ship that moved out of its main route, and could reduce the cut of communications to hours or minutes (instead days or weeks).

Just speculating

gotts2• 2 years ago

It doesn't matter whether it can resist dragging or not, if they could blow up large concrete reinforced NS pipeline.. a tiny optical cable is much easier to destroy.

wasmitnetzen2• 2 years ago

Looking at the sea charts[1] of the archipelago and following a few undersea cables, I think it might be this cabin[2], which roughly matches with a map on GlobalConnects website[3].

Funnily enough, it's right next to a base of the Swedish military.

[1] https://geokatalog.sjofartsverket.se/kartvisarefyren/

[2] https://maps.app.goo.gl/6mYHFhaUp7Jzx1X69

[3] https://globalconnectcarrier.com/our-network/

sourcecodeplz• 2 years ago

Geo-Guesser future champ right here

bikamonki• 2 years ago

1bn concurrent streams is a lot. Can satellites handle the same or more?

ashoeafoot• 2 years ago

There is no hybrid war. just war and a useless generation of politicians unable to deal with a return of the ugly old world of colonial powers, starved up ans carved up nations all scrambling to get nukes.

The dictators all told us to our face what they would do in their propaganda . Nothing overt, hidden or hybrid . We need the hawks back that won the cold war and we need those doves caged in their own delusions gone.

redmajor12• 2 years ago

What about the chicken hawks?

ksec2• 2 years ago

“security through obscurity” and then go on a publish it in a news paper?

Can someone provide some context here because I dont understand what is going on here.

tokai• 2 years ago

It's only baffling if you believe press is controlled and not writing what they want.

gus_massa• 2 years ago

They interview a few of the guys working there and posted a few photos of the racks inside it. It looks like they have official authorization to publish this.

Just remove all that stuf and the article would be so boring that it would not be worth publishing.

It looks like a PR from the facility to ensure nobody forget to send more fundings next year.

Perhaps the "security through obscurity" was only a tonge in cheek remark and the area is full of hidden bear traps or something.

MisterTea• 2 years ago

“security through obscurity” and then go on a publish it in a news paper?

It's obscure to people like you and me who aren't interested in undersea cable sabotage. For a government entity they either already have this knowledge or have the means to obtain it quite easily.

vintermann• 2 years ago

With governments in northern Europe on high alert over hybrid Russian activity, the Guardian was given exclusive access to the Stockholm datacentre site.

Yeah, ever thought about why?

kakoni• 2 years ago

So perhaps for Finland its not the wisest strategical move to push critical IT services into Azure?

gotts2• 2 years ago

I don't know about Finland but I read about Ukraine partnered with AWS in 2022 to move all of its digital infrastructure(government and banks) abroad and it worked surprisingly well.

syvanen• 2 years ago

Is Azure somehow impacted by this? Or any other of the big providers like AWS or Google Cloud?

Maybe there’s something that Finland and Finnish ISPs could learn from the big providers? And from Ukraine how they moved everything critical into cloud?

The big cloud operators and service providers with their own backbones have redundancies on their network on multiple levels. Not just IP level but also on light path level. Giving them enough bandwidth that even with failure they don’t get congestion.

Finnish ISPs could build more connectivity even inland or higher up in the Gulf of Bothnia. But many of them haven’t as they have optimized for latency and not for redundancy.

Even Finnish government networks were shown during the COVID to be under provisioned, the. pan gateways didn’t handle remote work. And then one roadwork cut a cable next to the road it was shown that the redundant cables were in the same ditch. Service owner has just bought “redundant” connections and never confirmed it.

pimeys3• 2 years ago

A good timing for this article, because today there was again somebody breaking the cables between Finland and Estonia.

https://yle.fi/a/74-20133531

rrjahg• 2 years ago

"One also running from Helsinki to Tallinn is owned by the Chinese-owned CITIC Telecom."

Has Sikorski made a "thank you" tweet to any suspected party?

yayitswei• 2 years ago

Letting the Guardian publish on article about the cabin is the opposite of security through obscurity.

jakeinspace• 2 years ago

That doesn’t have value against nation state actors.

sema4hacker2• 2 years ago

I looked at submarinecablemap.com and there are 4 cables going from Helsinki Findland to Tallinn Estonia. Is that just for redundancy? I would think it's expensive to add more cables between two points when so many other locations are a dead end.

sema4hacker2• 2 years ago

Then I noticed a single cable from Freeport Texas to Pascagoula Mississippi which seemed surprising, but then visiting the website for the tampnet.com owners of that cable reveals a map showing all kinds of offshoots of wireless coverage (I'm guessing to oil platforms), so what looks like a single cable on the map can often be the root of a wide tree of access.

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

The russians are pretty much totally dependent on Scandinavia not shutting down / blockading their ocean access like Turkey has somewhat effectively done in the Black Sea.

Russia is being really stupid in my opinion. They are antagonizing a far superior military force. The nuclear risk is obvious, but it seems that Europe will have to escalate the conventional conflict in Ukraine with more direct action.

Europe has to do some "growing up" militarily. At least it appears that Finland and Poland have their act together

derelicta• 2 years ago

If Westerners don't like getting invaded, then they should stop invading or destabilising countries themselves. Might do the trick.

The Swedish cabin on the frontline of a possible hybrid war

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