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Could Russian Subs Stop the Internet?
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FeedSource: www.bbc.co.uk collected from rss-bot logs
Time: 2015-10-26 14:42:19+00:00 UTC
Original URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34639148#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa [bbc.co.uk]
Title: Could Russian subs stop the internet?
Suggested Topics by Probability (Experimental) : 19.6 hardware 13.0 science 13.0 digiliberty 10.9 business 8.7 careersedu 8.7 breaking 8.7 OS 6.5 mobile 4.3 code 2.2 techonomics 2.2 software 2.2 careers
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Could Russian subs stop the internet?
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story [bbc.co.uk]:
Russia could be developing plans to sever key internet communications during future wars, according to a report in the New York Times [nytimes.com].
The article reports that various military sources are concerned about a spike in Russian naval activity near the locations of undersea cables.
Such cables are vital to the internet's daily running and constantly ferry huge amounts of data between continents.
There are many thousands of miles of them, [submarinecablemap.com] snaking under the world's oceans.
But could Russian submarines really be investigating ways of cutting these crucial cords?
Russia watchers have long been aware of the threat, says Keir Giles, associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at think tank Chatham House.
However, he added that cutting the US off from the web would probably be impossible because of the number of connections going in and out of the country.
"I very much doubt that anyone would think of cutting off the US," he comments. "It is only going to work in locations where the internet geography is going to create a vulnerability in communications."
But, Mr Giles adds that there are parts of the world where such action might be considered viable.
Ukrainian telecoms providers reported disruptions to a key internet exchange point and cable connections during Russian military activity in the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
The incident is mentioned in a Chatham House report on Russian information war tactics which is being published later this year.
"They can interfere with internet infrastructure in order to gain strategic control of specific regions," says Mr Giles, who adds that while much information about current naval activity in this vein is highly classified, the tactic does seem plausible.
"It does make sense given the intense programme of submarine building, including some very specialised vessels," he says. "It wouldn't be surprising that they would want to do this."
Some states are known to have developed capabilities to tap cables in undersea locations, and the US is reported to have done this in the 1970s.
What's more, documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden allege that intelligence agencies like GCHQ and the NSA can intercept data communications at listening sites such as Bude [theguardian.com] in Cornwall, where a major transatlantic cable comes ashore in the UK.
Severing cables entirely, however, would be a somewhat different tactic.
The internet was designed to be a "resilient" network - one which does not rely on the operation of all connection points to remain functional.
