Fiber Optic Cables Can Eavesdrop On Nearby Conversations (science.org) 28
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Cold War spies planted bugs in walls, lamps, and telephones. Now, scientists warn, the cables themselves could listen in. A fiber optic technique used to detect earthquakes can also pick up the faint vibrations of nearby speech, researchers reported this week here at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union. Freely available artificial intelligence (AI) software turned the fiber optic data into intelligible, real-time transcripts. "Not many people realize that [fiber optic cables] can detect acoustic waves," says Jack Lee Smith, a geophysicist at the University of Edinburgh who presented the result. "We show that in almost every case where you use these fibers, this could be a privacy concern."
Fiber optics can pick up on sound through a technique called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). Using a machine called an interrogator, researchers fire laser pulses down a cable and record the pattern of reflections coming back from tiny glass defects along the length of the fiber optic. When an earthquake's seismic wave crosses a section of the fiber, it stretches and squeezes the defects, leading to shifts in the reflected light that researchers can use to build a picture of an earthquake. DAS essentially turns a fiber cable into a long chain of seismometers that can detect not only earthquakes, but also the rumblings of volcanoes, cars, and college marching bands. And although scientists set up dedicated fiber lines specifically for research, DAS can also be performed on "dark fiber" -- unused strands in the web of fiber optics that runs through cities and across oceans, carrying the world's internet traffic.
DAS can also be used to eavesdrop, the work of Smith and his colleagues shows. They conducted a field test using an existing DAS setup used to study coastal erosion. They set a speaker next to the cable and played pure tones, music, and speech. Human speech contains frequencies ranging from a few hundred to several thousand hertz. The low end of the range could be pulled out of the data "even without any preprocessing," Smith says. "You can easily see acoustic waves." Getting higher frequency speech took a bit of postprocessing, but it was possible. Dumping the data directly into Whisper, a free AI transcription tool, provided accurate real-time transcription. However, this technique worked only for coiled cables, exposed at the surface, at distances of up to 5 meters from the speaker. Burying the cable under just 20 centimeters of dirt was enough to muddy the speech. And straight cables -- even exposed ones right next to the speaker -- did not record speech well.
Fiber optics can pick up on sound through a technique called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). Using a machine called an interrogator, researchers fire laser pulses down a cable and record the pattern of reflections coming back from tiny glass defects along the length of the fiber optic. When an earthquake's seismic wave crosses a section of the fiber, it stretches and squeezes the defects, leading to shifts in the reflected light that researchers can use to build a picture of an earthquake. DAS essentially turns a fiber cable into a long chain of seismometers that can detect not only earthquakes, but also the rumblings of volcanoes, cars, and college marching bands. And although scientists set up dedicated fiber lines specifically for research, DAS can also be performed on "dark fiber" -- unused strands in the web of fiber optics that runs through cities and across oceans, carrying the world's internet traffic.
DAS can also be used to eavesdrop, the work of Smith and his colleagues shows. They conducted a field test using an existing DAS setup used to study coastal erosion. They set a speaker next to the cable and played pure tones, music, and speech. Human speech contains frequencies ranging from a few hundred to several thousand hertz. The low end of the range could be pulled out of the data "even without any preprocessing," Smith says. "You can easily see acoustic waves." Getting higher frequency speech took a bit of postprocessing, but it was possible. Dumping the data directly into Whisper, a free AI transcription tool, provided accurate real-time transcription. However, this technique worked only for coiled cables, exposed at the surface, at distances of up to 5 meters from the speaker. Burying the cable under just 20 centimeters of dirt was enough to muddy the speech. And straight cables -- even exposed ones right next to the speaker -- did not record speech well.
So? (Score:5, Informative)
"We show that in almost every case where you use these fibers, this could be a privacy concern."
then
"However, this technique worked only for coiled cables, exposed at the surface, at distances of up to 5 meters from the speaker. Burying the cable under just 20 centimeters of dirt was enough to muddy the speech. And straight cables -- even exposed ones right next to the speaker -- did not record speech well."
So interesting, but sensationalized clickbaity BS of no utility. Moving on, slashhasbeen.
Re: So? (Score:2)
It is a concern for indoors fiber cables and this has been known since at least the 1990s
Re: (Score:3)
However, this technique worked only for coiled cables..straight cables -- even exposed ones right next to the speaker -- did not record speech well.
If your fiber service loop is coiled more than Eddie Van Halen’s guitar pickups, you should be working for Fender, not Verizon.
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Remind me again what has Trump achieved in this war (aka "excursion") ?
- nuclear material: still there (and never been an immediate threat, no matter what Trump and Bibi says, and let's not forget Obama's deal that worked well until Trump ended it)
- regime change: no matter how Trump tries to say the leaders were changed, the regime is very much still there
- Hormuz Strait: opened before, now very closed
- weapons/cost expanded: very significant
- potus making highly effective threat "open the fucking strait y
Re: (Score:2)
I think it is the other way round: Liberals are more in tune with reality. Also matches the results that conservatives are less intelligent.
Re: So? (Score:1)
Re: So? (Score:2)
Sounds like this coil needs to be directly connected to their equipment... It's not like you can extract that audio signal from a fiber patch cord in the next building.
So... Might as well not bother and just plant a mike.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can hide a coil of fiber optic cable in something, you can much more simply hide, you know, a microphone in that same spot. No need for the extra hassle of decoding speech captured by a fiber optic cable.
Re: So? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OK sure. But now you're talking about serious nation-level spying. If a government is after you, they *will* be able to get what they want, with or without those fiber optic cables. And these days, government employees use insecure services to communicate about classified material, so there are a whole lot of less expensive and less complex ways to eavesdrop, than *coils* of fiber optic cable.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, there are lots of ways to eavesdrop on a conversation, if you're in the spy business. But you can't rely on any single method. You need to use a spectrum of them, with the hope that a few, or even one, will yield intelligence.
And let's not forget that a great deal of the spy business entails making human connections, not employing James Bond gadgetry.
Finally, you mention govenment employees using unsecured channels. Yes, we know that happens (not naming names) but it's yet another method you can't rely
Re: (Score:2)
With the smart phone sitting in their pocket or on the table, fiber cable should be the least of their concerns.
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If you can do that, just place a microphone. Seriously.
Re: (Score:2)
So, the moral of the story is, if you are having a secret conversation, and you notice a coil of fiber optic cable nearby...be very, very careful what you say!
Who cares? (Score:2)
You can make a much more effective setup with an infrared laser without fiber, you can point it where you want it.
SCIFs and other tempest-hardened facilities care (Score:2)
But the NSA knew about this decades ago. Everything can be used as a microphone if you try hard enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Optics is *sensitive*
Indeed, it is. No idea why that statement got you moderated down.
Thank God (Score:2)
...that nobody phones or talks anymore.
This is how you get crosstalk from nearby frozen (Score:2)
people. Just spray a little Ubik on it and it'll be all better.
switching to sign language (Score:2)
Between microphones and acoustic fiber optics, it's getting so that concerned citizens can no longer talk about their concerns.