Ticking Time Bombs: The Internet's Weakest Links

Mary,

I hhave been to more than a few "parts of the world" and I can tell you that a very large part of the world lives without the technical  advancement we take for granted here in the 'First World' nations. For example, when US helicopters fly over certain rgions of the Persian Gulf  countries, the people remark that "Allah has sent fans to cool the desert"... try convincing those people that they should worry about sun spots knocking out your internet connected television guide.

Ha! Great points, Kurtkeys. I live in a rural area, and a few of my neighbors grew up without consistent electricity or running water. Their families grew or raised much of their own food. They feel they could always go back to live the old way, even though they would prefer not to. It gives them a sense of self sufficiency that has been lost in other parts of the world.

Mary,

How would you suggest we prepare for all posible calamities and catastrophies? Would building a conduit from teflon coated titanium to every ethernet port on the planet be sufficient hardening to protect us from total extiction in the cyber world? Whos going to pay for this system? And will it be expandable enough to allow for future growth? I recommend for everyone who chide about doom and gloom from some sort of near miss extiction episode, that they go out and learn how to make rope from hemp, and plant food crops and raise live stock, and give up trying to convince the world that there is some better way to be prepared and save society from goiung back to prehistory. For if such an occurance takes place, yoou will be on your own, trying to eek out a life amonst the wilderness without your precious iPhones and high speed internet connections. What's happening in London or Paris won't matter when you can't find out who lives across the street in the bunker, that used to be your neighbors house

Regarding multiple silo'd Internets, check out this story of how Iran plans to cut off the big Net and create its own.

I hope you're right, Kurtkeys. Perhaps there's less threat here than we think. At the same time, it seems foolish to ignore the potential for problems from Acts of God, space weather, or just weather events in general. Over the last decade, there have been too many natural disasters to permit complacency about our infrastructure being safe from external physical harm.

And the more dependent we become on Net services, the greater the potential for loss when those events do happen.

Totally on the mark, I think, mhhfive. The growth of mobility ensures that huge portions of Internet service will have to be wireless. And without the basic infrastructure, that can't happen.

An additional threat to ponder.

I hope you're right, DHagar. If anything, I think that portions of the international Net may wind up isolated from others, while a "good" and free Internet may shrink a bit but increase in benefit.

In other words, it's possible that the Net will start to get more silo'd, with multiple individual Internets splitting off and popping up.

I would like to offer this article on CSO|Online as Suggested Reading this morning.

The article notes that much hacking is via known methods|channels which should be covered by system owners|operators -- but which are left un-attended .

Today is 'patch Tuesday' .  I will apply maintenance tw morning after I read the Computer News.  If nothing untoward is noted I'll go ahead with all of MSFT recommendations

not everyone in a Corporate Environment can do this: in many cases all "apps" have to be re-certified -- with the maintnance on.  when I worked in IT in the hospital I participated in this process: as an IT worker if I killed my PC we could deal with it.  So one of the things I did was to apply the MSFT maintenance and then test the apps that I worked with and submit a report to NetworkAdmin

where an app is properly written IAW MSFT guidelines it is not likely to have trouble resulting from MSFT updates.  but if the developer doesn't follow the rules properly, there could be trouble.

any app that exhibits such deficiency should be weeded out and replaced with something better.  there is nothing worse than a bad app that won't run on an updated system.

Averting the "Outernet"

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. ... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
~~ Edmund Burke

This whole thing is based on one space physicist declaring, as if making book in a Las Vegas casino "there's a 10% chance of this happening between now and 2020... and even if I'm off by a factor of 2, that's a much larger number than I thought" If taking the reverse property, we can assume that there is a 90% chance thhat this will never occur, and if you are off by a factor of 2, then it becomes infitesimal as a posibility. But let's back up a little more and addrees one of the things that is wrong in this report. First off, it says "Fires worldwide" and that did not happen during the Carrington Event. The fires happened in a few locations in England Europe and North America, and only involved the wet paper printers in the telegraph stations (similar to the old wet paper used in the first Facsimile machines). And as for telegraph operators being shocked, well that was a common occurance without solar flares.

I don't want to say that we have nothing to worry about when it comes to EMP troubles, we do. But we are in the midst of some very active solar events right now, and I'm still  writing this post without interruption. Pete Riley's report in SpaceWeather on Feb 2012, sounds like another 2012 catastrophe film is being put into production in Hollyweird. And now the urban legend has made it's way onto IE

The points made in this section of the report are valid, to a point. Hackers are like any other parasite. To be successful, they must not kill their host. And they cannot take down the internet without loosing their own source of nourishment at the same time. and on the note where you suggest that an enemy could harden their own internet and then shut down ours, seem a little narrow sighted at best and completely naive at the worst. First off the terrorist organisations that we are currently at war with have not the skils nor the access to take down a country, much less harden thei own first. Secondly, if a superpower were to get involved in cyber-war, it would not be tryin to shut down your youtube access channel. And I assure you farther, our military command and control is not linked through your local ISP...