Security Expert claims hackers are looking to "shut down the internet"

[Bananasplit_00]

Well Telia(one of, if not the largest ISP in Sweden) DID go down for like days in my area because of DDoS attacks last year

 

anyway this is interesting tbh, i find it strangely interesting and im not sure why  maybe becuase its sounding more and more like the backstory of the Shadowrun D&D universe lol

[Bananasplit_00]

5 minutes ago, Prysin said:

how about you probe your post and find out how to format it so night mode users doesnt get cancer from the formatting. Dear god its horrible.

its horrible even on day mode, its just a slight tint and its incredably anoying

[KuJoe]

2 hours ago, SSL said:

Did anyone here actually read the article?

 

Sorry, but these comments stink of armchair "expertise". Any actual explanations or just a lot of noise to the effect "I doubt this is possible based on a Wikipedia article I read"?

 

I read the article and it made me chuckle a few times. What he's talking about isn't news at all, the first half is about DDoS attacks while the second half is about IP hijacking which happens quiet often and has happened for a while. Is there an organization trying to destroy the internet? There is no doubt in my mind, be it a government controlled group or a small group of anarchists there is always somebody out there trying to take down the internet. My issue with the article is that the vagueness and lack of technical details makes it useless to anybody with any actual technical knowledge while causing fear in those without any. He mentions that this group is "probing" "major companies that provide the basic infrastructure", this makes it sound like Level3 has a server in one of their data centers labeled "internet control". Any part of the internet that is required for the internet to operate is not a single server or router or even 50 servers or routers.

 

The root DNS servers are hundreds of servers in different countries running different software and are designed to be resilient so if the majority of them go offline you can still get to Facebook and Twitter, hell with DNS caching even if all of them go offline you're still browsing your websites like nothing happened until they get fixed.

 

I mentioned BGP in my post because BGP is designed to be even more resilient and with multi-homed networks it's even better. Last year the global routing tables exceeded 512,000 (we're at over 600,000 now), to knock off all of those BGP sessions would be a near impossible feat which is the easiest way to kill the internet from what I can see.

 

The IP/routing hijackings are the biggest PITA (which I learned first hand to only announce individual /24s), but the RIRs aren't particularly interested in fixing that issue and neither are the upstream providers who blindly accept any LOA given to them as long as there's a check with a bunch of zeroes with it.

 

I don't know, maybe this article might be a wake-up call for somebody with the power to do something to take action against all of those data centers and upstream providers who plague the internet with their openly exploited networks and who turn a blind eye at what their users are doing just to make a few more dollars. I mean after all, this kind of article probably caters really well to the people in power without any technical knowledge, the people who actual make policies and enforce them.

[MrDynamicMan]

Only way to take down the internet would be to destroy the hardware in every single DNS server. If they take down the internet their bonnet dissappear s, and BOOM! Internet back up. It's like trying to build a castle by taking the bottom bricks and putting them in top, it don't work. 

[Centurius]

On 9/14/2016 at 4:47 PM, JCBiggs said:

yeah... i don't think that people who think they can crash the entire internet, really understand how the internet actually works.  its designed to survive nuclear war in every major city in the world..  and in the unlikely even the "net" does fail... some basic re-configs can build city wide intranets with basically the same function. Then there is the mesh networks......yeah.. im not worried. 

 

 

 

not to mention.. the ai is already selfaware and working in the background to keep itself viable.

It would be very difficult to truly take out the internet, but you can severely cripple it surprisingly and very dangerously easy. Elements like the domain name systems are vulnerable and targeting the right systems could stop a lot of traffic.

[kuddlesworth9419]

Why would they do that. The one place they want to stay the same as it has been forever.

[Nena Trinity]

I think you can crash the Internet if you make a virus that replicates and resend itself to every PC & Server that is connected to the Internet but that is very hard and unrealistic, not to mention not everyone is hooked up 24/7 so some PCs will be left unharmed not to mention those that are more secure against one form of virus such as Linux and Mac... (Note: not that MAC and Linux are 100% virus proof there are cracks there do the safest OS known is BSD but even that can be hacked or infected)

[ionbasa]

The Internet can go down, the internets, not really.

See the difference: The Internet vs. internets.

 

The Internet is the collective of internetworking.

 

So taking down a backhaul router or other peering connector could shut down a small country or state's Internet access to the outside world. 

 

The article isn't wrong per say, but rather how we interpret it is wrong.

[DXMember]

Take down major DNS provides, take down social media you're basically having global internet outage

take down key sites like stackoverflow, oracle, msdn and you basically stopped mass development and tech support

 

I don't think it's a tin foil hat,

it's an actual threat as long as we have millions upon millions unpatched XP machines

[79 Potatoes]

On 14/9/2016 at 9:03 PM, VerticalDiscussions said:

But a Trillion is x1000 a Billion... :o?

Where I live a trillion is 1000000 Billion

 

[BuckGup]

Why would they shut down the place were you get bank account info, logins, and other things

[SurvivorNVL]

11 minutes ago, SamStrecker said:

Why would they shut down the place were you get bank account info, logins, and other things

Show the greater weakness and vulnerabilities in society.  Think if someone got control of the NASDAQ, stock exchange, all of that - most of it is algorithms and machines; all software and hardware.  Someone really wants to do damage to an entire country or even the world, via the global economy--they'd go for that, and while the scramble and panic ensues--they'd look for vulnerabilities in other key points.   Often it's not about gaining something, but causing chaos for the sake of it, or revealing how incredibly reliant people are.  I have no doubt if a true, actual hacker really wanted to do something catastrophic--they would.  Luckily for us, most of our nuclear power plants are run on mid-80s technology.  THE 80S SAVES US AGAIN!

[BuckGup]

5 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

Show the greater weakness and vulnerabilities in society.  Think if someone got control of the NASDAQ, stock exchange, all of that - most of it is algorithms and machines; all software and hardware.  Someone really wants to do damage to an entire country or even the world, via the global economy--they'd go for that, and while the scramble and panic ensues--they'd look for vulnerabilities in other key points.   Often it's not about gaining something, but causing chaos for the sake of it, or revealing how incredibly reliant people are.  I have no doubt if a true, actual hacker really wanted to do something catastrophic--they would.  Luckily for us, most of our nuclear power plants are run on mid-80s technology.  THE 80S SAVES US AGAIN!

We are talking Mr. Robot TV show kinda stuff here. But globalization is a thing so taking the US down would take almost every other country down too

[SurvivorNVL]

Just now, SamStrecker said:

We are talking Mr. Robot TV show kinda stuff here. But globalization is a thing so taking the US down would take almost every other country down too

Mr. Robot has some things right.  If someone really had the abilities, and want to do true harm to the system--they could.  It's why I'd much prefer we move back toward Intranets.

[BuckGup]

10 minutes ago, SurvivorNVL said:

Mr. Robot has some things right.  If someone really had the abilities, and want to do true harm to the system--they could.  It's why I'd much prefer we move back toward Intranets.

I mean banks, colleges, governmental buildings, hospitals and so on all have their own super high speed connections outside of the internet. All of it is not public and their is no way to access it for security reasons

[JCBiggs]

11 hours ago, Centurius said:

It would be very difficult to truly take out the internet, but you can severely cripple it surprisingly and very dangerously easy. Elements like the domain name systems are vulnerable and targeting the right systems could stop a lot of traffic.

If they could... They would have already.   Dns wouldn't take down the net... Just take it down for laypeople

[Centurius]

9 hours ago, JCBiggs said:

If they could... They would have already.   Dns wouldn't take down the net... Just take it down for laypeople

If not memorizing ip addresses makes someone a layperson I stand by my point.