Comments on: Who restarts the Internet after a cyber Katrina?

By: Homeland Security not ready for Cyber Storm - Homeland Stupidity

Homeland Security not ready for Cyber Storm - Homeland Stupidity — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:57:09 +0000

[...] In June, the Business Roundtable issued a report saying that “the United States is not sufficiently prepared for a major attack, software incident or natural disaster that would lead to disruption of large parts of the Internet” and that coordinating a response to such an attack or disaster should be turned over to the Department of Homeland Security. Comments RSS – Trackback URI [...]

By: Nixer6

Nixer6 — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 21:38:32 +0000

If the internet is so robust, why do I read about DOS attacks that
completely shut down large web sites. I am more concerned about
specific attacks on vital National Interests, Power Grids, the DoD,
the NRO etc. How about the military parts system? Banks and
financial transactions.

By: Bog

Bog — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 20:09:57 +0000

The whole reason the internet was invented in the first place was so that the DoD could communicate during and after a nuclear war. In other words, the net was specifically designed to handle catastrophes of the largest magnitude.

and Malfoy- that google dns problem was scheduled. They intentionally did that. There was no “glitch”. And it was down for less than 15 mins.

By: blah

blah — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:48:37 +0000

Homeland Security help someone? What a joke.

By: MM

MM — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:46:29 +0000

There is no centralization of “The Internet”. It is comprised of individual sites and providers. This ‘global internet attack’ scenario is not possible! due to this very nature.

Therefore, I conclude it is a bad idea to have ALL traffic go through a central government agency…because then it WOULD be possible to have a cenral US Based attack. (not global)

By: JG

JG — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:04:34 +0000

Seriously, the government in the internet is not a good idea. The private sector will shoulder the internet outages just fine. It happens every day.

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 06:52:35 +0000

I know quite well how the Internet works, and I think the idea that Homeland Security needs to help companies recover their portions of it is quite stupid.

Which is why it appears here at Homeland Stupidity.

Unfortunately more than a few people can’t seem to read, and got the opposite impression. That sort of stupidity is a bit beyond my ability to deal with…

By: Malfoy

Malfoy — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 05:37:30 +0000

I think you guys over estimate the resilence of the internet. Remember not too long ago,May 2005, Google’s DNS hit a glitch and ALL of Google’s domain names were unavailable for long enough to cause some serious concerns among the google faithful(meaning it was more than a few minutes.) Those who knew Google’s ip were fine, but how many people keep that bit of information lying around. Now last time I checked, Google was no small fry in 2005 and a mere GLITCH made him invisible to majority of the internet. GOOGLE, THE KING OF SEARCH, WASNT AVAILABLE TO THE MASSES. And that was because of a GLITCH. If that’s all it takes to make Google ‘disappear’, then a well planned attack on the internet can make a lot more things ‘disappear’. I’m not saying take down large amounts of sites, that is one approach but probably a dumb one. Keep the sites standing but if a group can make a DNS ‘glitch’ similar to what happened to Google happen on a much larger scale? Then the internet to all but the few hardcore who keep ips of every site they frequent has ceased to exist.

I think we should make note of how ISPs (at least US ones) are capable and some are complying with routing all internet traffic to the NSA so they can do a check. Ok, so now we know it is possible to route all internet traffic to a particular point with relevative easy. If its that easy to route and track, it can not be that hard to shut it down at the same points. It’s just a matter of finding and ‘attacking’ these points.

The internet coming to a halt? Not likely but far from impossible. It takes only a few key moves to bring down the internet. It will take probably a few more than that to bring it back and prevent the same exploit from happening again.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 02:06:55 +0000

First off, Katrina DID hit the United States… and the internet was unaffected.

If catastrophic meteors were to take out all US-based backbone DNS sites the internet would slow down for a while, but the rest of it would come back around.

And besides, if that much death and destruction came about there’d be more pressing matters than checking Digg.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:53:25 +0000

Wow, this article is a joke. Nothing new to add from the comments above, but yeah, as someone who makes all of his money from the internet, and is posting from a datacenter, any talk from the government, about a cyber katrina, cyber 911, or anything else that stupid ‘threatening our nations security’, has another agenda in mind. The ironic part is that agenda could be the very threat to the security and freedom of the nation.