PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Russia a 'risk’ to undersea cables, defence chief warns
Old 15th Dec 2017, 12:37
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Arcanum
 
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There are a lot of undersea cables:

https://www.submarinecablemap.com

The internet has network resilience (as DARPA intended) and will reroute through other links if one goes down. If necessary, there's also traffic resilience. Streaming Netflix video accounts for as much as 35% of internet traffic (though probably not across the Atlantic). Unless the majority of cables were cut, network traffic can be shaped to prioritise military, government, financial and some business traffic.

Sure someone can cut all of the undersea cables, but it's going to be nigh-on impossible to protect the entire network so that's just a risk people will have to accept.

Plus, it's pretty obvious who's launched such a physical attack. Whereas a mix of worms, DDoS attacks and ransomware can do more damage, more easily and the origin harder to prove.

Given the US has been tapping Russian cables since the 70's with the USS Parche (likely now the USS Jimmy Carter), this is a long way from raising a previously unrealised threat. Why raise it now?
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