
Why don't we see attacks on undersea cable landing stations? - grekain1
Hello,<p>we&#x27;ve been looking into undersea cable landing stations (landing points&#x2F;landing sites) and found that many authors call them &quot;critical infrastructures&quot; and yet heavily lacking in security [1][2][3].<p>Most of them are privately owned and outside the jurisdiction of the country they&#x27;re based in. As such, the owners are responsible for their maintenance, safety, and security. While damage to the undersea cables themselves are highly present and well documented, attacks (or accidents) on and in the landing stations seem to not be present at all. These attacks could be anything from bombing, to sabotage, or wiretapping.<p>Undersea cables that are not immediately located on the shore are extremely hard to reach (on the ocean floor) and mostly damaged by ship anchors. There has been intentional cutting of the cables with the intent to sell them, but single cable failures often do not cause any damage to the global internet traffic. By attacking a landing station, you could take out all the cables which are bundled there. This has been identified as a highly attractive target to terrorists and state-actors [1][4].<p>So we&#x27;re stumped, if taking out these landing stations is &quot;so easy&quot;, and would cause a great amount of damage, why are no attacks on them reported?<p>Thank you!<p>[1]: Michael Sechrist; New Threats, Old Technology: Vulnerabilities in Undersea Communications Cable Network Management Systems
[2]: Detecon Asia-Pacific Ltd; Economic Impact of Submarine Cable Disruptions
[3]: Aisha Suliman Alazri; The Threat and Vulnerabilities of Submarine Cables in Information Security and Telecommunication
[4]: Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Threats to Undersea Cable Communications
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aurizon
Here is why:- The repeater station is a cable landing station. Construction
was begun in 1962 and finished during 1963.[8] The building was specifically
constructed to withstand nuclear attack,[9] having numerous specialised
features including an air filtration system, five-ton blast doors, and backup
power supply systems allowing it to operate as an autonomous building. The
majority of the building is constructed below ground, as is common with many
blast-resistant bunkers.

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zw123456
Terrorist don't attack it because they want to kill people, disrupting the
internet for a short time does not instill terror, it's an annoyance. For
State actors the internet is far more valuable to them if it is left in place
because warfare today is mostly information warfare. If they blow up some
fiber cables then it would just impair their own propaganda programs.

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relaunched
Modern terrorist organizations like ISIS, for example, are loosely coupled,
espousing an ideology and allowing "everyone to contribute" using their own
skills. That means you have graphic artists, web devs, teens making videos,
online communities, people working in sandwich shops spreading the word,
someone with an idea asking for anyone who can help to do so...and so forth.

What this effectively means is that turning off the internet drastically
inhibits the effectiveness of their distributed movement.

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mytailorisrich
These are only attractive to state actors in case of a major war or a war. No
country is going to attack these infrastructures otherwise.

There are better targets for terrorists, especially much easier targets and
targets that do not require much or any specialist equipment.

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AnimalMuppet
IIRC, according to James Bamford in "The Puzzle Palace", they were attacked -
by the NSA.

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shahbaby
Everything about the internet is highly decentralized. There's no single point
of failure, no truly critical infrastructure.

At best, such an attack would be nothing more than an annoying inconvenience.

