It's Cyberwar Jim, But Not As We Know It

First the gas

Firstly it was the newly commissioned Nordstream 2 gas pipeline, with ‘maintenance issues’ causing a halt in supplies of Russian natural gas to Europe (and Germany in particular). Then, when the maintenance had been completed (nod nod, wink wink) the Nordstream network pipes were hit by explosions in several places close to the coast of Sweden.

All three affected pipes were rendered inoperable; Russia has confirmed one of the two Nord Stream 2 pipes is operable and is thus ready to deliver gas through Nord Stream 2. The leaks occurred one day after Poland and Norway opened the alternative Baltic Pipe running through Denmark, bringing in gas from the North Sea rather than from Russia as the Nord Stream pipelines do. — Wikipedia

Explosive-laden drone

On October 20th, Swedish naval investigators announced that they had found an underwater drone laden with explosives near one of the pipes. They cut the umbilical control cord (but didn’t say where the other end was).

I’m wondering who was was behind the damage and the massive emissions of the methane greenhouse gas.

Let me know if you have any idea who was responsible, because it’s certainly not a given that Putin was behind this murky act of sabotage.

And now it's datapipes

According to the Ukraine Government Telegram Channel on October 22nd 2022:

Underwater Internet cables were cut almost simultaneously in France and Great Britain.

Unknown attackers cut several underwater fiber-optic cables in the south of France on Wednesday night. These cables connected the country with other parts of Europe as well as Asia and the United States. A similar incident occurred in the United Kingdom.

The reasons have not yet been officially reported. However, there is speculation that Russian saboteurs could have done it.

The world is criss-crossed with a vast network of data and analogue telephone cables.

And some of them, as in the opening picture, run close to the surface as they emerge from the ocean and cross beaches to the mainland. Sometimes they are poorly protected, even when they carry high security data between governments such as the US and UK.

You can stand six feet away from one on a beach in Cornwall, UK. I stumbled across this crazy story about the Apollo 3 cable when researching ’Cause of All Causes’ (that’s a plug. Not a cable plug, a promo plug).

Apollo has another cable which comes ashore in Lannion, Brittany (France). I anchored my boat near there some years back. The locations where these cables emerge from the sea are marked with signs so that yachtsmen and fisherman don’t anchor over them or trawl them up. And so that Putin’s people know where they need to dig…

This is what zscaler.com (who control that network) had to say about the cut to the cable in the South of France in October 2022:

There’s some analysis here:

He's trying hard to smile. Quote from crn.com:

…[later]On Wednesday evening, Zscaler’s Chaudhry took to LinkedIn and was even more blunt: “This fiber cut was an act of vandalism and impacted at least three cable systems.”

He added that “our investigation identified that the issues were a result of a severed fiber cable in Marseille, France” and that the incident was “unique” for two reasons.

First, he said that “Zscaler detected the fiber cut and posted a trust notice long before anyone else (https://lnkd.in/eAtg4E52). Since Zscaler controls the network, we were able to re-route the traffic and mitigate the issue for our global users.”…

…The second “unique” aspect of the cut cable, Chaudhry wrote, was that it was caused by an “act of vandalism.”

Chaudhry didn’t elaborate further, but his comments come at a time of heightened concerns in Europe over possible sabotage of the continent’s infrastructure.

Note: the cable cut in France was in the French city of Aix-en-Provence, located just north of Marseilles, so Putin’s people did not even need to get their feet wet. It links there to the network of cables that run under the Mediterranean Sea.

Dig here

You too can dig up the Apollo internet cables in Europe, or if you're not feeling energetic, get the kids to do it. The cables can be found at:

1. United Kingdom: Bude, Cornwall (50°50′7.8″N 4°33′9″W)

2. France: Lannion, Brittany (48°44′47″N 3°32′50″W)

In the United States, they come ashore at:

3. United States Shirley, New York

4. United States Manasquan, New Jersey

Sorry, I couldn’t find more precise coordinates in the US, so you’ll have to look for the signs. ‘SECRET CABLE’.

But Putin’s people may already have beaten you to it.

Seriously

No, it’s not something I take lightly, although in this mad world an occasional smile is important. But does make you realise how fine a line the world treads when it comes to interconnectivity. A cable break earlier this year in Cairo brought down the police emergency system in the North of England:

In an interview with The Register, Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at network monitoring company Kentik, said:

“Whatever break took place was terrestrial in Egypt,” he added, which he said was good news. “If the break were in the water, it would be a matter of days before it could be repaired.”

He added that another cable, SEA-ME-WE 5, also appears to have been affected briefly.

That’s a strange, because these cables are not supposed to have any inter-dependency.

Stop the world...

It’s so easy to bring the world to a stop. Even Putin could do it — just give him a bucket and spade.

Why bother with expensive teams of hackers in dark dungeons when all you have to do is cut a few cables to let loose the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

You have to wonder why we are so blasé about the security of those cables.

Note: the cut in the UK internet as reported by Ukraine Telegram was localised and off the Shetland Islands (Scotland). It has since been attributed to a UK fishing trawler. Obviously the fishermen missed the 'no anchoring or trawling' signs…

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