Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/14/a-powerful-attacker-is-systema.html
…
The article without all the ads can be found on Bruce Schneier’s blog. I generally prefer reading his essays on schneier.com, mostly because of the (normally) high-quality comments and discussions.
35 Likes
Thank you very much, you are a true friend.
5 Likes
So, do you think there’s a spare internet in the closet when this happens? Are we pre-internet people going to have to show everyone how to churn butter?
23 Likes
Is “titrated” the new “curated”?
5 Likes
Nice things?
Can’t have 'em.
8 Likes
I recently heard that the Nice Terrorist who savagely murdered 84 people by running them down on the Promenade had several high profile “practice runs” with 19-ton lorry along the same stretch of road, driving at speed.
2 Likes
If registrars fail, wouldn’t the internet still work fine using IP addresses?
2 Likes
I’ve got a two year supply of freeze dried internet in plastic buckets with foil liners that’s rated for a 25 year shelf life.
32 Likes
While the Black Hats calibrate their attack, aren’t the White Hats calibrating their defense? Or are they busy watching Dancing With the Stars?
3 Likes
This doesn’t come as a shock to me. I’ve been watching ipviking (now map.norsecorp.com) for a while now and its obvious that China was up to something. What scares me is that nobody is fighting back.
7 Likes
1: China is always up to something.
2: Fighting back would lead to escalation.
3: Welcome to BOing BOing.
9 Likes
Think you can probably throw North Korea into the mix as well, the eastern European bad boys are mainly money.
What concerns me as a Linux user are the new types of cross platform nasties out there now and much preferred it when they just went after windows users.
3 Likes
Part of the problem is that the Internet isn’t a network in any meaningful sense of the word. The whole point of the original ARPAnet was fault tolerant system with multiple routes from each node to all the others. Although that alone would not solve the problem it would help but of course it isn’t just the ‘Chinese’ who are making the net more fragile, those who regulate it do so as well. We really need a proper peer to peer communication system that does not rely on a central authority like DNS.
12 Likes
If you (and enough other people to pay for the server costs) can remember all of the IP addresses you want to visit, sure!
4 Likes
Some of it would. After all you can just fill your hosts file with all the addresses you use and so long as they do not change you will not need to query a DNS server ever again. But the web pages that you read rely on Javascript on other sites and give you links to other sites, none of that will work unless everyone switches to IP addresses.
4 Likes
Since reading the linked article, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about something.
In Cory’s book “Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town” there’s an anarchist character who’s setting up a rogue WIFI mesh network. Would it be possible to create a parallel, separate, wirelessly connected internet using old WIFI routers? I have three or four old routers in drawers in my house. I did a cursory search for this information on my lunch break, but the results I was seeing only related to extending an existing wireless network in a home using repeaters, which would have one router handling all of the DHCP requests.
2 Likes
NoScript for everybody! It sounds like Christmas!
Every site should be required to explicitly show its links to scripts and assets loaded from elsewhere. Doing otherwise makes it impossible for users to truly navigate in any meaningful sense.
9 Likes
Taking away the layer of abstraction would paralyze most users. You would also lose links to static content. In effect, the Web would not be the web without DNS. (Not entirely true, hyper links could all reference IP address. Where do you suppose the people constructing them should look them up? It would be like having the telephone system and no phone books, operators, or directory assistance.)
6 Likes
The problem is that for it to work you have to have a lot of routers. A typical SOHO router has a range of less than 100m in free air and if there are buildings in the way it is much less. In “Someone …” they ask local shopkeepers, café owners, etc. to host the routers. It’s a really big job. There is or used to be a group called Seattle Wireless who did something similar in real life and covered central Seattle with Wifi but it took them a long time and a lot of work. Perhaps someone with more up to date information could chime in here.
3 Likes
