Sabotage of undersea cable infrastructure by threat actors is an existential threat that could damage commerce and disrupt government-to-government communications, potentially leading to economic turmoil and civil disorder, warns a report published by UK’s think tank Policy Exchange.
The reported authored by British MP Rishi Sunak says the UK and the world is highly dependent on undersea communications cables with 97% of global communications still transmitted via cables lying deep beneath the oceans. “Today’s submarine network comprises an estimated 213 independent cable systems and 545,018 miles of fibre. There is no alternative to using these undersea cables as satellite technology cannot effectively handle the communications requirements of the modern digital economy and society. In a single day, these cables carry some $10 trillion of financial transfers and process some 15 million financial transactions,” says Sunak.
The report adds that cyber-attacks against network management systems used to control cable infrastructure have the potential to hand hackers a kill-switch to the connectivity of entire regions.
“The location of almost every undersea cable in the world is publicly available, making them uniquely vulnerable to hostile actors. Their vulnerability is accentuated by international choke points where large amounts of cable capacity are funnelled into concentrated geographic areas both at sea and on land,” says the report.
