New Cyberweapon Could Take Down the Internet

A new cyberweapon could take down the entire internet – and there’s not much that current defenses can do to stop it. (Marvin Martian proposed this a long time ago as immediate disintegration) So say Max Schuchard at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and his colleagues, the masterminds who have created the digital ordnance. But thankfully they have no intention of destroying the net just yet. Instead, they are suggesting improvements to its defenses.

The attack requires a large botnet – a network of computers infected with software that allows them to be externally controlled: Schuchard reckons 250,000 such machines would be enough to take down the internet. Botnets are often used to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which bring web servers down by overloading them with traffic, but this new line of attack is different.

“Normal DDoS is a hammer; this is more of a scalpel,” says Schuchard. “If you cut in the wrong places then the attack won’t work.”

OK. Forgive me, but while I believe this is possible, only a government could mandate it, and I don’t believe we have anyone is Washington is savvy enough to do it. But, hey, it’s scary enough. Check it out at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20113-the-cyberweapon-that-could-take-down-the-internet.html

By the way, I am Marvin Martian’s boss, the one he refers to as “Sir Altitude.”

Have fun!