Internet being probed with a view to taking it down, warns Bruce Schneier

[steven36]

DDoS attacks designed to find the exact point at which the net will break

 

 

THE INTERNET'S underlying infrastructure is being probed for vulnerabilities by unknown attackers using sophisticated DDoS attacks, according to security expert Bruce Schneier.

 

Schneier said in a blog post that companies providing the basic infrastructure that makes the internet work have reported an increase in DDoS attacks against them.

 

"These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they're used to seeing. They last longer. They're more sophisticated. And they look like probing," he said.

 

"One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure."

 

Schneier did not name the organisations that have reported the new attacks, which have been going on for the past two years, but they are likely to include tier-one networks such as AT&T and Level 3 Communications, and DDoS mitigation services like CloudFlare as well as domain name system (DNS) providers.

 

The findings are consistent with a report by DNS provider VeriSign (PDF) which said that DDoS attacks are increasing in sophistication.

 

The scale and nature of the attacks point to the involvement of state actors. "It feels like a nation's military cyber command trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyber war," Schneier wrote.

 

It is impossible to tell where the probing attacks are coming from, but this sort of cyber warfare is consistent with the capabilities of China, Iran, Russia and indeed the US.

 

"It reminds me of the US's Cold War programme of flying high-altitude planes over the Soviet Union to force their air defence systems to turn on, to map their capabilities," Schneier said.

 

Taking out the internet would presumably be a high-risk strategy as the repercussions would be global.

 

Encrypted email provider ProtonMail was knocked offline in November 2015 by "an extremely powerful DDoS attack" which the Swiss company put down to a state actor concerned about the secure communications service it provides for journalists and activists.

 

ProtonMail eventually managed to mitigate the attacks using CloudFlare and by connecting directly to a tier-one network.

 

Schneier recently joined the board of the Tor Project. He has also warned that connecting billions of devices to the internet, i.e. the IoT, could lead to a major disaster.

 

Source:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2470712/internet-being-probed-with-a-view-to-taking-it-down-warns-bruce-schneier

 

[straycat19]

If we were to be honest, the dissolution of the internet would not be a bad thing.  It would take away hundreds of thousands of channels for international crooks to operate on, they would be limited to their own country.  It would reduce child pornography drastically, sales of illegal drugs would be reduced, and the opportunity of jihadists to recruit young people would disappear.  Brick and mortar stores would return and people would have more personal interaction.  Children would get out of the house and return to the playgrounds and they wouldn't be as weak and sickly as they are today.  None of these are bad things and can only improve the lives of all people.  In all honesty, I was against the opening of the internet (DARPANET) to the general public.  I, and many  others, thought it should be kept for use by the government and educational institutions whose research was considered of use to the general public.  I am sure if we could have proven then that the internet would become what it is today that we would have succeeded in restricting access.

[CODYQX4]

.

[SnakeMasteR]

Yeah, shutting down the internet will cost so much for most countries, it's not feasible. Especially the loss of spying on each other and the people would really hurt.

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/internet-collapse1.htm

[humble3d]

I agree with all of you...

[pc71520]

33 minutes ago, humble3d said:

I agree with all of you...

I agree with you and the rest ones...