Summary
European investigators allege that the Chinese-owned ship Yi Peng 3 deliberately dragged its anchor to sever two Baltic Sea undersea data cables connecting Lithuania-Sweden and Finland-Germany.
While the Chinese government is not suspected, officials are probing possible Russian intelligence involvement.
The ship’s suspicious movements, including transponder shutdowns and zig-zagging, suggest deliberate action.
The vessel, linked to Russian trade since March 2024, was carrying Russian fertilizer when stopped.
NATO warships surround the ship, but international maritime laws limit investigators’ access.
I’m a complete noob at this, but would it be possible for a submarine to cut the cable at the same time and install something to snoop on the data?
If you want to snoop you don’t cut the cable so people come to repair it where you installed your snoopy device. Also, if there is no data on the cable because it has been cut there is no data to snoop.
Not easily.
They’re deep enough down that getting to them requires some creativity (ROVs, specially trained deep sea divers, etc.)
Then, how do you sever the connection with the operator not seeing the break? Just installing the snooper is going to take time. A sudden loss of all signal and then that signal coming back? Yeah they’ll notice.
Then how do they get the data back? Either they have to run their own cable out (expensive and obvious,) or they use the cable itself and double the data going through…( also obvious. )
Further, everyone and their grandma uses encryption for basically everything. Anything actually interesting is going to be heavily encrypted. (This is also why they’d double the data through put. The snooper won’t have the power to break the encryption,)