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Cable Piracy

When Vladimir Putin made his move into Ukraine, few expected the underwater explosions that destroyed two Baltic gas pipes. Whether that was done by Russia is a moot point—it was clearly done, and Russia has the known submarine capacity to do it. It is not only gas pipes at risk—but the undersea telecom cables that underpin a lot of what we do today. It’s not just telephone cable.

By Peter Aggus

Peter, as an engineer & technology management consultant, has developed innovative & cost-effective solutions for clients in many industries.

Submarine Cables

The first transatlantic telegraph cable became operational on 16 August 1858 . Telephone cables followed and, more recently, optical data cables carry Internet traffic around the world. New cables enter service regularly and older ones are retired—so the exact number changes. Estimates are that over 400 cables currently span over 1 million km.

All are quite vulnerable to damage. Dragged anchors regularly sever shallow cables. Deep sea sections are not vulnerable to such damage as the cables just lie on the sea floor.

Vulnerability

Whilst the sea floor is mostly stable, in January 2022 the Fiji-Tonga cable was broken by an underwater volcano. Repairs took over 2 weeks.

Also, bad actors can easily inflict damage to a submarine cable. UK and US intelligence agencies believe that several cables may even be mined with explosives waiting to inflict such damage on demand. It is practically impossible to investigate all of the length of every cable to find out.

If a cable is broken, a ship has to be sent to the site and then undertake a weeks long exercise recovering the two broken ends, bringing them to the surface, and splicing in a repair section.

As the recent damage to the Baltic gas pipelines shows, such bad actors do exist and they have the capacity to sever something as large as a reinforced gas pipe—so a small cable will present little challenge. It is clear from his public comments that Vladimir Putin wishes to take revenge for the crippling sanctions imposed on Russia-and it is also clear that he has recently deployed a submarine designed for that purpose amongst others. To many observers it is no longer ‘if’ but ‘when and where’.

Consequences

Many still think of these cables as ‘international telephone cables’ - leading to a false sense of security if you never make international phone calls. Nowadays most cables carry IP traffic and form a critical part of the global internet. For sure they still carry phone calls but as one increasingly minor service. Since costs for long distance communication are no longer a significant issue, many data network designs put servers where in the world is cheapest. Social media postings may span the world several times without you even being aware of it—until things go wrong. We like to think of the internet as a ‘cloud’ as if it was ‘up there somewhere’-whereas the real cloud is mostly way below sea level and very much at risk.

What Should You Do?

As with all risks, you should investigate and quantify your exposure. You can then put plans in place to cover a potential loss of your network-based services should the ‘unthinkable’ actually happen. This may mean making sure your cloud service is adequately secure and did not just win your contract with a low bid because their servers are in the ‘third world’. It may even mean having local servers as a cloud backup so your business does not fail just because your network- based service vanished. Remember that it took many weeks to get Tonga back online from just one break.

If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at .

This article was published in the October 2022 edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:9 Issue:5

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