Can The Internet Be Shut Down?

50..........

wait....who's asking again?

Zombie enough machines so that they all send out tons of junk messages (like a DDOS). Problem is zombieing all those machines, and have them lay domant until ready for the big day.

ya, i see something like this happening. the goverment trying to "help" us and trying to take down the internet or something where they don't want us having electricity, phones or anything etc. so they just use this. i wonder what the usa defense tactics are for what happens if we went to a war here on our land

It was originally designed to withstand a nuclear attack and still allow for military communication (ARPANET). Saddam had his own version of the internet in Iraq and Bush Sr. bombed the shit out of it to disrupt Iraqi military communication - it still survived.

Imagine one of the root DNS servers sending out fake DNS data over a short period of time... getting mirrored on another.... getting mirrored on another...

It's not likely...


But.

it's possible... take out a few links here and there.... you'll end up with 1000s of small networks...

I thought about that while listening to an expert talk about what happened when the U.S. tested nukes in space. A real fuck of a problem as it knocked out satellites.

I'm sure however there are contigencies for EMP.

I say its not far impossible. You'll never know what people in power can do nowadays.

The root server data is cached throughout much of the Internet - ie. most ISPs, servers, etc cache that data.

The zones, such as .COM, .NET .CO.UK, .DE, etc are another story completely - but again, zones are widely distributed / cached.

In a nutshell, while many folks focus on root servers, etc ... that's among the stronger, more resilient parts of the internet despite how centralized that part is.

Routing, in particular NAPs, is where the internet is more vulnerable ...

Zap a few NAPs (network access points where large amounts of traffic is exchanged with other networks) and much of the internet will grind to a halt; peering arrangements outside NAPs only offers minimal protection in situations where numerous NAPs are affected due to the large volume of traffic involved.

Continuing on that thought - hacking, etc likely won't do diddly overall ... for a NON-government entity to knock out the internet would likely require physical access / destruction to facilities/networks ...

In regards to the government ... they can shut off large portions of the internet (most, if not all, NAPs are already tapped by governments) any time if the government was determined too; they likely never would because much of the government itself greatly relies on the same internet network itself for critical functions - ie. military, nuclear plants, collecting taxes, banking (some parts, such as Fedwire, are totally on private networks, but ATMs, on-line banking, etc are not) ...

Contrary to belief of some, Internet II is very limited in scope; much infrastructure relies on the same internet folks use ... anyone doubting that need look no further than the Slammer worm that led, in part, to the blackouts in 2003.

Ron

I think if they pushed that, the people would wake up and turn on them