The Internet will be taken down when we need it most

Maybe we should start practising how to reconfigure all of out wireless (wifi) devices so that we could have local ad-hoc wireless networks networks - like mini internets all over the place, and then maybe when a few people in the network can actually get a net connection the band width could could be shared out.


I'm not sure exactly how to do this, but I don't think it's beyond the ability of a half decent computer user - I doubt any extra kit is required, maybe just some software.

reply to post by Now_Then


Open wifi is not your friend.

Please do not go there, I hate wifi for many technical reasons!

Anyone remember the morning of 9/11? (What a dumb question!)

More specifically, anyone remember the internet behavior; the morn of 9/11?

I had high speed comcast, and as soon as everyone logged on wanting to find as much info as possible, most major news outlets had crashed. We all know virtually ALL sites are vulnerable to a DDOS attack. (An overloading of the server with a massive amount of client requests.)

DO NOT rely on the net WTSHTF.

Hell, we may not even have electricity anyway.

Really? I haven't been here for a month, and you people are still on about the swine flu? Get over it, Fall came and nothing happened. Hell it's almost Christmas, and a survey of the outside world will tell you that nothing has taken a world ending turn for the worse. (So long as you don't count this apocalyptic snowstorm on the east coast, yea right)

I wanted something as bad as the next guy but we were let down, again. Time to move on.

reply to post by TeddiRevolution


And why do you think the swine flu thing or the Ukraine virus has not "kicked in".

Public awareness of the B#ll Sh#t via mediums such as ATS, why do you think they want to know "what" we think. Look around the board and you will see what I mean.

On a side note I work for verizon and from my desk at DSL Tech support I can litterally delete the cross connects out of an asam or dslam mainframe and stop internet traffic for about 12 customers per lt card... if some supposid group got ahold of those tools that can send a message down the circuit the same way we do when were rebuilding circits via command line im sure that would be loads more effective at actually bringing down mainframes till they replace the hardware lol

Originally posted by Alaskan Man
the internet isn't stored in one place, its so vast i think it would be impossible for even an army of hackers to take over the internet as a whole.

the only way i see the internet going down is if Internet Service Providers are told to turn it off.

there are only hundreds (maybe thousands) of ISP company's however your looking at billions possibly trillions of websites hosted on hundreds of thousands of servers.

quite the task.

[edit on 12/19/2009 by Alaskan Man]

Actually, you can shut most of the internet down by closing about 6 hubs: Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and Washington, DC

See researchnews.osu.edu...

damn, I actually believed it was Iranians, but the idea that they're being framed actually seems more feasible, especially to garner support for a war against them.

reply to post by piddles


US could just down all internet traffic from Iran in about fifteen minutes once it has propogated. Just blacklist the entire address block in one blow if required. Unless they have millions of zombie bots installed on all place that would be fun, even if they did you could work out the packet sig quite quickly and black hole it. Guess there are not enough IT leaders in the world, I am available for a huge fee

This whole thing is just the brown smelly stuff. Who really cares if twitter is down for a day?!?

Originally posted by expat2368
reply to post by Alaskan Man

 

I will not give any details because I do not want to give anyone any ideas but the Internet is very open to attack and not by hackers.

Holy Crap, this again. The internet does NOT run on WINDOWS..ok.. Most of the servers are Linux, FreeBSD, Sun, and other variants of Unix. The switches run on a variety of operating systems, primarily being Cisco.

The Conficker virus targets WINDOWS operating systems, which if you haven't even tried Linux or Mac's you would need to take steps to clean your machine.

So to YOU, the internet might be down at the flick of a switch, but to a large part of the world, the Internet will just keep running. I have many servers on BGP connections to the internet. We did not and would not even notice the Conficker virus, or any other windows problems, when they came up. Most of the newer infrastructure has DDOS protection built in, and for the parts that don't, there are monitoring protocols.

The USA only controls the root servers for the .com, .net, org and country specific domain extensions (new dot net ...etc), so any smart host would also have their domain space held in the .ca or other country extension. So even if the CIA or whomever decided to shut off the internet in the states, the rest of the world will still continue.

To recap, YOUR internet access might be down when you need it most, but THE internet will not be.

..Ex

You cannot "take down" the internet.

Just because some bored kids "hacked" twitter, does not mean this is the beginning of World War 3.



[edit on 19-12-2009 by phrankie79]

Originally posted by underduck
The "Iranian Cyber Army"?

fantastic!

Can the internet really be "taken down"? I feel, just like with radio, there will always be the gurus who can whip something up with no less that a pop can, some duct tape, a discarded candy wrapper and an old cell phone. The internet is by far man's greatest accomplishment (IMHO) and I cant see it being brought to its knees without a serious fight. Even then we will find ways to communicate. It is hard wired into our brains. Life is stronger than any of mans ideas and it will power through just about anything we can devise and execute.

[edit on 19-12-2009 by underduck]

[edit on 19-12-2009 by underduck]

Yes. First they will most likely create "Internet V.2". Motorola will have the main servers and every internet connection and content will have to be filtered through their servers thus eliminating content that opposes government. They will have a tight grasp on business to control pirating (one of the many excuses they will create to take control over the internet along with, of course, cyber terr0rism).
Once the internet is absolved of all "free thought and free speech" under the guise of our not being able to responsibly (as a people) use the internet correctly, people will see it as nothing more than a business tool instead of a freedom of expression hangout. Most people will find other means of communicating, mostly locally or via mail because of the frustration of the fading internet. The rest that remain on the internet will be controlled heavily and possibly then when there is not so much a "need" for communication as it once was, the government will then sieze total control of it as a tool only for government use and control. We will then be at a major disadvantage concerning a free-flow of information. We will have to just settle for what we have left. As for uis "doing anything" about it? Well look back at recent history and ask.....how much have we done to stop all that has happened so far? NOTHING! As Edmund Burke once said:
"All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing. "
It looks like that is what is happening in America.

He also said: "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."
Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire (1784)

Isn't delusion all America has ever really given us? Er excuse me....the American Dream? It's because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Originally posted by v3_exceed

Originally posted by expat2368
reply to post by Alaskan Man

 

I will not give any details because I do not want to give anyone any ideas but the Internet is very open to attack and not by hackers.

" The switches run on a variety of operating systems, primarily being Cisco. "

..Ex

Here ya go:

Businessweek

You invalidated your own argument.

when will the mutation occur?
and what about cell phones?

Originally posted by Zot Twady
Maybe it's time for folks to get their amateur radio license and get organized?
They recently dropped the Morse Code requirement.
When phones and internet are down this may be the only long-range communication that the masses will have access to.

While I don't think this would ever occur.

I'd also recommend getting a Police Scanner. As you know, there is more to a police scanner than just listening to Police and Fire. It's open for most all communications in frequency form.

Scanning for CB or Ham amateur radio signals is a great way to be informed about what's going on in your area. Highly recommended if conventional communication methods are not accessible.

[edit on 19-12-2009 by OpenYourHead]

The Internet is a conglomeration of public and private equipment, with varying degrees of security and operating systems. There is no "super virus" that can "take it down," I have no idea where you got that idea. The worst I've seen happen in my 20-some odd years of IT, is a slowdown to major sites, due to traffic caused by some of the nastier viruses. You would have to write something that could take down Windows OS, Linus, Cisco IOS to start with, and this would be neigh impossible for a single virus. Especially the router command-line software - it's not an easy manner "hacking" that. It does not run the same way as a server, you can't just throw a virus at it and have it crash.

You can't "take down" routers and switches with viruses. The bulk of the Internet is not servers, it's basically plumbing. Cabling, routers, switches, and that sort of thing. The staggering amount of equipment, security, and redundancy is such, that this is a laughable premise. I do a lot of work in a huge data center, where we keep our 20-some odd racks of equipment. There is no magical virus that is going to crack this equipment.

The only way the Internet is going down imo, is a worldwide power outage.

Oh.. and I think it's hilarious you are even thinking there is still going to be forced vaccinations. I know many of you are sorely disappointed this never came to fruition, but get over it.. NOT going to happen. This was as many said, an overblown (media-wise) virus, and it's about run it's course. It's done with. You'll have to wait for the next big event before you can create yet another sensationalist, fear-mongering theory about how we are all going to die.

[edit on 19-12-2009 by fleabit]

Originally posted by OpenYourHead
I'd also recommend getting a Police Scanner. As you know, there is more to a police scanner than just listening to Police and Fire. It's open for most all communications in frequency form.

Scanning for CB or Ham amateur radio signals is a great way to be informed about what's going on in your area. Highly recommended if conventional communication methods are not accessible.
[edit on 19-12-2009 by OpenYourHead]

I have a police, EMS scanner for my blackberry. There's always something interesting going on somewhere.

brill

I'm in a hurry with all this so I couldn't work it out completely, but I thought I'd point out some things I found. It looks to me like the U.S. has been gearing up to make some sort of attack against Iran (I don't necessarily mean a physical attack with missiles, now) for a a minute.

In July, a bill was introduced and referred to committee called the Reduce Iranian Cyber-Suppression Act which aims "To prohibit the heads of executive agencies from entering into or renewing procurement contracts with persons that export certain computer or telecommunications technologies to Iran, and for other purposes."
Reduce Iranian Cyber-Suppression Act

And here on the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans website, it was reported that

December 15, 2009, Washington, D.C. – Today the House of Representatives passed the Iran Refined Petroleum Act of 2009 (H.R. 2194) by a vote of 412 yeas to 12 nays. Introduced in April of this year by Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA/28th), the Act allows U.S. sanctions against foreign companies that provide Iran with refined petroleum, among other things. The bill garnered immense bipartisan support and at the time of its passing included 343 cosponsors.

The Iran Refined Petroleum Act (IRPSA) has been the spearhead of a number of proposed bills voicing the U.S. Congress’ displeasure with Tehran’s continued nuclear program as well as the violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators following the disputed June 12th presidential election in Iran. Other proposed bills have taken aim at allowing state and local governments to divest from companies that invest in Iran’s energy sector (the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act), and sanctioning companies that provide sensitive technology to the government of Iran that could be used to spy on its people (Reduce Iranian Cyber-Suppression Act).

Read the whole article at the PAAIA website.


Again, I'm having a lot of trouble making sense of it all, but the relation of the names of the bill to the "Iranian Cyber Army", which has just been witnessed today, is very odd. Also very odd that just four days ago, this act was passed with overwhelming support - an act that enables the introduction of Reducing Iranian Cyber Suppression.

Maybe I'm an idiot and this is all a bunch of random crap and has absolutely no relation. Hopefully someone much more intelligent than myself can set me straight.

I would not really be affected by the Internet going down. I have all the equipment here to set up a Wireless LAN that can reach a range of one mile without near/far field interference. That said, I got about seven computers and I have been data harvesting since 1998. I could basically run my own internet, I even have my own Intranet Youtube, I download Youtube videos aswell (13,000 so far) as harvesting FBI/NSA/CIA/Mi5/MOD (military in general) documents, I have enough music that the playlist would probably play constantly for ten years without repeating a song and enough photographs to last maybe 50 years as a slide show. I have hundreds of gigabytes of software and games (dating from 1990+ in all platforms as emulations), I have a radio scanner, walkie talkies, the ability to send images via shortwave radio, I have a cardboard box filled with LAN hubs, WAN hubs, tons of coaxial cables, various telephony equipment and circuit boards.

I have a lot of stuff I cant explain how much, but its not all brand new equipment. I still have computers from the early 90s, old yellow monitors lol (previously white in color, stained due to nicotine).

Its actually very highly possible that I could run my own WiFi Intranet with roughly 3-4 Terabytes of information for users to download, browse, watch videos on my very own Youtube style local intranet webpage, listen to music etc. Of course this would be illegal without proper licensing, but this is all hypothetical assuming that you are talking about WWIII and the closure of the Internet. I would only assume real Police officers (Patriotic) would help everyone getting setup with some sort of communications.

If it happened right now (which it wont), I would "set up shop", once I have my WiFi LAN prepared and Intranet developed, I would then gather as many WiFi Antennas with a range no less than 0.5 miles (I have a 1 mile now), such as the YAGI +19dBi antenna (1mile). I would then point them toward housing locations where the people are. I would then go to those people and try and find out if any local hackers are wanting to start up an intranet (bridge). You could then easily get as many houses as you wanted all connecting to my WiFi Network (I got switches etc).

That way, its a like a "local Internet". If in this (fictional) future this were to happen. It would not be long until my entire country would be interconnected in the exact setup as mine. Then connect all those networks nationally and the entire country has its own self sustaining "free speech" + "free access" Internet.

My advice for those wanting to prepare. Study the history of computers, computer and network security, telephony, radio operating and in the mean time; download a copy of Back|Track (UNIX/Linux OS).

Prepare yourselves if you think it will happen, and for those that will think it will not happen; prepare anyway.

[edit on 19/12/2009 by the_denv]

The best way to shut down the Internet will be to stop people wanting to use it. The more people that feel threatened that their details are not secure, what they are browsing/researching IS being monitored, the less people will use it.

The only problems are that TPTB have gained financially from the Internet and its services and that the Internet itself would be very hard to shut down when so many people want to use it.

But I suppose Power>Money in their eyes. So maybe shutting down the Internet is a necessary sacrifice of money for more power.