Alligator clip can touch a nation's fibre optic nerve

By Greg Ansley

CANBERRA - The humble alligator clip has been revealed as a tapping device that could render useless the security systems guarding New Zealand's most sensitive corporate, financial, Government and defence communications systems.

Like a 21st century version of the proverbial number eight wire, an innovative spy could simply pop into the local hardware store to pick up the means to tap into the nation's fibre optic communications network.

Just about anything else would do: because every photon of laser light flashing down a fibre optic cable carries the encrypted information, a spy needs to make only a minute bend in the cable to bleed off a little as 1 per cent of the light and steal the data.

Encryption is little defence by itself.

A research group set up to test the security of smart card chip encryption, for example, beat the chips with horrifying ease, and US studies have shown that no matter how impressive, some hacker will come up with the algorithm to beat encryption.

"Any fibre optic link can be tapped and is vulnerable to its information being taken and used," Edward Tampanes, a 33-year-old Canadian-born former Monash University researcher said.

"This is not well known, and those who do know about it keep it quiet."

Mr Tampanes, now managing director of Melbourne-based Future Fibre Technologies Pty Ltd (FFT), has developed a new anti-tamper system for fibre optic cables, able to detect intruders and, if necessary, shut down communications.

The system has been adopted by a major multinational bank for its Sydney offices, and is under consideration by the New York Stock Exchange.

Variants providing immediate, pinpoint, detection of disturbances to perimeter fences, building, pipelines and other structures are already being installed on a 110km gas pipeline in Indonesia, and are being studied by South Korea for possible use on its vast and heavily-guarded border with the North, and for a large range of public buildings and institutions.

Interest was also high at the recent unveiling of the Foptic Secure Link in Canberra. Among the audience were diplomats from 16 embassies - ranging from Fiji to Russia and China - senior defence and customs officers, officials from Australia's super-secret Defence Signals directorate, and representatives of major security and telecommunications companies.

"This will have very important consequences for national security and defence," said the Communications Minister, Senator Richard Alston.

The problem of securing fibre optic communications lies in the vulnerability of the cable and the relative ease with which the flow of laser pulses can be intercepted.

Cables do not need to be severely bent or broken: even a small, soft-toothed clamping device is sufficient to allow light to be bled into a receiver.

Protecting the cable by encasing it means only that information thieves need to break open the casing to get at the link, with even pressurised alarm chambers vulnerable to determined intruders.

Other existing technologies to detect fibre fracture, bends, fibre attenuation or connector losses work only if the cables are cut, fractured or severely bent.

Mr Tampanes' Foptic Secure Link works by shooting a second laser beam down the cable with the main message-bearing signal, alerting the system to the changes in light characteristics that mean intrusion or damage.

Potential uses include security monitoring of perimeter fencing, detection of hairline cracks and other damage to pipelines, reduction of train accident risk by monitoring track and wheel damage, and vibration sensing for bridges, roads, tunnels, dams and buildings.