Cyber-Weapon that Could Bring Down the Internet

Internet security investigators at College of Science and Engineering of US' University of Minnesota said that there was vulnerability in the routing protocol of the Internet, which could allow anyone to attack and bring down the Internet.

Actually, graduate investigator Max Schuchard at the University discovered that a botnet was capable of drastically interrupting fresh channels which were crucial for the Internet to continually run if the network of bot-infected PCs overloaded the main Border Gateway Protocols (BGPs) with denial-of-service assaults.

Notably, BGP serves as a crucial routing protocol with whose help routing data are exchanged on the Internet. Its absence prevents ISPs to interconnect; consequently, users can't link up with websites externally from their local intranet.

So during the attack, Schuchard's cyber-weapon could allow an exchange of traffic across the attacker's botnet and thus create a pathway among the bot-infected PCs. Subsequently, that attacker could spot one common connection among several individual paths and execute one ZMW assault for disabling the Internet.

However, the investigator's discovery does not imply that there'll be an abandonment of the Internet soon. Said Schuchard, it was unbelievable that there was a workable cyber-weapon to bring down the Internet. In reality, the attack was one which could work theoretically not one that could be launched very soon, he contended. Mndaily.com published this on February 15, 2011.

Moreover according to Schuchard, for the attack, an army of infected PCs controlled externally and joined to make a botnet, is required. He thinks that some 250,000 such PCs might be sufficient for destabilizing the Internet. Nevertheless, while botnets usually carry out 'distributed denial-of-service' assaults that due to overwhelming Web-servers with traffic destabilize those servers, the current method of assault isn't exactly the same.

Further, according to the investigators, the new development will hopefully prove wrong several hazardous presumptions telecom firms formulate regarding the exact volume of data possible for routers to manage.

Stated Schuchard, while the solution for counteracting the new assault was simple, it wasn't readily available. However, the assault should serve as an indication to telecom firms the need for making their equipments strong, he added.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/18/2011