Undersea Cables Carry Nearly Everything
Approximately 99 percent of intercontinental Internet traffic travels through submarine fiber optic cables. There are fewer than 500 active cables worldwide, and the number of physical landing stations is in the hundreds. This is a concentrated infrastructure that signals intelligence agencies have every reason to tap.
Public Evidence of Taps
Much of what is publicly known comes from the Snowden disclosures in 2013:
- NSA Upstream programs: collection at Internet backbone chokepoints including cable landings.
- UK GCHQ Tempora: tap of undersea cables landing in the UK, reportedly producing massive stored traffic.
- Five Eyes sharing: US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand jointly operate SIGINT collection.
- Echelon consortium: historically documented, partly acknowledged.
China's similar capabilities are assumed but less publicly documented. Russia operates comparable programs via its SORM infrastructure and dedicated naval units (Glavnoye Upravleniye Glubokovodnykh Issledovaniy).
Why HNDL Applies to Cable Taps
Most cable traffic is encrypted (TLS, IPsec, VPN) but relies on classical cryptography that Shor's algorithm will break. Every TLS 1.2 or classical TLS 1.3 handshake recorded today reveals the key exchange; a future quantum computer breaks that exchange and recovers the session key.
Storage costs have collapsed: a petabyte of hard drive storage is under $20,000. Stockpiling years of intercepted traffic costs pennies relative to the intelligence value.
What's in the Archives
Decades of encrypted diplomatic cables, corporate M&A discussions, legal communications, pharmaceutical trial data, source-protected journalism, genetic data, and personal communications are reasonably assumed to be in multiple nations' archives today.
The Only Defense
Classical cryptography cannot be retroactively strengthened. The only defense against HNDL is to deploy Post Quantum Cryptography before traffic is transmitted. Hybrid ML-KEM in TLS 1.3, WireGuard with PQ extensions (Rosenpass), IPsec with IKEv2 PQ drafts, and end-to-end PQC messaging (Signal PQXDH, iMessage PQ3) are the tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many undersea cables are there?
Fewer than 500 active submarine cables carry about 99 percent of intercontinental Internet traffic. The concentrated infrastructure is well-known and accessible to nation-state actors.
Do governments really tap undersea cables?
Public documentation via Snowden 2013 disclosures shows NSA Upstream, GCHQ Tempora, and Five Eyes cable taps. Comparable capabilities for other nations are assumed or partially documented.
Can I encrypt my way around cable taps?
Yes, but you must use Post Quantum Cryptography. Classical TLS and VPN encryption in cable traffic is recorded and will be decrypted once a CRQC exists. Hybrid ML-KEM prevents retroactive decryption.
Is Starlink safer than undersea cables?
Satellite links have different interception profiles but are not inherently safer. Use Post Quantum Cryptography at the application layer regardless of transport.
Sources
Related Articles
Protect Your Data Before Q-Day Arrives
QNSQY's NIST-standardized post-quantum encryption protects files against both current and quantum-era threats.
Try QNSQYOriginally published at quantumsequrity.com/blog/hndl-undersea-cable-tapping.