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."

Comments

What makes DDOS hard to stop?

[Late Adopter]

What makes denial of service attacks so hard to respond to technologically? 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?

Or is the problem more in the "distributed" part than the "denial of service" part? Can a network engineer enlighten me?

Re:Militarization?

[Chrisq]

Surprisingly I think not always, it could depend where it is in the city. I have spoken to people who live in cities with gang-land areas who see attacks (drive by shootings, houses burned out, etc.) as though it was talking about somewhere the other side of the world. If one gang fired a mortar at another's stronghold this probably would not worry them too much.

War against anybody not supporting our government

[cagrin]

I've heard recently that the police forces across all states are given documents suggesting anyone who mentions the US Constitution and espouses their rights (for example, warrantless checkpoints) are being classified as terrorists against the government. It has also mentioned the shutting down of the current internet in favour of Internet II which would be more controlled (for example, anti-government sites would not be allowed...freedom of speech anyone?). See the following for more: the Alex Jones Channel on YouTube (or infowars.com, a recent show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Eizli66bU), http://www.freedomtofascism.com/, and for the Canadians out there... Bill Abram on the 'Crime of the Canadian Banking System' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Zl1Wax8MI

enjoy...and spread this stuff around :)

Re:Militarization?

[Mr. Slippery]

Life critical monitoring equipment is never plugged into the Internet.

"Should never be" and "never is" are two different things.

And what constitutes "life critical" is fuzzy. Is Google Maps "life critical"? Do you remember the family that got lost and the father froze to death? (It's not clear that the map in this case came from Google Maps, but it show the possibility.)

Is your word processor "life criticial"? Michael Richard was executed after his lawyers were unable to file paperwork by a deadline due to computer problems, under circumstances that would likely have at least postponed his murder by the state.

Is your local park service's database "life critical"? It becomes so when a dead tree that was supposed to be removed falls and kills somebody.

(By the way, if you're a computer professional and you're not reading the RISKS digest, you oughta be.)

Re:Militarization?

[hairyfeet]

Silly Silly PopeRatzo, criminals don't follow your stupid laws, that's why we call them criminals. You get rid of all the ways of law abiding citizens to have guns and all you will have is a free for all because the criminals will STILL have guns. You DO realize that, don't you? After all drugs have been illegal for nearly a century, yet I can walk out my door and in less than 30 minutes score any drug I wanted. Do you really think that smuggling a load of guns would be any harder than a load of dope? You anti gun people make me laugh, thinking your silly laws will have any effect on actual criminals. That is just so silly.