from Hacker News

'Shadow fleets' and sabotage: are Europe's undersea cables under attack?

by cyberlimerence on 3/5/25, 11:14 AM with 157 comments

by jl6 on 3/5/25, 1:38 PM
> It then carried on across four undersea fibreoptic cables, three of which registered failures around the time the ship crossed them. The ship was suspected by Finnish authorities of having dragged its anchor to damage the cables and was escorted into custody.
The ship in this case was the Eagle S, estimated to be costing the owner €14,500 per day in running costs while impounded.[0] If the owners abandon the ship, that's a ~$30m asset forfeited, which could be used to compensate the cable owner for the damage.
How much does it cost to fix a broken cable? Here's one estimate saying $2m[1].
Monitoring cable breaks + rapid reaction + police investigation + asset seizure + criminal prosecution = increases the cost of this attack.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_S
[1] https://subtelforum.com/8m-to-restore-subsea-cable-services/
by roenxi on 3/5/25, 12:19 PM
If the headline is a serious question, it'd be helpful to have an #incidents/year chart in here somewhere. The article includes "According to the Recorded Future analyst Matt Mooney, between 100 and 200 cable outages occur every year" but it is easy to miss if someone doesn't go looking for the statistic.
by dghughes on 3/5/25, 2:11 PM
An undersea cable between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia has also been cleanly cut. Twice.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/bell-subsea-fibre...
by Havoc on 3/5/25, 1:46 PM
That does seem to be the new Cold War of sorts. Attacks that are indirect and easier to deny than kinetic attacks
by throwaway48476 on 3/5/25, 2:29 PM
Russia has been waging a hybrid warfare campaign against Europe for a while now. Of course Europe is still in denial.
by qwertox on 3/5/25, 5:55 PM
If I were a bad actor, I would position a sub at some location over a cable, sabotage the cable at a far away point, and while the cable is unusable, I'd install some kind of splitter. Then again, I'd probably have nowhere to collect the data to.
by SanjayMehta on 3/5/25, 2:19 PM
Maybe it was a small group of drunk civilians on rented yacht?
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
by FirmwareBurner on 3/5/25, 11:55 AM
Would European nations having big fleets of submarines patrolling the waters reduce the chances of such sabotages?
by anovikov on 3/5/25, 2:28 PM
Stupid question - why not just protect cables with anchored mines? Of course, publicly declaring the minefields.
by siliconc0w on 3/5/25, 3:21 PM
Easy solution- seize any tanker coming from a Russian port. Revoke all insurance or bullshit maritime chicanery that allows hiding the beneficial owner.
Why even have sanctions if you don't enforce them.
by knowitnone on 3/5/25, 6:53 PM
I mean, they can ban ships from certain nations from entering - sink them if they do.
by aaron695 on 3/5/25, 12:22 PM
Yep, Russia is risking it's $80 billion per year in oil sales shadow fleet to cut cables that haven't once caused HN users to lose their porn for even a day.
Cool story bro's keep smoking it up now it's legal along with big pharma, what could go wrong.
These ships can barely stop their anchor safety equipment from rusting out but they are full of secret spy stuff to cut cables. I think once someone saw a keyboard with Russian letters on it even.
Better question is Russia really getting Ukrainians to suicide bomb recruitment stations? - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/02/07/ukraine-recr...
I don't think they are, Europe spreads this disinformation as lame wanna-bes pretending they are also under attack, Russia is burning down their Ikeas.
To avoid pay them, is quite laugh out loud - "remotely detonates the explosive early — to kill the witness and also avoid paying them"
by miroljub on 3/5/25, 2:12 PM
After North Stream sabotage, any similar action in international waters is a fair game.
If you didn't bother to properly investigate NS, why bother with some random cable?