The End of the Internet

Alistair Croll over at Gigaom has been doing some doomsday prophesising about just how the internet might implode, explode or otherwise end.  Much of it is lighthearted scaremongering, but it's important not to forget just how fragile and potentially vulnerable the internet as a whole is to attack.

Some of my favourites:

“Massive physical infrastructure failure. If an accident involving a couple of cables in the Mediterranean can make the Internet unusable for hundreds of millions, imagine what an intentional attack could do.”

“Someone subverts the Domain Name Service. The Internet relies on DNS. But if someone broke — or worse, subverted — the fundamental way in which we find web sites, we wouldn’t trust URLs any more. Phishing would be easy. Own the DNS and you own the Internet.”

Perhaps best of all:

“The lawyers get involved. The Internet has been an experiment in free speech. That may be coming to an end. Unable to go after the sites themselves, lawyers go after the hosters and registrars. That’s how Swiss banking group Julius Baer took whistleblower Wikileaks off the air. And once there’s precedent, others are sure to follow. The recording industry is already wondering if it can go after carriers for enabling copyright infringement. This is the irony of Net Neutrality: When telcos start treating different bytes differently, they aren’t ‘common carriers’ and may be liable for what they transmit, including illegal content. So they’ll comply."

Good point. Damn those lawyers, eh?! Interfering busybodies that we are!

“Walled gardens: Many countries already restrict how the Internet is used. China’s firewall — which includes 30,000 people tasked with finding improper users...”

Geez, don’t even get me started!!