Can hackers kill the intenet?

[deadeye]

Im just wondering if the hackers will cause the internet to become too risky to deal with. Its got to the point that you need two computers- one for importatn stuff and one for internet. It seems the anti-virus software is having a hard time keeping up. Is it possible that the hackers will win?

[deadeye]

1. damn, I really should check my spelling before I post (nt)

[Sweetpea]

3. LOL I undertood what you meant.

[SeanT]

11. no way

nah,

the internet..is a net...a hacker destroying such a net isn't plausable.

[Sweetpea]

2. I hope not but this last episode as scared me though I lucked out

[HereSince1628]

4. My off-line pentium one never has viruses...

and it never annoys me with instant messenger notices.

Come to think of it neither does my old daisy-wheel Brother typewriter...but it hasn't been plugged in for a decade or more...

[Maple]

5. I doubt it

The net has become far too important to everybody.

Wouldn't benefit the hackers to lose it either.

[Occulus]

6. save yourself the pain.

Buy a router and don't use Outlook for email. Oh, yeah- backup all your important stuff on a linux partition. No, don't be scared- there are plenty pretty (and useful) interfaces for linux. Best thing about using it, though- you're immune from all these annoying exploitations of Micro$oft's sloppy software coding.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist... but at least get a router. Oh, and don't open anything from anyone you don't know is sending you something.

[Old and In the Way]

10. Well I have to take exception on Outlook.

I have had no problems with viruses the past few weeks and I use Outlook (the full suite). But-
(1) I keep both XP Pro and XP Office up to date on the patches
(2) Keep my Norton's AV Up-to-date
(3) Use Spamfighter plug-in in Outlook
(4) Have Zone Alarm

It works pretty well for me. But you do need to keep your various protection schemes up-to-date.

[AntiCoup2K4]

15. For those Outlook users....

there's a Linux program called Ximian Evolution which is almost identical to Outlook (without the swiss cheese security of course).

My home PC is totally Linux now and the e mail was the hardest part to get used to, until I found Evolution. It's Outlook without the security holes :-)

[SOteric]

7. Nah. I suppose technically, anything is possible.

But the scenario you paint is very, very unlikely. What hackers may well do is force a recognition in the consumer that MicroSoft has some gaping holes in its security. The Republican governmental pass on their monopoly trials may not have the kind of long term good impact that they'd hoped.

Many computers and operating systems are fairly unscathed by even pervasive virus and knowledgeable users can eliminate or minimise the impact of a virus attack.

My computer was infected with Blaster, it took me a few hours of time to remove, shore up my defenses and tidy up my subscriptions. But it didn't shut me down for days, it didn't corrupt my hard-drive and it didn't cause any lasting damage to my flow of work. This is pretty much the majority impact. Folks that were completely and utterly shut down were not likely maintaining the best, most intelligent practices. I'll bet they will from now on.

[anti_shrub]

8. No, but that won't be what you hear on the news.

You have to remember that the Internet was originally designed by the Defense Department, so it's built to take a licking. I read somewhere that something like 5 or 6 of the 13 backbone servers have to be taken out before the Internet would fail to operate. No hacker or virus has been able to get more than 2. When servers go down, others take their place as any serious ISP has redundant servers out the wazoo. The worst that can happen is that it will be slow. Remember on 9/11 when all the news pages went to text only due to the tremendous demand? If the 'net didn't go down that day, I think it's safe.

However the Corporate Media Empires will continue to paint the net as an unsafe and unstable place so they can scare people away from it and towards their news channels.

[Jim Sagle]

9. Who knows? After all, video killed the radio star.

[Az]

12. Curious Yellow

Its the name of a theoretical virus being sought within the hacker community. The idea behind Curious Yellow is its a fast spreading virus that attacks unsecured bports much like blaster and welchea did. Once infected the computer continues to try to infect other systems. When it comes across a computer it cannot effect it contacts the other infected computers and they begin a Denial Of Service (DOS) attack on the computer.

In theory once this virus launches any system immunized gets pinged to death by the infected computers. So either you are infected or you are off the net.

This virus will not have a destructive payload such as most malicious virie do. Instead it will sit on the system and interfere as little as possible. It will maintain a backdoor through which the hacker can insert new code. The reason for this is once the virus has control of the net they introduce code that allows them to monitor any transaction on the net.

We have already seen parts of this virus. Sapphire was an example of the fast spreading port attacker aspect of the virus. Blaster was supposed to initiate a DOS attack on Micro$oft. It is unknown whether a virus like Curious Yellow can be coded. But it is a possibility.

[frustrated_lefty]

13. The recent virus stuff just drives home

the need for better encryption.

[rman]

14. poor encription does not cause these virus problems

viri exploit exsisting bugs and security holes; breaking (weak) encription is not what viri do to cause trouble.
what is needed is less buggy and more secure Operating System (hello Microsoft).

[Vitruvius]

16. Why would any hacker kill the Internet, when it's much more fun to

torture Microsoft?

[Nlighten1]

17. I remember reading an article long about by...

the good hacker boys at Lopht. In this article they claimed to have the knowledge of how to take down the net in about 15 minutes. It had to do with a software flaw of some sort I believe but I could be wrong it was a loooong time ago when I read this...

[Kellanved]

18. temporarily? yes. Has already happened in the past

Has already happened : in 88 a worm effectively shut down the Internet for two days.

http://world.std.com/~franl/worm.html

On Edit: This worm attacked UNIX machines - remember this when bashing Windows (not that I'm a Windows fan, but saying that UNIX is invulnerable is simply wrong).

[Fescue4u]

19. Yes, not by attacking the Servers though.

You do it by attacking the routers (the devices that move traffic around), although Servers could be used to deliver the attack on routers.

We actually had an opportunity for that about a month ago when a router vulnerability was discovered. If exploited a well written worm could have spread and absolutely destroyed the Internet for a at least a few days, while new software was shipped via snail mail.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/cisco-sa-20030717-blocked.shtml

Fortunatly, savy management of the situation secured things before that became possible.

Still though, the structure of the Internet is based on fragile trust system involving a protocol known as BGP. With a little bit of co-ordinination one could cripple the Internet quite sufficiently, albeit it would be nearly impossible to do anonymously.