[HN Gopher] The Swedish cabin on the frontline of a possible hyb...
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The Swedish cabin on the frontline of a possible hybrid war
Author : Sami_Lehtinen
Score : 193 points
Date : 2024-12-23 13:31 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| fifilura wrote:
| Tangential, after reading the description of the archipelago.
|
| Sweden is the country with most islands in the world, followed by
| Norway and Finland.
|
| https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-countries-have-the...
| yoavm wrote:
| If you've never visited the Stockholm archipelago, I highly
| recommend it. In fact, I think it's perhaps the best thing
| about Stockholm, and one of the most beautiful places in the
| world in general -- if you're into sailing, islands and seas.
| It's almost too easy to find an island just for yourself for
| the weekend, and "Allemansratten", the law that grants people
| the right to access wilderness, only makes it even more
| accessible. Going there at the midst of winter or during summer
| are both very different experiences, but both are very
| charming.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Also, the superb torpedo museum!
| yoavm wrote:
| A torpedo museum? Where is that?
| spidersenses wrote:
| Perhaps they were talking about this one:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maritime_Museum_(Stockholm)
| Luc wrote:
| Probably the Naval Museum (which is different from the
| Maritime one): https://www.marinmuseum.se/en
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Mm. I can't find it now. I'm pretty sure it was
| Stockholm. Had a WW2 Mark 14 out front - one of those
| terrible American torpedoes. I do specifically mean a and
| only a torpedo museum (which is not huge, and was on a
| little island), not the Maritime Museum (which is huge).
| pimeys wrote:
| Same with Helsinki and Turku archipelago. We've been spending
| the whole Christmas in my parent's cabins near Helsinki in a
| small island. It was a bit tricky to come here with a small
| boat due to the ice, but when we got here, we just heated up
| the sauna and started enjoying a very quiet island life.
| ionwake wrote:
| Is it legal to camp overnight on them?
|
| I'm from Europe and when I saw the islands on the ferry to
| Helsinki's from Stockholm I have to say I was amazed at the
| beauty so much so I'd love own property there now. Truly
| astonishing seeing kids on tiny row boats chilling on random
| rocks in the estuary
| yoavm wrote:
| It's completely legal, yes. As a matter of fact, it's so
| legal that sometimes you ask yourself why own land there,
| since technically you can even camp on private land thanks
| to allemansratten.
| pimeys wrote:
| With one caveat: you can't be too close to any houses
| with your camp. I don't remember how far, but at least
| they should not be able to see you from their window...
| pastage wrote:
| Respect is the actual legal definition.... There is no
| legal distance and it depends and you need to respect
| peoples privacy. You can definitely camp where you can be
| seen, but if you can not be seen you are almost certainly
| in the clear.
|
| It is a tricky subject because you can do a lot on other
| peoples land as long as you are respectful. I have no
| problems with people camping on my land especially when
| they are walking or cycling while car camping is illegal
| in most instances.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Others mentioned not being too close to any houses. The
| second part is, you are not allowed to damage anything.
| Leave it as you found it. No trash, no damaging plant life,
| and so on. Also, exact rules differ from country to
| country, but generally the Nordics follow "everyman's
| rights" something like this:
|
| You cannot make a campfire, drive off-road, damage
| agricultural fields, cut down trees or damage trees (even
| the already fallen ones), go into pastures with cattle in
| them, and so on. Rule of thumb, don't bother the landowner,
| don't damage anything, and don't disrupt any of their
| income sources, including logging, fishing, agriculture
| etc. You can camp but if you want a campfire I suggest
| going to one of the designated camping areas; there's
| plenty of those too, even completely free log lean-tos and
| benches around a firepit and even free firewood hauled in,
| if you go remote enough.
|
| And then there's protected areas, with stricter rules. For
| example, if a rare bird is known to nest on some specific
| island, you might not be allowed to go on that island at
| all.
|
| But yes, if you're smart about it, you can camp almost
| anywhere.
| eesmith wrote:
| Do they use the same methods to define "island"?
|
| The section for Australia seems very broad: "Australia itself
| dominates the islands around its coastal fringe, which range in
| size from smaller rocks that are not covered by water at high
| tide to ..."
|
| While it says the US has 18,617 islands, I struggle to find an
| official source for that very precise number.
|
| I also see how
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Florida says
| "The U.S. state of Florida has a total of 4,510 islands that
| are ten acres or larger", suggesting that ten acres is the
| minimum sized used for "island" in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Maine says
| "Maine is home to over 4,600 coastal islands, ranging from
| large landmasses like Mount Desert Island to small islets and
| ledges exposed above mean high tide."
|
| Clearly these are not using the same definitions.
|
| I managed to find the Global Islands data set at
| https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/item/63bdf25dd34e92aad3c...
| with an explorer at https://rmgsc.cr.usgs.gov/gie/ which should
| have exactly what I want, except 1) it only lists ocean
| islands, not inland ones, and 2) I can't figure out how to get
| the data by country.
|
| It categories things as "Big Islands (greater than 1 km2),
| Small Islands (less than or equal to 1 km2 and greater than or
| equal to 0.0036 km2), and Very Small Islands (less than 0.0036
| km2)." "There are 21,818 big islands in the database. The
| remaining 318,868 islands are all less than 1 km2 and are
| classed as small islands.'
|
| I give up.
| Etheryte wrote:
| I don't think that quote implies a limit for the definition
| in any way. It just says that this is the count below a given
| threshold. It doesn't say anything about that threshold being
| a standard or anything of that sort.
| eesmith wrote:
| > below a given threshold
|
| Is the threshold the same for all listed countries, or does
| it use each country's specific definition of "island"?
|
| Is it all islands, or only ocean islands?
| LtWorf wrote:
| In sweden if you dig a canal around some land, they call the
| result an island.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Does the canal make a fjord if one forgets to finish it?
| 0xDEADFED5 wrote:
| yes, but you have to pine for it
| LtWorf wrote:
| That's norway. Sweden is just mud lakes and trees
| eesmith wrote:
| The Global Islands database I linked to considers the
| Delmarva Peninsula ("Lower Delaware") in the US to be an
| island because of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, so
| that's not unique to Sweden.
| CPLX wrote:
| There's just literally no possible way that Sweden has an
| order of magnitude more islands than the US or Canada.
|
| Open up Google Earth and scan around northern coastlines of
| all these countries and you'll laugh at the premise of this
| article.
|
| With that said I wouldn't be surprised if they have the most
| documented/counted islands. That's another thing entirely and
| also sort of interesting I suppose.
| cyberax wrote:
| It's actually quite an interesting question. The West Coast
| of the contiguous US has almost no islands, you really
| start getting "islandy" only in the Puget Sound.
|
| The East Coast has more islands, but then you need to
| decide how you classify the river deltas. Is a bump in a
| brackish swamp an island or not?
|
| On the other hand, Sweden has thousands of really small but
| also well-defined islands. They can be just several square
| meters in area, but they are well above the water and
| clearly separated from the main landmass.
|
| Alaska has similar terrain, though.
| CPLX wrote:
| Yeah I'm talking about more polar "drowned coastlines"
| which clearly are the place to go hunting for lots of
| islands. In the US that's Maine and Alaska especially.
|
| Sweden sure has a lot of islands I'd believe they are #1.
| It's the +10x claim that seems suspicious.
| SllX wrote:
| California has more named islands than Washington, but
| they're not all obvious since there's quite a few small
| islands in the San Francisco Bay, Suisun Bay and the
| Sacramento River Delta. I tried fact checking which of
| the two had the most total islands between them but
| couldn't find a satisfactory answer.
| cyberax wrote:
| From a practical standpoint, sailing in the Bay Area is
| dead boring. There's not that much worth visiting. And
| once you go outside of the Bay, the next interesting stop
| is Japan. Puget Sound is way better.
|
| It'd be nice to quantify this somehow. I guess one metric
| would be "navigable rocky islands"?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| you have got to be joking or else wildly uninformed. SF
| Bay Area sailing is known across the world. There are
| international races here.
| eesmith wrote:
| I went to the Geographic Names Information System at
| https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-
| domestic/public/searc...
|
| Name search, Names search mode is "Exact Match", Feature
| Classes is "Island".
|
| State (FIPS) of "California (O6)" gives 522 named places.
|
| State (FIPS) of "Washington (53)" gives 422 named places.
|
| Note that this list includes river and lake islands,
| including islands in reservoirs.
|
| There are two islands named "The Island" in California,
| neither in Wikipedia, and the one at 41.0922983,
| -121.4803677 does not appear to be an island.
| SllX wrote:
| That's what I used too, but the limitation is _named_
| places.
| johanneskanybal wrote:
| It all depends on what you count/map. By some european
| definition Sweden has 24 islands if you discount all the
| small ones. We basically have an extreme anount of small
| ones from the last ice age.
|
| Bit whatever, it's a great place to sail/visit no matter
| how you count.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Part of it is based on population density. It is an island if
| it has a name and someone living on it. Canada has thousands,
| hundreds of thousands, of unnamed "islands" with nobody on
| them. Wherever land is relatively flat, every water body will
| have a few.
|
| Canada's north is so vast that even unique features remain
| unnamed, such as the "Island in a Lake on an Island in a Lake
| on an Island".
|
| https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/85342/island-in-
| a-l...
| eesmith wrote:
| While every island which "has a name and someone living on
| it" might count, the links mentions:
|
| > Sweden has 221,831 counted islands ... Though Sweden is
| the country with the most islands in the world, less than
| 1,000 of them are inhabited.
|
| Thus, around 221,000 islands are counted as islands, even
| if not inhabited.
|
| If "large enough to be inhabited" sets the minimum size for
| an island, then I present Just Room Enough Island -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Room_Enough_Island - at
| 310 square meters / 3,300 square feet.
|
| The Wikipedia entry says that previously Bishop Rock at was
| formerly the smallest inhabited island, due to the
| lighthouse keeper living there.
| tester756 wrote:
| Why write about it then?
|
| Even if you assume that enemies' intelligence already knows about
| it, then doesnt it just show that it doesn't work?
|
| Or maybe it is just fake cabin?
| 23B1 wrote:
| There's no mystery to infra being both vulnerable and
| accessible, especially to belligerent world powers. It's all
| just degrees of consequence for attacking those components.
|
| Additionally, a journalist would probably (reasonably) argue
| that writing about it exposes just how little consideration
| governments give to protecting this infra.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Good thing they have a giant neon green spindle of fiber optic
| cable right next to the discreet cabin to help it blend in..
| LtWorf wrote:
| I'd bet it's done this way to blend with the landscape, not to
| be a big secret.
| ninalanyon wrote:
| Why doe it need to blend in? It's not a secret installation.
| The cabin is discreet simply because the red paint is the
| traditional colour for pretty much all rural plank clad non-
| residential buildings in Scandinavia. I doubt that any thought
| went into the colour scheme.
| unwind wrote:
| It's called Falu red [1], btw. Made from mining residual
| products and originally liked because it resembled luxurious
| brick.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red
| wildzzz wrote:
| Also common in early farm structures in America too which
| could likely be due to large immigration from Scandinavia.
| The iron oxide acts as an anti-fungal as well.
| gsf_emergency wrote:
| There's also an underlying theme of a resurgent clash of
| civilizations from yesteryears?
|
| https://www.declad.com/falu-red-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-
| an-...
|
| > _During this time the Swedish Krona even moved from the
| gold to the copper standard._
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-are-all-swedish-
| co...
| gsf_emergency wrote:
| Ukrainian( ultranat)s adopting 801818 for their flag
| might constitute a FF0000 line that must not be crossed?
| 0points wrote:
| I prefer falu light red for the classic look:
|
| https://falurodfarg.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/12/stockholm...
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Undersea cables are also marked explicitly on all nautical
| charts. If a rented pleasure boat can, with plausible
| deniability as to intentionality, drag a hook across the sea
| floor and easily get away, the cabin isn't the issue.
|
| This isn't the main weak point.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| And the nautical charts are published by the responsible
| Swedish agency as well:
| https://geokatalog.sjofartsverket.se/kartvisarefyren/
|
| Undersea cables are the squiggly lines.
| leobg wrote:
| > [T]he Guardian was given exclusive access to the Stockholm
| datacentre site. [...] Daniel Aldstam, the chief security officer
| at GlobalConnect, which transports 50% of the internet capacity
| of the Nordics and runs the centre, described the approach to its
| location and ordinary outward appearance as "security through
| obscurity".
|
| How do you do that facepalm emoji on HN?
| lostlogin wrote:
| This is a good point.
| askonomm wrote:
| Probably a stupid question, but why don't we encase the
| (undersea) cable in some metal container or something so that it
| would not be so easy to break? Is it due to economics? Is the
| constant fixing in the end cheaper than making it hard to break,
| or perhaps it needs maintenance anyway often enough to make it a
| hassle?
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| Because it would need to be pretty beefy in order to stop an
| anchor dragged by a big(-ish) ship and would be uneconomical.
|
| If it does get damaged then repair would also be more expensive
| than current methods
| chiph wrote:
| They are armored when they get close to land. But at depth they
| are not because of weight & economics. Even if a cable were
| armored for the full length - I'm not sure it would withstand
| an intentional anchor-dragging.
|
| Someone needs to do an A/B test. (no not really)
| gruez wrote:
| You have to encase the entire length of the cable, which can be
| hundreds of miles, but the attacker only needs to attack a
| single spot. The nordstream pipeline attacks have shown that
| planting explosives on undersea infrastructure isn't exactly
| hard, so you end up paying an enormous price to add a knee-high
| barrier for a would-be attacker.
| efnx wrote:
| They mention at the end that it makes it heavier and harder to
| deploy, as well as how rare it is that they get damaged.
|
| But I think this is the point of the article - that we start
| thinking with "a wartime mindset". Which is a shame, but maybe
| necessary given the state of the world.
| nradov wrote:
| The other approach that can work in some areas is to use a
| plough to bury the undersea cable in a trench. This is much
| slower, more expensive, and damaging to the marine environment.
|
| https://www.royalihc.com/offshore-energy/offshore-equipment/...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It would cost so much material. I think it would be more
| economical to just bury it. With an automated robot of course.
| It would also make it a hell of a lot harder for an attacker to
| locate the cable. But I don't know if these already exist.
| lazide wrote:
| The undersea terrain in many areas can be quite varied and
| rocky. In others, endless mud.
|
| It's not the easiest terrain to bury anything in.
|
| And it's always hard to access or even see reliably.
| amelius wrote:
| A better approach may be to dig a few more tunnels like the
| Channel tunnel, and run some fiber through them.
| chuckadams wrote:
| The North Sea is quite a bit deeper and wider than the
| English Channel.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| This would only be a stupid question if it had been explicitly
| addressed in the article linked.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42498928
| pvaldes wrote:
| I wonder if sea cables could be designed with some mechanism that
| could stand being dragged and even crossed somewhere but
| returning later to its position automatically with a click.
| Something like a giant karabiner.
| rajamaka wrote:
| I'm sure it could, but whether it's cheaper than the existing
| cable and repairs is probably the question mark
| pvaldes wrote:
| The main expenses aren't so much the value of the cable as
| the disruption in communication and intelligence that could
| be sensible. Arranging the cable like a V ending in a
| karabiner in the angle could catch the anchors on a big area
| and redirect it toward the point of breaking and release
| anchor at the angle. If the ship would take a long detour
| from the shortest path to attack the cable in a different
| area, that would coast then gas money, so a possible boycott
| is not free anymore making the process less desirable.
|
| That also would eliminate the plausible deniability of the
| ship that moved out of its main route, and could reduce the
| cut of communications to hours or minutes (instead days or
| weeks).
|
| Just speculating
| gotts wrote:
| It doesn't matter whether it can resist dragging or not, if
| they could blow up large concrete reinforced NS pipeline.. a
| tiny optical cable is much easier to destroy.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Looking at the sea charts[1] of the archipelago and following a
| few undersea cables, I think it might be this cabin[2], which
| roughly matches with a map on GlobalConnects website[3].
|
| Funnily enough, it's right next to a base of the Swedish
| military.
|
| [1]: https://geokatalog.sjofartsverket.se/kartvisarefyren/
|
| [2]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6mYHFhaUp7Jzx1X69
|
| [3]: https://globalconnectcarrier.com/our-network/
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| Geo-Guesser future champ right here
| bikamonki wrote:
| 1bn concurrent streams is a lot. Can satellites handle the same
| or more?
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| There is no hybrid war. just war and a useless generation of
| politicians unable to deal with a return of the ugly old world of
| colonial powers, starved up ans carved up nations all scrambling
| to get nukes.
|
| The dictators all told us to our face what they would do in their
| propaganda . Nothing overt, hidden or hybrid . We need the hawks
| back that won the cold war and we need those doves caged in their
| own delusions gone.
| redmajor12 wrote:
| What about the chicken hawks?
| ksec wrote:
| "security through obscurity" and then go on a publish it in a
| news paper?
|
| Can someone provide some context here because I dont understand
| what is going on here.
| tokai wrote:
| It's only baffling if you believe press is controlled and not
| writing what they want.
| gus_massa wrote:
| They interview a few of the guys working there and posted a
| few photos of the racks inside it. It looks like they have
| official authorization to publish this.
|
| Just remove all that stuf and the article would be so boring
| that it would not be worth publishing.
|
| It looks like a PR from the facility to ensure nobody forget
| to send more fundings next year.
|
| Perhaps the "security through obscurity" was only a tonge in
| cheek remark and the area is full of hidden bear traps or
| something.
| ksec wrote:
| >It looks like a PR from the facility to ensure nobody
| forget to send more fundings next year.
|
| Thanks that makes a lot more sense. It is sad that is the
| way how government funding are worked around the world.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > "security through obscurity" and then go on a publish it in a
| news paper?
|
| It's obscure to people like you and me who aren't interested in
| undersea cable sabotage. For a government entity they either
| already have this knowledge or have the means to obtain it
| quite easily.
| vintermann wrote:
| > With governments in northern Europe on high alert over hybrid
| Russian activity, the Guardian was given exclusive access to the
| Stockholm datacentre site.
|
| Yeah, ever thought about why?
| kakoni wrote:
| So perhaps for Finland its not the wisest strategical move to
| push critical IT services into Azure?
| gotts wrote:
| I don't know about Finland but I read about Ukraine partnered
| with AWS in 2022 to move all of its digital
| infrastructure(government and banks) abroad and it worked
| surprisingly well.
| syvanen wrote:
| Is Azure somehow impacted by this? Or any other of the big
| providers like AWS or Google Cloud?
|
| Maybe there's something that Finland and Finnish ISPs could
| learn from the big providers? And from Ukraine how they moved
| everything critical into cloud?
|
| The big cloud operators and service providers with their own
| backbones have redundancies on their network on multiple
| levels. Not just IP level but also on light path level. Giving
| them enough bandwidth that even with failure they don't get
| congestion.
|
| Finnish ISPs could build more connectivity even inland or
| higher up in the Gulf of Bothnia. But many of them haven't as
| they have optimized for latency and not for redundancy.
|
| Even Finnish government networks were shown during the COVID to
| be under provisioned, the. pan gateways didn't handle remote
| work. And then one roadwork cut a cable next to the road it was
| shown that the redundant cables were in the same ditch. Service
| owner has just bought "redundant" connections and never
| confirmed it.
| pimeys wrote:
| A good timing for this article, because today there was again
| somebody breaking the cables between Finland and Estonia.
|
| https://yle.fi/a/74-20133531
| rrjahg wrote:
| "One also running from Helsinki to Tallinn is owned by the
| Chinese-owned CITIC Telecom."
|
| Has Sikorski made a "thank you" tweet to any suspected party?
| yayitswei wrote:
| Letting the Guardian publish on article about the cabin is the
| opposite of security through obscurity.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| That doesn't have value against nation state actors.
| sema4hacker wrote:
| I looked at submarinecablemap.com and there are 4 cables going
| from Helsinki Findland to Tallinn Estonia. Is that just for
| redundancy? I would think it's expensive to add more cables
| between two points when so many other locations are a dead end.
| sema4hacker wrote:
| Then I noticed a single cable from Freeport Texas to Pascagoula
| Mississippi which seemed surprising, but then visiting the
| website for the tampnet.com owners of that cable reveals a map
| showing all kinds of offshoots of wireless coverage (I'm
| guessing to oil platforms), so what looks like a single cable
| on the map can often be the root of a wide tree of access.
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