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Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

lawfareblog.com

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Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#31

Post by rl3 »

wtracy wrote: post #22
asclepi wrote: post #16

So how exactly is one entity, even a state entity, going to take down all 13 root servers, assuming that that is what Schneier is talking about since the man speaks in mysteries? What would it take to do that? Let's safely assume that these servers, every single one of them, are subject to DDoS attacks all the time and have at least some experience in handling them, and have a backup scenario ready for a serious atta…

Just a little heads-up, your account appears to have been shadowbanned.

That post is publicly visible to me. It also seems to be the first post for the account, and is fairly substantive.

Moreover, I don't think it's even possible to reply to posts made from shadowbanned accounts.

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#32

Post by M_Grey »

hackuser wrote: post #19
increment_i wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He suspects China or Russia as the likely culprit. What exactly rules out an American agent? Is it because American economic and social activity rely disproportionately on internet backbones more so than other state actors? If so, that would be especially interesting.

Following on what M_Grey says, I'd say beyond a doubt the U.S. military plans to take down any and all Internet infrastructure as needed as a contingency in war. Remember the U.S. government has plans to effectively destroy the world with nuclear strikes as a contingency in war. Do you think they would hesitate to prepare plans to take down a data network? It's immoral? Unthinkable? I'm not criticizing such plans. Wa…

This is exactly true. Military forces make plans for everything, then make more plans, then study the plans, practice them, and revise them. It's actually the single biggest activity of any military, day in, day out. We're not going to change that anytime soon either.

As you say, we need to be active as citizens in ensuring that either such a war never occurs (in which case lets be realistic, a loss of the internet is going to the prelude to mushroom clouds), or that conflict is minimized and if necessary, occurs through proxies. It's ugly, it's not the way we should do things, but it is the way we do things.

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#33

Post by M_Grey »

thomnottom wrote: post #21
increment_i wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He suspects China or Russia as the likely culprit. What exactly rules out an American agent? Is it because American economic and social activity rely disproportionately on internet backbones more so than other state actors? If so, that would be especially interesting.

My guess would be that the American government has less reason to test what would take down some of these services. And not for benevolent reasons, but because they could more easily send in armed agents and simply unplug those services.

We've already shown that we can pretty effective destroy a country's infrastructure from the air as well, not just with explosives and incendiaries, but other clever tricks as well.

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#34

Post by matt4077 »

goda90 wrote: post #15

Since there are lots of hobbies that sometimes overlap with community service I'd love to see a club that focuses on being prepared to reestablish intra-community communication in case the Internet goes down. Yes, it'd be great if everyone was self hosting, using distributed services and involved in a mesh network now, but without motivation it won't happen. So this club could focus on developing the resources that a…

There should be a term for "overprepping for disaster because it's so exciting to think about".

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#35

Post by M_Grey »

kej wrote: post #28
goda90 wrote: post #15

Since there are lots of hobbies that sometimes overlap with community service I'd love to see a club that focuses on being prepared to reestablish intra-community communication in case the Internet goes down. Yes, it'd be great if everyone was self hosting, using distributed services and involved in a mesh network now, but without motivation it won't happen. So this club could focus on developing the resources that a…

The amateur radio community already has the technical know-how and disaster readiness to do most of that, and I'd be willing to bet there's enough overlap between them and the meshnet crowd to take care of the rest.

A good friend of mine has been into ham radio since he was a young guy, and this is definitely true. In fact a lot of people in that community play a role in plans for a disaster that would knock out other communications, integrated with some local, and state governments. I'm not sure about the federal level, but I'd guess it's integrated there too.

And there are a lot of them, and at this point if you're into ham radio, it's for the love and you tend to be pretty proficient.

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#37

Post by mark-r »

compiledAtBirth wrote: post #27
increment_i wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He suspects China or Russia as the likely culprit. What exactly rules out an American agent? Is it because American economic and social activity rely disproportionately on internet backbones more so than other state actors? If so, that would be especially interesting.

To think of the culprit of a potential action in terms of nationalism is weak logic, no offense to you or the author, of course, because the digital world transcends any national boundary more readily than virtually any other technology, thanks to its low energy overhead and high data throughput. This internationalism amplifies the net's vulnerability, and when coupled with (as per the article posted a couple of days…

Certainly the internet transcends national boundaries. But ask yourself the question, whose economy is most vulnerable to a disruption to the internet? How much of B2B commerce today relies on the internet? At a time of war, doing damage to the enemy's economy and way of life from thousands of miles away with no risk to people or equipment is a pretty powerful capability.

China in particular has been building their own parallel internet universe. If Google goes down, most of us are going to feel it - but not China.

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#38

Post by AnimalMuppet »

m0nty wrote: post #29
phantom_oracle wrote: post #25

Blaming China or Russia is lazy writing. It could be just about anyone, including a rogue internal agency doing a spoof-attack to precisely cause the blame to go towards the obvious "state actors". Cyber-warfare is the 'new' war and just like any war, misinformation plays an important role.

> Blaming China or Russia is lazy writing It's what the author is being told by the people he has spoken too. Maybe a lazy assumption on their part, but it's not lazy writing. And your point is directly addressed in TFA: "The data I see suggests China, an assessment shared by the people I spoke with. On the other hand, it's possible to disguise the country of origin for these sorts of attacks." It would be interestin…

> Is it limited to state actors, or could we all play?

Per the article, no, we can't all play. We don't have either the bandwidth or the expertise.

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#39

Post by justifier »

kej wrote: post #28
goda90 wrote: post #15

Since there are lots of hobbies that sometimes overlap with community service I'd love to see a club that focuses on being prepared to reestablish intra-community communication in case the Internet goes down. Yes, it'd be great if everyone was self hosting, using distributed services and involved in a mesh network now, but without motivation it won't happen. So this club could focus on developing the resources that a…

The amateur radio community already has the technical know-how and disaster readiness to do most of that, and I'd be willing to bet there's enough overlap between them and the meshnet crowd to take care of the rest.

combined with a project like this:

http://icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry...

and you've basically got the web ;p

at least a one way communication network form

Re: Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

#40

Post by linkregister »

Although Schneier is probably correct in this instance, one of the most exasperating features of his computer security writing is an utter lack of citations or evidence to back up his claims. (His writing about cryptography should require no citations because he is an actual crypto expert.)

After the significant inaccuracies and frequent unsubstantiated speculation in Schneier on Security, I don't think credible security researchers can take his analysis at face value. Additionally, the halo effect of his actual expertise, cryptography, convinces people who aren't security experts that his opinions and speculations are correct. Worse, he rarely frames his speculation as such; he states conjecture as fact. This is counterproductive and leads to confusion among journalists and eventually the general public.

To the imminent downvoters, I'm not offended; I expect it with an unpopular opinion. I'd prefer you engage with a reply in addition to the downvote so we can have a discourse. I think it's important that I add my dissent to the conversation.

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