Slashdot Mirror
Beyond Firewalls — Internet Militarization
angry tapir writes "One of the discussions at the Source Boston Security Showcase has been the militarization of the Internet. Governments looking to silence critics and stymie opposition have added DDOS attacks to their censoring methods, according to Jose Nazario, senior security researcher at Arbor Networks, with international political situations spawning DDOS attacks."
Oh, come on. This is just more hysteria manufactured by people looking for money, fame and fortune.
A DDOS attack is hardly the same the thing as a shell and mortar attack. For one thing, a DDOS doesn't do, and by definition, can't do permanent damage, nor can it kill people.
Can we all just lay off the hype machine a little bit?
My blog
"We do it, so we should expect it in return." Yet, where is the proof that the federal government is actively engaging in the sort of network thuggery that Russia and China indulge in? It's just "common knowledge" that "we do it," especially at a tit-for-tat level.
The main reason I've grown impatient with this line of thought is that it's usually used to defend other countries when they're doing wrong. "The US supported dictators, so why not Russia." Might as well say "two wrongs make a right!"
It was inevitable, surely. Once governments came to realise that the web was becoming a legitimate medium rather than an entity, they would obviously start to employ it in the same way they have every other.
I have to ask: is this story about governments wising-up in the ways of the intertubes and turning it to their advantage, or about the fact that this was discussed at a conference? I'd have thought the former was self-evident, and the latter was completely un-newsworthy. Maybe we can discuss specific examples of political internet jiggery-pokery, but this kind of vague allusion is just going to prompt hot-air discussions with no real content, isn't it?
Meta will eat itself
What makes denial of service attacks so hard to respond to technologically?
Really, it's not.
Our pipes are limited in capacity, surely. Is it not possible to build a router that can mask out requests from IP ranges as fast as they can electrically come in?
Yes, such routers actually exist, although even some commercial-grade routers tend to made with low end processors and such that if your pipe is fat enough, it can become overwhelmed.
If you want to stop a DDOS and your firewaall can't seem to mask off IP ranges quickly enough, by far the easiest technological measure is really quite simple: sever the connection. I guarantee you the DDOS will no longer be affecting your equipment at that point.
Our TCP/IP networks were built to survive connections going down. At least if they were built cluefully, anyway.
My blog
Since computers tend to be communication devices the question folds backward into another question. Can any government survive good communications among its citizens? I really doubt it. Understanding government will lead people to realize that for their individual situation the government is a negative. If you end up with any substantial percentage of a population feeling that the government is negative in their lives they will find a way to crash the government. Even 10% who are real disaffected with government will assure failure of a nation.
Back in the Hippy movement the young understood that. Tune in, turn on, and drop out was every bit as serious as an enemy marching toward a border. Whether the hippie seeking to end the Vietnam War or the kid in the mud in Vietnam was the better patriot is open to debate. But one thing is sure. The hippies did cause that idiotic war to end. Sadly we have so many ruined lives on both sides of that war as living testimony that war is a lousy idea.