This is probably the most disturbing news I've ever read about hacking. Apparently somebody is testing the network infrastructure to see what it takes to shut it down and how long it takes for anyone to respond. The attacks are becoming more frequent, more intense, and more persistent. The usual suspects are being eyed, but nobody really knows who is behind this testing.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/someone-lea ... n-internet
Shutting Down the Internet
Re: Shutting Down the Internet
Must be somebody with a lot of money and resources. Like our own government maybe?
In one way, it sorta reminds me of when Ma Bell started converting from Rotary Pulse Phones to Touch Tone Phones.
The station where my aunt worked was near a converted relay to touch tone building.
Without warning, all of the stations in her building would stop dead. Nothing in, nothing out.
I know phones are a lot different than the Internet, but what was happening was purposely driven overload of their new system.
The old Pulse System had a definite number of relays and if they relays were busy, you only got a busy signal.
Apparently the Touch Tone System could handle many more calls than it had connections to distribute the calls.
I never looked into how that early system worked, but their call distribution system was frequently and purposely flooded many times before they found a way to prevent it.
When I read articles like the one you linked to above, it does make you wonder if it is the old copper providers trying to keep their hold of the Internet and block the optical providers from gaining a foothold into their money bags.
In one way, it sorta reminds me of when Ma Bell started converting from Rotary Pulse Phones to Touch Tone Phones.
The station where my aunt worked was near a converted relay to touch tone building.
Without warning, all of the stations in her building would stop dead. Nothing in, nothing out.
I know phones are a lot different than the Internet, but what was happening was purposely driven overload of their new system.
The old Pulse System had a definite number of relays and if they relays were busy, you only got a busy signal.
Apparently the Touch Tone System could handle many more calls than it had connections to distribute the calls.
I never looked into how that early system worked, but their call distribution system was frequently and purposely flooded many times before they found a way to prevent it.
When I read articles like the one you linked to above, it does make you wonder if it is the old copper providers trying to keep their hold of the Internet and block the optical providers from gaining a foothold into their money bags.
Re: Shutting Down the Internet
Shutting down the Internet has grave military and economic implications. I don't think there is a corporation on earth who would want to put their resources against any country's retaliation for messing with something so critical. If you want to speculate about conspiracies think about how these attacks might be part of the World War III scenario now in progress. This war is like no other humanity has ever witnessed.
The article suggests that China might be behind the attacks. The military in China is not like the one we have here in that they are autonomous. The Chinese ruling powers would not be lying if they told us they are not backing any of this. However, even they don't have full control over what their military does. Accusing the Chinese sounds credible. The Russians are also poised to reestablish themselves as a world power - this would be a tool they can use to prove their point. In any case, I'm hoping this is a wake up call. More effort has to be put into the defense of our digital infrastructure. To date congress has been dragging it's feet in this endeavor.
The article suggests that China might be behind the attacks. The military in China is not like the one we have here in that they are autonomous. The Chinese ruling powers would not be lying if they told us they are not backing any of this. However, even they don't have full control over what their military does. Accusing the Chinese sounds credible. The Russians are also poised to reestablish themselves as a world power - this would be a tool they can use to prove their point. In any case, I'm hoping this is a wake up call. More effort has to be put into the defense of our digital infrastructure. To date congress has been dragging it's feet in this endeavor.
Re: Shutting Down the Internet
I may not understand how the Internet works, any more than I understand what they call the electrical grid.
I know when I lived back home in St. Louis County, most of our power was ensured by using a grid system. However, the controlling stations had full control over each line.
Take the street I lived on as an example: If something caused the power to go out on the lines coming in from the west, no problem, we still had power coming in from the lines from the east. I assume they had to keep them in phase to prevent the lines from shorting out, hi hi... The nice thing about this way of providing electric was if a sub-station or wiring from it went down, we did not lose power as we were fed from another sub-station. Also, where the sub-station got their power from was also two or more separate feeds. About the only time we were out of electric was if the transformer supplying our four to six home groups failed, or a tree fell across the wires leading to or from the transformer.
Remember when we used to track how many hops and what path our Internet signals took to get a message from point A to point B? The message sent from your computer may take several different paths for the packets to reach their destination.
The Internet consists of Hubs, Nodes, etc. like a massive spiders web. Knock out section and everything just routes itself around the knocked out section. But as the article points out, there are Controllers taking care of all this. If those controllers get knocked out, then what? However, I'm sure there are more than a dozen or so major controlling centers keeping things up and running.
I messed around with Diaspora for a short time. If one server went down, it didn't matter because there were thousands of other servers all doing the same thing. Most of us use either dial-up or cable providers so if our ISP is off-line, we are off-line too.
I never got far enough into Diaspora to study how the independent connections worked, since very few had the capability of connecting directly to the Internet without going through one or more controlling companies.
However, the concept of feeding the lines independently would keep a service like Diaspora up and running when all the rest of the Internet is down, by using the remaining portions that do not pass through controllers.
Because almost everything now relies on the Internet, an attack to those controllers could bring the whole thing down, and nothing we have will work.
Electrical power stations supply power to specific areas. The excess power they generate is placed on the grid.
When I see these TV simulations of half the US suddenly being without power because the grid failed, one has to wonder how is this even possible. Each independent power supplying company should still be able to supply their service area by not providing excess power to the grid. Disconnecting their lines from the grid where they are using power from the grid so they too do not get pulled down when the national grid goes down.
Ironically, as far as I know, we are not on a grid at all here, at least not like back home.
If power is lost to a single substation, we have no electric at all. There is no backup grid to grab electric from another substation. Power comes either from the hydroelectric dam, or the nuclear power plant, through the lines of distribution until a single line feeds our substation, and a single line from the substation feeds entire areas, which are also not on a grid.
Any break in that single line and we are without electric. Back home was nothing like this. Each substation was fed from two, three, or more sources. Now that source may be only one source, like the nuclear power plant, but it had more than one set of wires going to each substation, each following a different route. Then as I said, each substation powered a local grid, which was fed from more than one substation. Even the power line on our street was fed from both ends, so if one end failed, the other end carried on.
Like dead end streets, all electric supply here comes down a single wire which terminates at the last house or business along that wire. While back home, the electric supply came down our street from both ends, so if a tree fell across a line to the east of our house, we still had power from the west side of the line. Sparks would fly from the downed line until they tripped one of the fuses or turned off the power, which wasn't likely, they would come out and cut the downed line then replace it. Rarely did they turn off the power to do so either.
I know when I lived back home in St. Louis County, most of our power was ensured by using a grid system. However, the controlling stations had full control over each line.
Take the street I lived on as an example: If something caused the power to go out on the lines coming in from the west, no problem, we still had power coming in from the lines from the east. I assume they had to keep them in phase to prevent the lines from shorting out, hi hi... The nice thing about this way of providing electric was if a sub-station or wiring from it went down, we did not lose power as we were fed from another sub-station. Also, where the sub-station got their power from was also two or more separate feeds. About the only time we were out of electric was if the transformer supplying our four to six home groups failed, or a tree fell across the wires leading to or from the transformer.
Remember when we used to track how many hops and what path our Internet signals took to get a message from point A to point B? The message sent from your computer may take several different paths for the packets to reach their destination.
The Internet consists of Hubs, Nodes, etc. like a massive spiders web. Knock out section and everything just routes itself around the knocked out section. But as the article points out, there are Controllers taking care of all this. If those controllers get knocked out, then what? However, I'm sure there are more than a dozen or so major controlling centers keeping things up and running.
I messed around with Diaspora for a short time. If one server went down, it didn't matter because there were thousands of other servers all doing the same thing. Most of us use either dial-up or cable providers so if our ISP is off-line, we are off-line too.
I never got far enough into Diaspora to study how the independent connections worked, since very few had the capability of connecting directly to the Internet without going through one or more controlling companies.
However, the concept of feeding the lines independently would keep a service like Diaspora up and running when all the rest of the Internet is down, by using the remaining portions that do not pass through controllers.
Because almost everything now relies on the Internet, an attack to those controllers could bring the whole thing down, and nothing we have will work.
Electrical power stations supply power to specific areas. The excess power they generate is placed on the grid.
When I see these TV simulations of half the US suddenly being without power because the grid failed, one has to wonder how is this even possible. Each independent power supplying company should still be able to supply their service area by not providing excess power to the grid. Disconnecting their lines from the grid where they are using power from the grid so they too do not get pulled down when the national grid goes down.
Ironically, as far as I know, we are not on a grid at all here, at least not like back home.
If power is lost to a single substation, we have no electric at all. There is no backup grid to grab electric from another substation. Power comes either from the hydroelectric dam, or the nuclear power plant, through the lines of distribution until a single line feeds our substation, and a single line from the substation feeds entire areas, which are also not on a grid.
Any break in that single line and we are without electric. Back home was nothing like this. Each substation was fed from two, three, or more sources. Now that source may be only one source, like the nuclear power plant, but it had more than one set of wires going to each substation, each following a different route. Then as I said, each substation powered a local grid, which was fed from more than one substation. Even the power line on our street was fed from both ends, so if one end failed, the other end carried on.
Like dead end streets, all electric supply here comes down a single wire which terminates at the last house or business along that wire. While back home, the electric supply came down our street from both ends, so if a tree fell across a line to the east of our house, we still had power from the west side of the line. Sparks would fly from the downed line until they tripped one of the fuses or turned off the power, which wasn't likely, they would come out and cut the downed line then replace it. Rarely did they turn off the power to do so either.