This paper explores the vulnerabilities to cyber attacks of infrastructure that today carries nearly all the world's data and voice traffic: undersea communications cables. Long-standing physical vulnerabilities in cable infrastructure have been compounded by new risk found in the network management systems that monitor and control cable operations. Unlike an attack on a water treatment plant's control systems, however, an attack on the cables' control systems could devastate the world's economies — presenting a different kind of Internet "kill switch" altogether — shutting down world commerce, and doing it all with the click of a mouse.

Michael Sechrist, a research fellow with the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program and Explorations in Cyber International Relations, discusses national security cyber threats, the possibility of a cyber 9/11, and the security of undersea communication cables with communications intern Joseph Leahy.

Michael Sechrist, joint Information and Communications Technology/Science, Technology, and Public Policy fellow at the Belfer Center, says Egypt’s wireless and Internet blackout early this month raises serious questions concerning the new measures at the disposal of authoritarian regimes in suppressing political dissent.

Recognizing cyberspace's role as a medium for security, communication and commerce, the authors detail five ways that the US can better protect cyberspace.

This paper highlights the dangers associated with undersea communication cable operations and proposes a set of 10 recommendations that could be implemented under the creation of an international public-private partnership.