L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
washingtonpost.com
L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
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Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#2The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down "by any of the seven individuals seated before you" with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes.
If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#3It was an exaggeration.
But it is certainly not especially hard for _governments_ to take down the net in their own country and in many cases reduce the degree of interconnectedness with other countries so far as to effectively take down large chunks of the Internet. The problem is that we do not truly have a network, instead we have a tree structure connected to a very small number of fat pipes. As originally envisaged the internet would be resilient in the face of the failure of one route because there would be many alternative routes but that is not what we have today.
This is a much bigger threat than the cracking of individual machines.
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#4The title picture is wonderful.
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#5The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down "by any of the seven individuals seated before you" with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes. If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
> If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
Leaving aside the truth of their claims at the time–because it's irrelevant–your comment makes the fatal error of assuming conditions haven't changed at all in 17 years.
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#6The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down "by any of the seven individuals seated before you" with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes. If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
> If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years. Leaving aside the truth of their claims at the time–because it's irrelevant–your comment makes the fatal error of assuming conditions haven't changed at all in 17 years.
Assuming I'm not dead, ISTM "changed conditions" would be such a fortunate circumstance, although perhaps somewhat unspecific. How have conditions changed? Have all the hackers been eliminated? Do hackers have no interest in taking down the internet? Have previously vulnerable processes been made more secure? Have previously trusted parties been removed from positions of trust? Can you fill in the blanks for us?
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#7> Even today, many serious online intrusions exploit flaws in software first built in that era, such as Adobe Flash, Oracle’s Java and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
Isn't that like saying "Many accidents happen to models of cars first built during that era?" Just because they debuted then doesn't mean they are substantially, or even remotely the same thing. How many complete rewrites of Internet Explorer have we had since then?
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#8The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down "by any of the seven individuals seated before you" with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes. If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
We've seen some pretty large drops in the last two decades due to BGP hijacking with entire countries going dark.
So I wouldn't say that it's been entirely avoided.
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#9The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down "by any of the seven individuals seated before you" with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes. If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
It hasn't been avoided. This has happened a few times to various pieces of the Internet.
Re: L0pht’s warnings about the Internet drew notice but little action
#10The Internet itself, he added, could be taken down "by any of the seven individuals seated before you" with 30 minutes of well-choreographed keystrokes. If this wasn't exaggeration, we should study the fortunate circumstances by which this calamity has been avoided for 17 years.
Well, it's somewhat exaggerated. But a bit of BGP hacking can take large areas offline for hours. Why not done more often? No lulz or money in it. Hackers want the net as a whole to stay up for the same reason as everyone else. It's specific sites that are targets for humiliation or extortion.