Could the Internet Be Taken Down In 30 Minutes?

GhostX9 writes "Tom's Hardware recently interviewed Dino A. Dai Zovi, a former member of Sandia National Labs' IDART (the guys who test the security of national agencies). Although most of the interview is focused on personal computer security, they asked him about L0pht's claim in 1998 if the Internet could still be taken down in 30 minutes given the advances on both the security and threat sides. He said that the risk was still true."

Comments

Yes

[2.7182]

By a nuclear war for example.

Re:Yes

[ElizabethGreene]

To break the "whole" internet takes some doing. That said, a large scale distributed dns reflection attack or any number of other attacks can turn off large chunks of the internet more or less at will. Thirty minutes seems very optimistic, if the zombies are in place prior to the attack.

Internet Backbone DDOS in 2002

[eldavojohn]

In 2002 4 or 5 of the 13 root servers were big news ... although we've come a long way since then, I think the integrity of the internet still depends on these things.

Every so often we get reports that the internet is a rickety old jalopy on it's last leg.

Given this impression and add to it the fact that the botnets seem to grow in tandem with the internet, I wouldn't be surprised to see an attack take her down in 30 minutes although I'm no expert. I think 30 minutes is a generous amount of time if one of the larger botnets turned its attention on the root servers for a DDOS attack. You'd have some fail overs and some courageous engineer might save the day but I'd put my money on the bad guys.

I would be surprised if it was down for more than 24 hours following that though.

Re:Internet Backbone DDOS in 2002

[afidel]

The way to fix it would be egress filtering where all consumer class lines were barred from directly querying the root servers. Would suck greatly for anyone who wanted or needed to run their own resolver, and would break the original end to end design of the internet, but it would be the most likely response to the threat. The ISP's would love it too since it would allow them to have a captive audience for their ad laden DNS servers.

Re:It can be taken down much faster now.

[Leafheart]

Your Internet maybe, not mine. At least, not because of that.

Re:Is this news??

[ckaminski]

If you want a ride bouncier than the storm chasers in KC10s you can do about 22-25 mph in a Ford 555 (80's vintage backhoe). And that's on a decently paved street. You hit a decent pothole and you better have your feet on the posi button because when your steering wheels hit ground again, you're likely to zoom into traffic or onto the sidewalk.

It's why I only ever did over-street travel in ours at night. Then again, backhoe's are naturally overbalanced to the rear, I never did try to get our straight farm tractor up to speed on surface streets.

I've popped a wheelie in exactly two tractors in my day, one a backhoe, another a dozer. Sort of frightening when you do it for the first time and aren't expecting it.

Re:NAH

[iluvcapra]

The DoD also approved the Space Shuttle's final dimensions on the basis of $100/lb launch costs and a constant schedule of military payloads... I think if you were to hand the DoD a purchase order for a pallet load of marshmallow peeps, they'd only be to happy to certify their nuclear/chem/bio survivability and tactical necessity. They just like to buy toys, and nobody questions them about wether they really need something, and nobody ever tests them to make sure they really use it...

At least in this case we ended up with the Internet, and not the spaceplane-that-wouldn't-die-and-syphons-science-money.

Re:30 mins might be optimistic

[NeutronCowboy]

You seem to underestimate the blood, sweat and tears that goes into keeping networks alive. Yes, some assholes could take it down in a heartbeat if everyone would just let them. Fortunately, there are a good chunk of smart people who work tirelessly so that this doesn't happen. So far, so good. the problem: the good guys need to win every time to be seen as successful. The bad guys only need to win once.