Preparing for the Worst in IT

mplex writes "How vulnerable is the internet to terrorist attack? Is it robust enough to handle an outage on a massive scale? Should the commercial infrastructure that powers the internet be kept secret? These are the sorts of questions raised by Mark Gibbs in his latest column in Network World. 'There is an alternate route available for nearly all services through Las Vegas or Northern California serving all facilities-based carriers in Los Angeles -- all interconnected at numerous L.A. and L.A.-area fiber-optic terminals supporting both metro and long-distance cable.' Given that the internet thrives on open networks, it's hard to imagine keeping them a secret. At best, we must be prepared to deal with the worst."

Comments

Already UNDER ATTACK

[redelm]

What special skills or tactics do you believe "The Terrorists" [whomever they might be] possess? The Internet already copes with a deluge of spam, 'bots and trojans and varous DoS attacks. Not to mention the flash crowds.

It might be hackneyed, but please remember the internet was designed to withstand hundreds of nuclear warheads. Half of any class of nodes can go down and the rest keep running.

commercial infrastructure

[GovCheese]

I guess if an invading army decided to hit all your NAPS you're SOL (all your NAP are belong to us) but a greater threat might be a chip embargo during a war or a period of instability. Open up your box lately? The Asian Tigers have our peckers in their pockets. I fully expect this to occur downstream and it's a greater threat to "national security" than most want to admit.

Egoism

[cyphercell]

Terrorists would not attack the Internet, they would attack the power grid. This article is IT egoism and paranoia, the physical robustness of our national communications systems should not be questioned unless we expect a prolonged bombing campaign, which incidentally is what the Internet was designed to survive. My personal order of operations would be:

1. Bomb the power grid
2. Bomb the freeways
3. Bomb the phone system
4. Bomb Cellular towers
5. Bomb the tv system
6. Bomb the Radio stations
7. Bomb the locations that make satellite TV and satellite internet possible

Wrecking the US's communications systems would require a significant industrial expense and commitment, this doesn't come from terrorists.

Re:Egoism

[davidwr]

1. Bomb the power grid
      2. Bomb the freeways
      3. Bomb the phone system
      4. Bomb Cellular towers
      5. Bomb the tv system
      6. Bomb the Radio stations
      7. Bomb the locations that make satellite TV and satellite internet possible If I were a minor terrorist I'd probably truck-bomb a local public building, take down a highway overpass, or poison the water supply.

If I had the resources of a major terrorist organization, my goal would be to inflict the maximum terror with the minimum chance of getting caught beforehand.

I might run a few private planes full of explosives into rural school cafeterias during lunch or into movie theaters on the opening weekend for a big blockbuster. Not only are many rural areas soft targets but like attacking children they have a higher terror-factor.

If I wanted to cause medium-term damage I'd probably blow up a lock or dam on the lower Mississippi. If I could blow up all the Interstate bridges leading into a major city or blow up all the high-tension lines into a major city, I might try that. The same goes for highly-traveled roads or high-tension lines leaving a major power plant: If I could get all the major backups then it's worth a try.

If I had access to 1 or 2 nukes I'd want to do some long-term damage to shipping. I'd look for railroad depots, freight airport hubs, and key waterways. I'd also look at poisoning the water supply for a large city.

If I were a government one of my first targets would be communications satellites, weather satellites, and of course, military satellites.

Unless I'm a government, I probably don't have the resources to do long-term physical damage. I would instead focus on scaring Americans into giving up their civil liberties and forcing America to spend more of its budget on internal defense, leaving less money available for outside wars.

I trust government agents long ago thought of all of these possibilities and more and that they are planning accordingly.

Re:Egoism

[cyphercell]

I would instead focus on scaring Americans into giving up their civil liberties and forcing America to spend more of its budget on internal defense, leaving less money available for outside wars.

Sixteen days after 9/11 my daughter was born, it scared the shit out of me. I wondered if I would be drafted for war, I wondered if she would, one day go to war, I wondered if one day she would have to prepare for terrorist attacks in school, I wondered if she would be snuffed out two weeks into life by some nasty man made virus, I wondered if the virus had already been released and we just didn't know it yet, I thought a lot about my daughter's future and how I would raise her to deal with it. I was thoroughly terrified of the future.

Looking back on all of that I realize that Americans did more to terrify ourselves than the enemy ever could have. We've lost thousands of soldiers and spent billions of dollars in this war on terror and we are only more terrified, it doesn't make us safer, it doesn't keep the power on, we're not flying safer, our water, internet, phones, roads, schools, our children are not safer, and hell we don't even feel safer. It's all at risk now, because we've spent all of our money and time trying to lock things down, keep things safe and protect ourselves from the boogeymen.

Today, my daughter is five, she can read, tie her shoes, and does well with math. She doesn't know what a terrorist is and they don't talk about that in school. Her little brother is also doing great, neither has gone hungry or lonely or cold a day in their lives and we still haven't finished our Y2K rations. They know only one thing about politics and it's that George W. Bush is a dumb ass. They also know what consumerism is and the ways that the TV can affect them.

I'm sick of hearing about terrorists and terrorism. I'm not scared of a terrorist attack and in fact, I'd rather be scared than watch another one of our civil liberties gobbled up by the administration or watch another funeral on the news. I'm so fucking sick of hearing about this "post 9/11" bullshit, that I could scream. We weren't safe "pre 9/11" and there isn't a fucking thing we can do to become safe in a post 9/11 world. Get over it. Life is fragile and raising your children in a bubble will not make them safer. In fact, once they inevitably leave that bubble they will not be able to survive the harsh reality that is "fresh air". So thanks George W. for a nation that cannot move without asking themselves WWTTD? (What Would The Terrorists Do?)

Yes and no

[jhines]

Yes in theory. Remember it was designed to survive global thermonuclear war.

No in practice. Because it is cheaper not to. Those multiple routes and connections are more expensive than a simple, single one which works just fine on a clear sunny day.

The reality is somewhere in between.

Re:What about a boogeyman attack?

[suv4x4]

Much more delicate than the Internet is the power grid it relies on.

People in IT like to brag how robust and reliable Internet is in the event if a disaster, but I've seen far more interruption of my internet service (at any point on the route), that interruptions of my electricity.

And that's without any terroristic activity.

Re:What about a boogeyman attack?

[Andrew Kismet]

http://www.2kweb.net/images/network_map.swf

If the West Coast gets hit by a quake, we're pretty much screwed.

Re:What about a boogeyman attack?

[koreth]

Do you think you'd feel any different at all if you or someone you care about had been sitting next to the guy that was caught actually trying to set off real shoe bombs on an actual airplane? Are you of the "well, we lucked out on that one, caught him, and since they know we know that trick now, they would never try it again, and we can stop looking for it now" camp? How does your brain work on topics like that?

You mean Richard Reid, the guy who tried to set off plastic explosives with a match (hint: you don't ignite plastic explosives with a match; if you set C4 on fire it will just burn, not explode) and who was beaten unconscious by the other passengers before he could even fail to set off his nonfunctional bomb?

No, I don't think I'd feel that different.

In fact, it's a good demonstration of, as you say, how my brain works: I try to think through the subject based on what actually happened. Observable history, one might call it.

The only reason two of the three 9/11 hijackings succeeded was because the passengers, having never heard of a passenger jet being used as a weapon before, assumed they would be flown to Cuba or somesuch, just like all the other passengers on hijacked jets in living memory. That is no longer the case, as evidenced by the fact that the third hijacked plane failed to reach its target. The simple fact that everyone knows there are people out there who want to blow up passenger jets will, without an extra dime spent on security or any extra disrobing at the gate, make it a lot harder to pull off any stunt that requires a terrorist passenger to initiate.

And those plans that don't require a passenger to initiate, e.g. smuggling a bomb into the cargo hold, hitting a plane with a surface-to-air missile after takeoff, etc., won't be affected at all by the senseless security theater everyone is subjected to.