How do you change the perception?

[BILL]

I share your sentiments but not your Optimism.

BILL,

I know I don't know much about this Cyber Warfare stuff. I really wish I had a little more knowledge about computer mediated conflict. I guess what you're saying is that we're about three years away from terrorist entities having the capability to take down the Internet. So what would an attack like that look like?

"Server NOT found"
"Service timed Out"
For weeks or months?


Is it simple violence of oppression or something like that the reason for taking out the Internet? I've heard that there might be some literature out there by Eberschloe, Vernton, Lewis, and others discussing possible "Cyber Pearl Harbor" scenarios.

Please share?

It would be great if we had some military capability like the Air Force or civilian capability to fight cyber terrorism like the NSA. Wouldn't it be great if the Department of Homeland Security promoted something like an emergency support functions for cyber events?

My fear is this could be a replay of NYC 911 where the Emergency support functions are in the center of the attack/building. The question becomes how you stop the flood from the bot net? A small hint?

BILL, you know that if the eastern seaboard central switching office for almost all Verizon in New Yorks primary region was destroyed in something like 9/11 the entire Internet might collapse. In fact it might take months to get that facility back up and running. I wonder how long it would take to get the stock exchange back up and running through a primary data hub that had been blown up almost completely?

I understand if its blown up, its all backed up and just has to be reloaded to a Internet connection, but what if the Internet connection is out, the data remains 'backed up'?

I wonder what a cyber attack would look like. Maybe if there were millions of bots out there capable of attacking simultaneously it might look like a storm. And when they fired up on December 29th I wonder what the entire effect might be? Gee what if a foreign government like China hacked the pentagon daily and ran all of their communications through Israel, Taiwan, Thailand, and other pseudo friendly nations?

I understand how to deal with that particular situation, but what do you do if there is no connection. If you are able to counter attack with your own bots on some connections, on their nodes, it just subtracts connections and further pushes towards a total collapse, When restarted will the attack restart?
And the attack can come from anywhere in the world from unprotected, non-updated computers.

If we only could find experts that had touched hundreds of thousands of sites on the Internet or been involved in building large chunks of the Internet. Maybe we could have a reasonable discussion about risk and less hair on fire fear that something might NOT happen.

I'm not an expert, and know the Army built large chunks of it, it seemed worth mentioning in this age of asymmetrical warfare.


Don't you think prognastications of specific time frames are going to be difficult to back up when they've been occuring since 1968?

I based the time frame on how long it would take me to do it.
Given the funding.

Did you know that there is a low speed wireless network capable of handling massive amounts of data and is highly redundant and nobody even realizes it exists.

No I did not know that. A second Internet, not dependent on the first Internet, and without attack vectors from the first Internet?

It is the ham radio packet radio network. If a bunch of guys with soldering irons and tin hats built something like that I wonder what the telephone companies and military have built?

They are part of and tied into and rely on the Internet. The only defense I see or will talk about publicly is an independent "Intra net" a second Internet.

Thanks for the reply, excellent points.
Bill



Bill, do tell us more.