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back to article Spooks foils fictional Russian plot

UK Security Services yesterday breathed a sigh of relief at their last-minute foiling of a "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attack on the UK by elements of the Russian Security Services. The attack was due to be launched at 4pm GMT, when a Russian submarine tapped into a transatlantic cable – just off the shore of …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    People not tech

    It's the yanks that go for exotic technical solutions and as others have said, attached devices to undersea telephone cables to bug Russian military communications. The FSB (formerly KGB) has tended to use people. They never seem to have trouble finding people in positions of responsibility who will do their bidding either for cash or political idealology. If the SIS are really paying under 20K to some of their systems and networking people working in central London, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were moonllghting for the FSB.

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  2. spegru
    Boffin

    only slightly impossible

    In fact many submarine cables, especially the long ones going to the US (that tend to go out of cornwall - so at least they got that right) have things called repeaters in them - to boost the optical signal every 80km or so.

    The older ones of these were regenerated - meaning extracting the signal from the optical fibre, and then retransmitting it optically.

    So if they were attacking an old cable with this type of repeater, rather than the cable itself, there is just a chance they could achieve something, by hacking into the signal payload.

    In theory this could allow access to an internet router in the UK. However, whether they would achieve anything more this way than by attacking from a cyber cafe is highly questionable because the likely out come of such an attack is to crash the router concerned - and of course there are hundreds of them in the UK's internet - resilience is the whole point of it when it was originally engineered by the US military.

    Really I do annoy myself sometimes with the things I happen to know.

    No good for enjoyment of shows like this ........ sigh

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  3. Waggers
    Dead Vulture

    Techy TV plot not too realitic

    So what's new? Do I detect a slow news day at Reg HQ?

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  4. Craig Williams
    Boffin

    500nm is correct

    Those of you complaining about the '500nm' are just plain wrong:

    http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5038406.html

    Just how GCHQ managed to intercept a point to point blue/green laser is the dodgy part (since the whole point of this is to allow a submerged submarine to communicate without broadcasting) - the wavelength however is spot on.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    The worst bit...

    ...was referring to RN *Engineering Officers* as "technicians". Grrrrrr etc.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    The sub was essential

    It was necessary as it allows us all to speculate on the need to keep shifty looking foreigners out of the country in case they happen to be terrorists or agents of a hostile nation armed with a USB memory stick. Thank God we do as it forces the bad guys to use a submarine.

    Pure WASP drivel, I think I am going to be sick.

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  7. Nano nano

    Open square ...

    the point being that the open square took so long to get to that there was no "safety margin". Neither could you guarantee it being empty.

    A nearer, less "optimal" location (surely in their database) might have been preferable.

    "at the T-junction, turn left ... the blast confinement zone is second right. goodbye ! "

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  8. Stevie

    Noooooo!

    So the Russians will mount a submarine attack that will result in us not being to access Russian pron-and-virus sites?

    Where will we go to see "yonug grils spnacked until there bottoms is red" after that? And who will steal my credit card number while I'm researching this disgusting web phenomenon?

    The government must act!

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    really?

    Regular hackers put real viruses on thousands of UK servers now and nobody is reverse hacking them, let alone catching them. I'm talking about bored freshmen, not KGB...

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