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There are not as oceanic pipelines between continents as you could think.
Some good attacks on strategical points could probably stop those comunications and isolate us in several areas.
If we add the attempts to try again and again to comunicate in different ways, + the panic of users. It could paralyze Internet easily.
I don't want to prognosticate consequencies on economy and armies movements but it could be disastrous.
OK kisscool, I'll bite. Exactly how would you go about paralyzing the internet??
I don't know how practically (I don't plan to attack the world :)) but in theory we could imaginate a lot of scenarii with different ways:
- DDOS attack really really well prepared (I don't believe it could work), maybe manipulating some panic movements.
- using various vulnerabilities with viruses specifically designed (mmh).
- a better method would be to gain access to each strategical points one after one, hiding the access and starting the global attack when all is prepared.
....
The preparation would be the key, but it's true the more easy would be to have physical access to installations and cables (army is probably already ready to do a such thing).
KissCool -> If I'm right this has something to do with "percolation" or better it hasn't but it has... ;) Percolation is about transition phases and maximum tresholds in an infinfite network model. But the internet is infinite therefor it's possible to calculate how many points you need to disable to bring it down. But if you talk about "the internet" even when it are only 2 remaining computers, you should take out that last connection too. So theoreticly and correct speaking would mean disable all network traffic. offcourse we do not mean that here. You mean the net like we now it today with today's importance and traffic. Well for this network you can calculate how many points should been destroyed / disabled to lower bandwidth significantly therefor the net losing its meaning. This would be the critical point.
Talking about critical points... hmm like said above the internet is designed from ARPA net, a military decentralized network capable to survive even if many points were / are lost. The network needs to reach a critical point, this is called "Phase transition" in physics, when such higher number of points are lost the whole network goes down. Try to calculate this for the internet and you will know what effort it would take. ;)
the scientific approach:
Percolation theory
from http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jq...00000000000000
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jqwu/paper1/gif/1.gif
from http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~jq...00000000000000Quote:
The basic idea of percolation is the existence of a sharp transition at which the long-range connectivity of the system disappears(or, going the other way, appears). This transition occurs abruptly when some generalized density in this system reaches a critical value(percolation threshold).
The Critical Point
from: http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/course...rcolation.htmlQuote:
You will investigate how the probability of a site matrix having a spanning cluster depends on the site occupation probability p. Site percolation is an example of a critical phenomenon. There is a special value of p, called the critical site occupation probability pc, such that for p < pc spanning clusters never occur. While for p > pc they always occur. The case p=pc is called a critical point.
More about critical points:
from http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/courses/CP/critmore.htmlQuote:
Critical Points
At critical points a qualitative transition in the behaviour of a system occurs: typically between ordered and disordered states. In our case the transition is from no spanning clusters to always spanning clusters.
Such qualitative changes are known as phase transitions. Examples are the freezing of water and demagnetisation of a ferromagnet at the Curie temperature. Strictly, critical points only exist for infinite systems. For finite systems, like we will investigate using the computer, the transition is not sharp but smeared out over a parameter range.
Percolation models are good physical descriptions of many phenomena, especially in condensed matter physics. Examples are discussed by R. Zallen in his book "The Physics of Amorphous Solids".
Ok kiss. l0pht(@stake, whoever they are now) claim they could do it in 30 minutes. How do you like their odds. It's BS pure and simple
I don't speack about attacking the decentralized system itself but the points (like pipelines under oceans) where the comunications are less decentralized (if you wanted to stop an army during the medieval age, destroying the bridges was a good idea).
The threat is primarily to isolate large areas. After, it is not impossible that panics movements (not only informatical, the phenomenon of all the people using telephone after a disaster is well known and can block all the lines) and multiplication of attempts to continue normally with the pipelines which work again could provocate more problems.
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For your question DoktorFoobar: the global attack could perhaps be done in 30 min but I think they would have to works months and months before to prepare all (the famous method: you crack, you hide, and you'll use it on the future).
Ok Ok I see what you mean, but still... They are talking about attacking w/ software not blowing up installations. There isn't like one cable connecting the Americas and Europe that is the nerve center of the net. It may be possible, with much effort, to temporarily slow down a goodly percentge of long-distance packet travel, but I think even that much would be a prodigious effort, and would only be quickly rectified. tcpip is designed for exactly this contingency. Don't believe the hype.
Well, I for one think it is very possible to cut off the net in under 30 mins. Without going into to much detail:
The internet is based on routers basicly taking a packet, and moving it along its way to its destination. There are many different speed pipes of varying bandwidth. If you wanted to take out a bridge, building, dam, whatever. You always go for the main thing holding it up. So in this case they would go after the main pipes that are owned by various telephone corps, ie.. At&T, MCI, Sprint, etc... and other make backbones of the net. There are DRDoS styles of attacks that will be able to tie up these various backbones and routers till they are full. Once they are full the main normal internet traffic will seek other lowerband routers. So in the second phase of attack you go towards the routers etc.. that are just below the main backbones. Once again doing a simultaneous DRDoS attack on those points would fill them up quickly. Now the traffic will be force to tunnel through lower-band routers etc.. virtualy overloading them. They would't be able to handle the loads and would virtually cause a domino effect of the routers going down, one overloading after the other. Once all the lowerband routers have been taken out, then you unlock the mid-band routers, all the while still tying up the main backbones. When you unlock the mid-band, instantly in one big brunt they will have to take on the entire nets routing. That would overload them. In the final phase you would open the main backbones. Now, they are very powerful, but without the support of the smaller channels, like the capillaries of the human bodies blood system, the main body will fail.
Now, how would these be done? Thru a style of DoS attack, you can use a spoofed ip and send that to a list of routers, say 5000 different routers, that will all be sent to the main routers. without giving to many details, you would be using routers to attack other routers.
IMO, yes it can be done. Although it would take a masive 20 or 30 server WAN system working together to have enough impact. But it can be done.
There is no way a typical internet user could take down the internet in 30 minutes. It's basicaly impossible. L0pht is just trying to make people aware of how insecure the internet really is. " IMO, yes it can be done. Although it would take a masive 20 or 30 server WAN system working together to have enough impact. But it can be done." If you can arrange this, and I don't believe anyone could, it might be possible, but I'm talking about the average user. Yes the as we know it internet can be taken down there's no questions about it. It's been done before. But there's no way it can be done in 30 minutes or less. Kisscool had a good point with attacking oceanic pipelines, maybe a terrorist attack, but that would just slow down the internet. There are still satalites and I believe there are several pipes going across the Atlantic and the Pacific so destroying 1 TPC pipe would do little damage. The only true way the average user could take out the entire internet is with a worm like codered. It would take "me" months to code (or alter around previously written source code "script kiddy") a worm like that. It would have to be able to mutate on its own, and it would have to be timed to "go off" months after it was initialy released into the world, just to make sure almost every major server is infected. When these computers are taken out then major websites would be gone, like google or lycos, atms would stop working, those credit card scanners at Stop and Shop would break down and the civilized world would basicaly fall into chaos.
end of rant....
To me, the easiest way to really take the Net down is to go after the DNS.....take that out and you cut off a pile of people quick