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The Internet Technology

Russian Boat Implicated in Norway Cable Sabotage Mystery (bloomberg.com) 28

In a perplexing turn of events that has raised concerns about the vulnerability of critical undersea infrastructure, Norway's Institute of Marine Research is reconfiguring its sophisticated underwater observatory after a mysterious incident left a section of its seafloor cable cleanly severed. The Lofoten-Vesteralen Ocean Observatory (LoVe), an advanced array of sensors designed to monitor marine life and environmental conditions off Norway's rugged coastline, unexpectedly went silent in April 2021, prompting an investigation that would uncover more questions than answers.

As the institute's acoustic engineer Guosong Zhang delved into the mystery, he meticulously traced ship movements in the area, uncovering a curious pattern: a Russian trawler had repeatedly crossed the cable's location at the precise time the outage occurred, a coincidence that seemed too striking to ignore. Despite this compelling lead, subsequent police investigations proved inconclusive, leaving the institute grappling with the unsettling possibility of deliberate sabotage.

The incident, compounded by similar damage to a communications cable serving the remote Svalbard archipelago, has cast a spotlight on the potential vulnerabilities of submarine assets in an era of heightened geopolitical tensions, with some experts pointing to the possibility of Russian intelligence activities targeting Norway's undersea infrastructure. In response to these challenges and the unresolved nature of the cable damage, the Institute of Marine Research has made the difficult decision to adapt its approach, opting to replace the compromised cable section with wireless modules -- a solution that, while sacrificing some data transmission capacity, aims to enhance the security and resilience of this vital scientific installation in the face of evolving threats beneath the waves.
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Russian Boat Implicated in Norway Cable Sabotage Mystery

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  • by ugen ( 93902 ) on Monday July 15, 2024 @03:14PM (#64627521)

    "In a *predictable* turn of events" - FTFY

  • There, I fixed it for you.

    It's not like it's an NSA submarine cutting an internet backbone to insert monitoring equipment into it.

    So much nonsense reporting :)

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Monday July 15, 2024 @03:46PM (#64627631)

      USN Jimmy Carter isn't the only game in town in that field. Russians have Belgorod among other older subs designed for that work.

      http://www.hisutton.com/Belgor... [hisutton.com]

      But nowadays, it tends to be cheaper to deploy underwater drones for that kind of work, as mothership doesn't need to loiter over the cable any more. Instead it can maneuver in the general area granting significant plausible deniability. So it's much more plausible to covertly use surface ships for this today than it was a decade ago, when Jimmy Carter and it's less capable older non-US cousins were the main stars of the geopolitical game of damaging and tapping undersea cables.

    • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Monday July 15, 2024 @03:51PM (#64627653)

      Trawler trawls and snags a cable after repeated attempts.

      Fixed it for you.

      • Nice clean break for a trawler too.

      • Have you ever seen normal operations on a trawler?

        No, seriously. Have you?

        I used to watch them form the deck of the rig, trawling left-to-right (you can tell they've got trawls trawling because you can see the wake of the wires behind the vessel) as I'm going to collect a rock sample, and 20 minutes later when I go for the next sample, they're going right-to-left. Trawling across an area of seabed, with minimal missed seabed, and minimal double-trawled seabed.

        This description is exactly how trawlers oper

  • by rjforster ( 2130 ) on Monday July 15, 2024 @05:14PM (#64627927) Journal

    From over 100 years ago.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Thanks, I learnt something. (no mod points today)

    • by caseih ( 160668 )

      The difference here is that Putin is too cowardly to openly declare war on the rest of the world. Come on guys, it's just a "limited" military operation.

      • So he's the 5 year old running around the playground breaking his preschool chums' toys because other people don't just bow down to his sniveling, bullying ass and comply. Russia is on the losing side of the overall game of life, and they don't even know it.
  • We seem to have forgotten about the sabotage of the northstream gas pipelines very quickly...maybe because we don't want to know the answer

  • Nothing more need be said. Why would they DO something like that?

  • Isn't it wonderful how fast and easy attribution works, after all? We're not yet quite sure if there has been an act of sabotage but we sure know who's done it. Very much unlike that pipeline somebody blew up before everyone's eyes yet until today not the slightest little hint could be found who might be responsible for history's worst (intentional) emission of greenhouse gases.

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