The evil supervillain’s guide to DESTROYING THE INTERNET! (insert evil laugh here)

You hear threats by Anonymous and other such groups to bring down the internet in retaliation for copyright legislation or other such gubment outrages all the time but, figure it’s just empty threats because the internet is just a digital entity comprised of millions of computers spread throughout the world. No way in Hell any organization could destroy that right?

Well, maybe not. It seems that Gizmodo has gone to the trouble to figure out what it would take to destroy the internet and it isn’t quite as impossible as one would think. It would be incredibly hard and complicated to get done but, with enough of your drinking buddies involved, you just might be able to pull it off.

Apparently, it can be done in 3 simple steps; Cut the Cables, Ruin the Root Servers and Destroy the Data Centers


CUT THE CABLES

Forget wireless. The Internet exists because of hundreds of thousands of miles of thick, old fashioned cables. Hundreds upon hundreds of undersea, intercontinental cable lines, cross-crossing around the world, are what put your tweets onto a monitor in Pakistan. As mentioned, the cables are wired to back each other up—when one fails, another picks up the slack. But hey—what if you snipped them all?

Sure, that’s a whole lotta cables that would need chopping but, all it would take would be an axe to cut through them and most of them run aground in publicly accessible places like beaches where they are not protected and you can even find a list of all their locations conveniently online. Here is every single internet cable in the world and for the US ones only: US Submarine Cables

Gotta love when the gubment keeps a database listing all the stuff you need right?

You wouldn’t even have to cut all of them; the Gizmodo article lists a few of the most important on the Eastern Seaboard that would effectively end communications with Europe and a handful of other sites around the world that would seriously screw up worldwide internet communications.

Get these out of the way, and you've made a good dent into the Internet's guts. Global finance is now over, leading to an instant worldwide financial collapse—sorry. Skype is broken, as is every other means of talking between continents over the Internet. You can't email your friends abroad. You can't order Barbour coat from the UK. Tweets from the Middle East are stuck there.

But, that’s only the beginning.

RUIN THE ROOT SERVERS

If you take down the root servers, people will no longer be able to search the web using site names and such. If you want to search the web in a world without root servers, you would have to write down the IP address of every site you wanted to visit and type that in. Knock the root servers off line and the alphabet is no longer a part of the internet anymore and all sites will have names like: 67.228.0.162 (ATS) and 74.125.65.91 (YouTube)

Lucky for us, some folks have prepared for this eventuality.

So how do you find the root servers?

Like the cables that feed (well, fed) them, the servers are also an open secret. In order for them to be any use at all, they have to be absolutely transparent—the web is worthless unless it's a free orgy of interoperability. And the best way to make sure everyone gets theirs is to just make the details of the root servers—and their locations—public. It just takes the tiniest amount of digging.

Let's say we want to obliterate the "K" servers, operated by a company called RIPE NCC. Go to its website, and from there it's as simple as scrolling across a Google Map. Oh, here's a server located in Miami. Click on it—it's located in the NAP of the Americas data complex, which a simple Google search will point out is located at 50 NE 9th St, Miami, Florida. You can take the 6 bus straight there. But if you're going to wipe the place out, be prepared for security—these places are guarded like Nazi bunkers to make sure nobody enters without a damn good reason.

Nobody said destroying the internet would be easy but no supervillain worth his salt would be much daunted by a few rent-a-cops. Finding the root servers is very easy, thanks to the ever-helpful internet Root servers.org. How did we ever plot to destroy the internet before the internet made everything so simple?

DESTROY THE DATA CENTERS

What have we accomplished so far? With all the cables cut, the Internet is landlocked, broken up into a handful of tiny Internets that can't talk to one another. Messages can't be sent around the world anymore. Hell, Japan is completely isolated. After demolishing the root servers, web addresses are reduced to incomprehensible code numbers. The destruction of the Internet is ready for its coup de grâce: Blow up the boxes that hook what's left together.


Data centers are unassuming buildings filled with servers that host the websites we browse, the emails we read, and the vault of lo-res Facebook photos you racked up all through college. They're enormous, often windowless structures that aren't designed for people. They're houses for computers, not flesh—they're often dark most of the time—to keep them cool, and because computers don't mind working without lights on. But they're vital to the people who want to sprint through the web, allowing your ISP to link up with the rest of the internet. Some of these centers in particular are mega-hubs, "public internet exchanges," open bazaars of ISPs from every corner of the globe converging on one floor of one building.

One of the Most Important Internet Hubs in the World Is in Manhattan

60 Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan provides colocation services and low-latency interconnectivity to over 100 carriers—companies that own the physical equipment that makes up the Internet—including financial exchange and application providers, content and cloud providers, and multiple private enterprises. Interconnectivity is the act of physically linking network equipment with those owned by another company or a customer—be it AT&T linking to Verizon or a Pac Bell customer attaching an answering machine to his landline.

Back on the 9th floor of 60 Hudson, a 15,000 square foot facility known as the Meet-Me-Room is the convergence point of multiple layers of local, national and global fiber optic cables. This is where each carrier's server, storage, and networking equipment resides as well as arrays of optical, coaxial or copper terminations which allows the carrier's "colocation units" to connect to other networks through a series of connection panels. This physical hub of the Internet, essentially a gigantic Ethernet switch, is powered by a 10,000 Amp DC power plant.

Sure, blasting that one would do some major damage but, if you wanted to really knock out the whole internet, you would have to hit the major data centers around the world. Thankfully, the article lists all the ones you would need to hit:
111 8th Avenue, NYC
1 Wilshire, Los Angeles
Telehouse, London
Telehouse, Paris
Global Switch, London
Global Switch, Paris
NAP of the Americas, Miami
Equinix, Palo Alto

If you wanted to be REALLY thorough, you can find a master list of all datacenters worldwide here: Data Center Map

Now data is entirely frozen. Nothing can get anywhere, because all the roads, bridges, and traffic lights are in ruin. All that's left of the Internet is your office intranet, or the file-swapping in your dorm. The tiny shreds. There are nets, but none of them are inter.

Congratulations, you're the world's biggest asshole.

But remember, to do this, you would've just completed the single most complex, sweeping act of destruction in human history. But with anything less, the Internet would still be kicking.

Gizmodo: How to Destroy the Internet

So, sure, destroying the internet would take a whole lotta coordination, mass destruction and ingenuity but, it nothing your average run of the mill supervillain couldn’t pull off right?

Makes you wonder how many aren’t out there plotting it right now, huh?

It would never work. Maybe in the early 90's it could, but cyberspace is too big an infrastructure to destroy at this point.

Here is my super-villain method to destroy the internet.

Remember the virus Code Red ? or you can use any latest worms

Using the virus, put a payload on it, payload job - remove all MS updates/patch on target. Downgrade the OS to basic install without patch and reopen all closed security holes. Then, set up a source computer to redistribute ALL the internet worms known, maybe for 2 days

I think I'll need 1 week to crippled the internet. If want faster, I can set up a time bomb in the code. Kabooey on 21/12/12 how about that ?

I trademark my worm - OpenSesame.

Add
btw Unixish and single button mouse users need not worry much
You can keep your titanium shielded servers intact, I dont care.

reply to post by FortAnthem


Chill out, dude. We are trying here to find ways to keep it alive, not to kill it
I do appreciate your research, but your ideas are not in resonance with the general mood on this site.
Peace & malt whiskey

Originally posted by DarkKnight21
It would never work. Maybe in the early 90's it could, but cyberspace is too big an infrastructure to destroy at this point.

It would take thousands of people around the world in a coordinated strike before the governments of the world could react to protect all the sites but, it is not impossible. The whole point of the article was to point out that our perception of what the internet is is wrong and it IS vulnerable to attack.

Just cutting a few of the cables that run between continents could seriously screw things up, and that would only take a few clowns with axes.

The internet should not be taken for granted. Its a wonder that these sites aren't better protected or their locations at least kept secret.

Having been inside the data center in Reston Virginia, I don't believe anyone will "destroy the data centers" with any ease. It would take an army. That data center makes Fort Knox look like a pushover.

As far as pulling down the thousands and thousands of miles of wires, again, that would take an army to do, and the government would have to be dismantled first to prevent any response.

I don't see any outside group having the ability to pull this off. The government itself is the one to be concerned about. THEY seem to be doing a pretty good job of destroying the Internet. Heck, they've turned the Internet into the biggest surveillance network around.

My evil plan to destroy the intraweb?

Eliminate porn.
Stop all emails from Nigeria saying they have 6 million in a bank but need your account!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Even if all this in the OP happened, it would not destroy the internet. Apparently the people @ Gizmodo don't know about the myriad of other technologies that are extremely robust and which led to the development of the internet itself.

X.25 Packet switched networks over POTS - BBS's, Packet Radio, TCP/IP over radio, etc etc.
All of these networks have been in use for YEARS and some are still operational.

For instance most people think that BBS's were the largest WAN before the advent of TCP/IP.
This is incorrect. SPRINTNET etc existed years before that and it was used over the Plain Old Telephone System (among other physical layer media) - POTS - and it was global. These days X.25 networks see very little usage, but they are STILL out there. Pretty complicated system honestly, but it was used by banks, corporations, etc for data transmission (called packet switched network) over the POTS.

Matter of fact I think some ATM's (yes, Automatic Teller Machines) still use X.25 lines for communication. Probably really old ones...but still !

Anyways, yeah - the Internet is unstoppable. Even if uncle sam thinks they can pass "policy" or even try to physically destroy it. I'm not worried at all.

Internet can bounce off satellites too. Just saying. Cables are outdated.

Destroying datacenters is not that hard... all you need is an EMP device

Originally posted by Unity_99
Internet can bounce off satellites too. Just saying. Cables are outdated.

Yeah but, just imagine the amount of bandwidth that would take up. Just the financial transactions alone would probably overwhelm the system, or at least slow it down considerably.

I found the article remarkable for the fact that all of the parts that make the internet run can be found using simple internet resources and some of them, like the intercontinental cables are practically unguarded.

Everybody seems to think the internet exists only in the cyber-realm but, this article reminds us that, for everything out there, there is a portion that exists in the brick and mortar world and those parts are vulnerable to physical attacks that could bring the whole thing down.

Don't worry, there's plenty to do when the Internets down.

*Bump*

Its all depends on what type of destruction. I'm going with digital destruction, if you want to destroy physical, I would say its useless, there are so many fall back exist that its merely "why the net slow" instead of "no access".

Bombing datacenter is not good either, thats old method, some data center have nuclear shielding and able to endure days without power not to mention titanium casing and round the clock security.

If internet gonna fall, it will fall digitally.

reply to post by FortAnthem

Makes you wonder how many aren’t out there plotting it right now, huh?

As a super villain, I first made sure My superduperelectronicplants out price all other suppliers and make them go bust. Soon all new hardware is made with My cheap ass semiconducting components that I have provided with a dark gloomy backdoor ready for my evil entrance, I might just push the button.. now.. no not now.. soon though.. soon sOOOOn!

Originally posted by D.Wolf
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

Makes you wonder how many aren’t out there plotting it right now, huh?

As a super villain, I first made sure My superduperelectronicplants out price all other suppliers and make them go bust. Soon all new hardware is made with My cheap ass semiconducting components that I have provided with a dark gloomy backdoor ready for my evil entrance, I might just push the button.. now.. no not now.. soon though.. soon sOOOOn!

edit on 4/8/12 by D.Wolf because: typoos

Sooo, let me get this straight...

You sort of create a super chipset with backdoor, make it the cheapest, everyone using it, you can access and control everything at will, then for the sake of proving "I'm super villain" blew it all ? Wow

reply to post by NullVoid


Look at the bright side; now we know that Bill Gates has an ATS account.

I got a better idea-

A bulls eye solar flare (sweet spot) hit-

Observe how far you really haven't come (spiritually, emotionally, and mentally) with all those guns the insecure tough guys on the planet have that are scared to death they might be gay deep down inside.

reply to post by FortAnthem


but... what if its true ? not Bill gates, but the chip maker
intelligence inside

Originally posted by NullVoid

Originally posted by D.Wolf
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

Makes you wonder how many aren’t out there plotting it right now, huh?

As a super villain, I first made sure My superduperelectronicplants out price all other suppliers and make them go bust. Soon all new hardware is made with My cheap ass semiconducting components that I have provided with a dark gloomy backdoor ready for my evil entrance, I might just push the button.. now.. no not now.. soon though.. soon sOOOOn!

edit on 4/8/12 by D.Wolf because: typoos

Sooo, let me get this straight...

You sort of create a super chipset with backdoor, make it the cheapest, everyone using it, you can access and control everything at will, then for the sake of proving "I'm super villain" blew it all ? Wow

You have it all figured out! You must be smart.

Wanna be my evilmonkeysidekick I can pet with my bionic handclawthingy?