Investigators say a Chinese ship’s crew deliberately dragged its anchor to cut undersea data cables
Summary
European investigators allege that the Chinese-owned ship Yi Peng 3 deliberately dragged its anchor to sever two Baltic Sea undersea data cables connecting Lithuania-Sweden and Finland-Germany.
While the Chinese government is not suspected, officials are probing possible Russian intelligence involvement.
The ship’s suspicious movements, including transponder shutdowns and zig-zagging, suggest deliberate action.
The vessel, linked to Russian trade since March 2024, was carrying Russian fertilizer when stopped.
NATO warships surround the ship, but international maritime laws limit investigators’ access.
https://www.engadget.com/transportation/investigators-say-a-chinese-ships-crew-deliberately-dragged-its-anchor-to-cut-undersea-data-cables-195052047.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world361
Comments32
Seize the ship and sell it to cover the cost of repair.
Seizing a ship in international waters is a bad move. A better idea; block the docking of all Chinese ships at NATO country ports across the world until the cost of repairs are paid. Payment would arrive in about 5 minutes because the cost of of all Chinese flagged cargo ships idling outside ports for any length of time would be far far FAR more expensive.
I'm down with that.
And trebucheting the captain back over the border with Russia.
I agree, but replace China with Russia.
Better to sue the shipping company into oblivion
Why not both? /meme
Why not Zoidberg?
The shipping company only has 2 ships. source
Fuck it then. Seize their ships when they're in port. Assuming that they're not some shadow puppet company for a bigger company, you've halved their possible business.
I didn't dig very deep, but they may only be used in Russian and Chinese ports. This seems like a good way to insulate a larger company that does use NATO friendly ports. Create a new company, put two ships in it, and do risky shit in Russian and Chinese ports. If the company gets sanctioned the big company is protected.
International Maritime laws are for sober, sane, classy, respectful, gentlemanly behaviors between countries.
Russia has been the complete opposite, so that means only NATO playing this game fairly. The question is, "The fuck? Why? "
Because it still gives us leverage to demand every country other than Russia also play by the rules.
If China gave full access to the investigation the Russians can get fucked too.
I'm a complete noob at this, but would it be possible for a submarine to cut the cable at the same time and install something to snoop on the data?
If you want to snoop you don’t cut the cable so people come to repair it where you installed your snoopy device. Also, if there is no data on the cable because it has been cut there is no data to snoop.
Not easily.
They’re deep enough down that getting to them requires some creativity (ROVs, specially trained deep sea divers, etc.)
Then, how do you sever the connection with the operator not seeing the break? Just installing the snooper is going to take time. A sudden loss of all signal and then that signal coming back? Yeah they’ll notice.
Then how do they get the data back? Either they have to run their own cable out (expensive and obvious,) or they use the cable itself and double the data going through…( also obvious. )
Further, everyone and their grandma uses encryption for basically everything. Anything actually interesting is going to be heavily encrypted. (This is also why they’d double the data through put. The snooper won’t have the power to break the encryption,)
FWIW, optical cables have electronic repeaters spaced regularly along their length, so it may not be necessary to interrupt the connection to put a tap on it.
Even if data is encrypted, the source and destination addresses may be in the clear. If that's the case, it is still valuable for traffic analysis. Similarly, it's possible that an attacker has the means to decrypt traffic (they have the keys, or an exploit in the implementation).
As to getting the data back, you're right that an attacker probably wouldn't want to duplicate the entire flow of traffic, but they may wish to copy all data to/from certain addresses.
True, but gaining physical access to the repeater is going to still be difficult, and I would be shocked if there’s not some type of switch that triggers an alarm when it’s accessed. It would also be extremely difficult to upload fresh firmware to it in place- at least, or without removing it to a dry environment.
(Maintenance would just upload it through the data connection.)
It would be easier (and probably actually profitable…) to gain access to it during manufacture. This was the legitimate concerns about 5g infrastructure being made in china.
Regardless, it’s almost certainly more cost effective to get hooks into the IT guy maintaining the system than any physical attack.
Even if there are tamper sensors (unlikely, for something on the seabed built by cheapskate telcos), you could very likely trip it or just take it offline, and they'd attribute it to normal wear and tear from the ocean and its denizens.
Also, you can tap fiber optic lines by bending them, no cuts required. This seems unlikely for undersea cables, considering the size and weight and thickness of sheathing, but isn't impossible.
They can actually just store the data on drives on the snooping device, and then periodically swap out the storage devices with a submarine.
Periodically like every minute?
These cables can carry terabits per second. I suppose if you had 100 petabytes of storage (that could probably be achieved with a single large rack of machines) you could just swap the entire rig every few hours or so, but that feels extremely cumbersome.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
You can just store metadata instead of all traffic (most of it is encrypted anyway). Or just store the packets that interest you.
Feels like setup for a movie.
Call it Geek Squad
Situation: Someone painted the wall blue. Investigstors: "We came to the conclusion the wall is blue."
Thank you captain obvious.
If it looks like a bear, acts like a bear and shits in the woods, guess what animal it is.
Edit: I don't know if you guys are familiar with anchor operations. I am, as I have served 15 years in the navy. There is no way you drop an anchor by accident, with the correct anchor chain length compared to the depth of the sea, then to accidentally have the anchor chain break operated correctly (this isn't as easy as pushing a button) and have the anchorchain stop accidentally placed (manual labor) so the chain isn't ripped out of the ship while dragging it over the sea floor. Sailing with the chain out is also difficult; going too fast or making too tight turns drags the chain over the hull and the bulb, creating a nice Titanic effect. Dropping an anchor makes so much noice, the entire ship will hear it like there's someone using pots and pans while drumming in the hallway. Even when a ship is 300+ meters long. So everyone on board knew about dropping the anchor. "Well maybe they were asleep" nope, this wakes everyone up.
Doing all of this requires manpower of several crew members as well as calculations for chain length and navigation. So the captain and officers were involved, as well as deckhands for operating the anchor winch and stop.
So to me this is a no-brainer that this was done deliberately, no doubt about it.
Russia: it's obviously a very convincing puppeteer with IBS
If I shoot you at point blank range on national television, it still needs to be established as what happened at my trial.
Obvious things need documentation and proof when they are being done illegally.
Maybe the ship that took out the bridge in Baltimore was on purpose too
Maybe bad things happen with Chinese ships unintentionally too.
I'm inclined to agree with this. Just apply Hanlon's razor, people make mistakes, often.
It’s a good thing we’ve got all these razors helping us know what’s true
That seems incredibly racist.
Although not that surprising that 9-11 deniers are also racist.