Cybersecurity Advisors Network

State of (Cyber)War Episode 7.1

Welcome to the first of our two-part episode on underwater communications cables. Hugo Tarrida and John Salomon discuss the history and current situation surrounding the world of undersea comms infrastructure, and try to get a grasp of threats to the data links under our oceans that are an integral part of both civilian and military capabilities.

Notes and Links:

The rapidly evolving conflict in Ukraine, increasing revelations about Russian (and possibly others’) sabotage efforts in Europe and further afield, tensions around Taiwan and the South China Sea, and the Middle East conflict all mean that some of the topics we talk about in this episode may have changed by the time we get around to actually publishing it.

As with all our talks, this is purely based on our own (limited) knowledge and expertise, and a lot of open source intelligence and publicly available material. Feel free to direct any corrections, insults, and additional information to the various comment sections.

01:50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern
02:20 Here’s a publication on the topic up to WW1 (pdf): https://blogs.mhs.ox.ac.uk/innovatingincombat/files/2013/03/Innovating-in-Combat-educational-resources-telegraph-cable-draft-1.pdf
02:50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram
03:30 Germany’s Enigma cipher machines, the Polish Byuro Szyfrów, and British Bletchley Park codebreaking efforts are a fascinating rabbit hole – see you next week. The Allies were far from alone in this, albeit having a much better organized, resourced, and mature set of cryptanalytical capabilities compared to even the Germans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_code_breaking_in_World_War_II
03:41 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Rochefort
04:02 For example https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
04:52 Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach, chief of the UK defence staff – https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42362500
06:12 Google’s Nuvem cable was one of the first examples that popped up during our homework https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introducing-the-nuvem-subsea-cable
06:20 Some market statistics and information: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/submarine-cable-system-market-184625.html – currently the undersea cables market is worth around 18.2 billion and is expected to grow to 29.7 billion by 2029
07:12 Note: we should probably recommend differentiating between actual revenue/profits, or the value of capital assets, and market valuation of AI companies…
07:42 Nord Stream sabotage: https://meet.google.com/wjh-hrnr-vnx
08:18 Let’s not even start on subsea tunnels like the Chunnel…
09:14 As of the time of recording, Google has investments in 29 subsea cables, Meta in 15. For example https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/introducing-the-nuvem-subsea-cable
09:41 https://www.zttcable.com.hk/en/submarine.htm (certificate validity warning)
11:07 The Economist has a number of good articles (paywall) about subsea cable vulnerabilities, e.g.: https://www.economist.com/international/2024/07/11/how-china-and-russia-could-hobble-the-internet
12:23 OM NOM NOM https://slate.com/technology/2014/08/shark-attacks-threaten-google-s-undersea-internet-cables-video.html
17:13 There is actually significant danger to subsea cables from coastal erosion: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/the-tide-comes-in-for-subsea-cable-networks/
20:15 E.g. Volt Typhoon – Natto Thoughts’ analysis: https://nattothoughts.substack.com/p/who-is-volt-typhoon-a-state-sponsored
20:38 In addition to Wikipedia, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/we-now-have-details-uss-jimmy-carter-spy-submarines-secret-mission-129272 and https://cryptome.org/nsa-fibertap.htm
23:02 Glomar Explorer – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer
23:20 We won’t link to some of the wilder conspiracy theories, but Wikipedia’s entry on Project Azorian is a good start – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian. The original Time Magazine article from 1975 is also a pretty wild read: https://time.com/archive/6817157/espionage-the-great-submarine-snatch/
24:10 https://www.csis.org/analysis/red-sea-cable-damage-reveals-soft-underbelly-global-economy
24:18 https://www.politico.eu/article/balticconnector-damage-likely-to-be-intentional-finnish-minister-says-china-estonia/ and https://apnews.com/article/finland-estonia-gas-pipeline-balticconnector-china-79e29d7588aca32fe8ea4cdec96adaa9
25:24 https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2024/08/28/reinforcing-resilience-natos-role-in-enhanced-security-for-critical-undersea-infrastructure/index.html
28:02 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/houthis-ship-cutting-red-sea-telecommunications-cables/

You can find CyAN’s Secure-in-Mind YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/@cybersecadvisors – and of course, our videos about cyber conflict on the State of (Cyber)War playlist here. All of our episodes are also available in audio format on Apple iTunes, Amazon Audible, Podcast Republic, Spotify, and Libsyn – links on our Media page.