[8752] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: NSA tapping undersea fibers?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Denker)
Tue May 29 10:13:02 2001
Message-Id: <4.2.2.20010529084112.027c3910@127.0.0.1>
Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 08:49:16 -0400
To: Tib <tib@tigerknight.org>
From: John Denker <jsd@research.att.com>
Cc: <cryptography@wasabisystems.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0105282136240.29883-100000@unica.tigerknight
.org>
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At 09:46 PM 5/28/01 -0700, Tib wrote:
>I'm curious as well about how the tap could actually happen though without
>some major bells and whistles taking place.
....
>one fracture and suddenly you're going to have massive data loss
So don't do it that way. There are ways to tap a fiber without fracturing it.
>... about the only way I can see this taking place (from the limited
>knowledge I have on this) would be if there was an NSA or other government
>agent standing over the operator as the alarm went off about the line
>failure and canceling it, then politely telling the operator 'This never
>happened, and I was never here' (a'la James Earl Jones in Hunt for Red
>October).
Uhhh, if either end of the fiber connects to a place where Mr. Jones has
access, then they don't need to tap the undersea cable at all! They just
tap the dry-land connections near that place -- or tap the electronics
inside that place.
>To sum this whole thing up - /IS/ there a way to put a tap on a fiber line
>without letting the whole world know you're doing it, if not just the
>operator/owner of the line itself? And if so could someone sketch it out for
>me or point me to a resource? I'd love to learn of it
For starters:
http://www.stud.fim.ntnu.no/~johanh/prosjekt97/node19.html
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