Someone is learning & practicing how to take down the Internet

[Jonas]

Just picked this up from another forum... look into amateur radio, folks!

https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/09...-internet/

Someone is learning & practicing how to take down the Internet
Posted on September 18, 2016 by Dr. Eowyn

This is serious and genuinely alarming.

Bruce Schneider is an expert in cyber-security, the Chief Technology Officer of Resilient, an IBM Company, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, and a board member of Electronic Frontier Foundation — an organization defending our rights in the digital world.

In a blog post, Schneider sounds the alarm that in the past year, the websites of major companies that provide the Internet’s basic services repeatedly have been attacked, each time more sophisticated than the last, which suggests “someone” is practicing how to take down the Internet by learning from the companies’ defensive moves.

Below is Bruce Schneider’s blog post of Sept. 13, 2016, “Someone is Learning How to Take Down the Internet“:

Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet. These probes take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don’t know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China or Russia would be my first guesses.

First, a little background. If you want to take a network off the Internet, the easiest way to do it is with a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). Like the name says, this is an attack designed to prevent legitimate users from getting to the site. There are subtleties, but basically it means blasting so much data at the site that it’s overwhelmed. These attacks are not new: hackers do this to sites they don’t like, and criminals have done it as a method of extortion. There is an entire industry, with an arsenal of technologies, devoted to DDoS defense. But largely it’s a matter of bandwidth. If the attacker has a bigger fire hose of data than the defender has, the attacker wins.

Recently, some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they’re used to seeing. They last longer. They’re more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure.

The attacks are also configured in such a way as to see what the company’s total defenses are. There are many different ways to launch a DDoS attack. The more attack vectors you employ simultaneously, the more different defenses the defender has to counter with. These companies are seeing more attacks using three or four different vectors. This means that the companies have to use everything they’ve got to defend themselves. They can’t hold anything back. They’re forced to demonstrate their defense capabilities for the attacker.

I am unable to give details, because these companies spoke with me under condition of anonymity. But this all is consistent with what Verisign is reporting. Verisign is the registrar for many popular top-level Internet domains, like .com and .net. If it goes down, there’s a global blackout of all websites and e-mail addresses in the most common top-level domains. Every quarter, Verisign publishes a DDoS trends report. While its publication doesn’t have the level of detail I heard from the companies I spoke with, the trends are the same: “in Q2 2016, attacks continued to become more frequent, persistent, and complex.”

There’s more. One company told me about a variety of probing attacks in addition to the DDoS attacks: testing the ability to manipulate Internet addresses and routes, seeing how long it takes the defenders to respond, and so on. Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical Internet services.

Who would do this? It doesn’t seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It’s not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes — and especially their persistence — points to state actors. It feels like a nation’s military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar. It reminds me of the US’s Cold War program of flying high-altitude planes over the Soviet Union to force their air-defense systems to turn on, to map their capabilities.

What can we do about this? Nothing, really. We don’t know where the attacks come from. The data I see suggests China, an assessment shared by the people I spoke with. On the other hand, it’s possible to disguise the country of origin for these sorts of attacks. The NSA, which has more surveillance in the Internet backbone than everyone else combined, probably has a better idea, but unless the US decides to make an international incident over this, we won’t see any attribution.

But this is happening. And people should know.

A reader of Schneider’s blog-post, Random Guy 17, wrote this interesting comment:

“An attack on a service is best done by an attacker that doesn’t need that service. You don’t pull the plug on the power company that supplies your own home/business.

With that in mind, a closed, not highly Internet enabled country makes the most sense- like China.”

Other commenters warn that it may be the U.S. government, e.g., the NSA, doing the attacks — to find the Internet’s weaknesses (in order to better defend it), or more malevolently, as bargaining chip for more money allocated to cyber-security.

It doesn’t help that in two weeks, on October 1, control of the Internet — specifically, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — will pass from U.S. administration to a multilateral body, most likely the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU). (Breitbart)

H/t ZeroHedge and FOTM’s Will Shanley

[harrypalmer]

Its common knowledge that Russia, China and North Korea are attacking the wests cyber infrastructure on a 24/7/365 basis and I'd guess we and the US are doing the same. I've little doubt that one day the net and phone/power networks will fail due to attacks, lets hope the downtime does not last long.

[Mortblanc]

I don't care.

Nothing I can do about it anyway.

Perhaps we should hire more strange little computer people to deal with this since none of us have a clue what to do.

[bigpaul]

the sooner the better, bring it on.

[Straight Shooter]

I just wonder would any communication work ? even ham comms ? we will NOT get the true news from our govs....have you watched the BBC news lately ....i rest my case RUBBISH .

[harrypalmer]

Disagree about the beeb, its still pretty good, certainly way better than the drivel spouted over the pond.

Ham comms will work, you may need to Faraday modern kit but I've several old valve (Tube) rigs that will run after EMP strikes. The brit army and I'm sure the US forces still have a stockpile of old valve/tube rigs sitting in stores. Most modern replacement valves/tubes are made in Russia and India so I guess Putin is sitting on some old kit that will work even when things go breasts up.

No EMP and your modern kit will work, you just need to find someone to talk with.

Looks like Paul has a death wish LOL

[Mortblanc]

All U.S. coms, as well as vehicles, have been EMP proof for some time. Spare parts have been stored in EMP proof packaging since the 1970s.

As for the news being rubbish, we get the BBC news over here too. Don't kid yourself, it is no better than the local bull$%!t.

The separation of the "pond" means nothing in the electronic age and they are all the same person telling each other how great they are, telling the masses what they need to know rather than what is.

[Mortblanc]

I should amend the above to military coms and vehicles.

Most commercially owned vehicles with restart after EMP with a simple reset procedure.

Disconnect the battery for 5 minutes, then reconnect.

[harrypalmer]

I look at US news channels and obviously the beeb is better by a mile Do you listen to the BBC World Service at all MB ?

[Mortblanc]

I view BBC world news almost every night. It is available on our PBS communist outlet.

The only difference is the accent, perhaps that is what is throwing you off.