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ashford
join:2015-01-28

ashford

Member

Research for sci-fi book

Hello everyone,

I'm working on a novel that is kind of a tribute to the Twilight Zone and am in the midst of a story about a group that at one point tries to destroy the internet.

I understand that this is impossible. And while the real story lies in this fringe group's effects on the young protagonist, I still want to have the plan be somewhat plausible, i.e. not just activating a mystical global killswitch.

If anyone would indulge in a little thought experiment on how this could be accomplished outside of nuclear warfare, I would be very grateful and my work would be better off for it.

As it stands, the group's plan is extraordinarily vague and involves a virus taking over the 10k or so ISPs.

Cheers.

Chubbzie
join:2014-02-11
Greenville, NC
Hitron CDA3
(Software) OpenBSD + pf

Chubbzie

Member

said by ashford:

...destroy the internet. I understand that this is impossible

I'm sorry but I disagree with this statement and would like to know why you believe this?
TheWiseGuy
Dog And Butterfly
MVM
join:2002-07-04
East Stroudsburg, PA

TheWiseGuy to ashford

MVM

to ashford
Do a search, use your imagination for terms. Here are 2

How to destroy the Internet

Chna's Internet Hijack

carpetshark3
Premium Member
join:2004-02-12
Idledale, CO

3 recommendations

carpetshark3 to ashford

Premium Member

to ashford
Since you like Sci-Fi, go find "A Logic Named Joe" by Murray Leinster.
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_ ··· amed_Joe

It was written in the late 1940s, but worked up to some of the insidious qualities of the internet today, step by step. Maybe you can follow one of those steps for your takedown.

Plus it's funny.
ashford
join:2015-01-28

ashford to TheWiseGuy

Member

to TheWiseGuy
Chubbzie and Wise Guy, thank you for your answers.

Wise Guy, I read this gizmodo article »gizmodo.com/5912383/how- ··· internet, but the China internet hijack was new to me and very helpful. From what I gather, using the BGP could wreak havoc in a much simpler form.

Chubbzie, It was my understanding that even if all physical lines and ISPs were compromised, satellites could still be used and that only nuclear (and satellite) destruction could truly end the internet. Please let me know where I've messed up and thanks again!
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

At best satellites would only allow for a large scale intranet like a lan . at some point even satellite based internet relies on servers hosted on the ground hooked up to isps over physical connections like copper or fiber. Take out those server or lines and the net would be dead. Oddly the number of back bone providers if not huge even when talking world wide your talking 100 to 1k maybe and not 1000s. While nearly impossible to shut down the entire net you could in theory do it.look at the recent shut down of north Korea's limited internet as a example. Alsoany of the same infrastructure the net use is also used for phone as well. Meaning kill the net world wide you also kill cell phone and most of the long distance phone service as well. Hell aain att building flooded a couple weeks back and killed cell service and phone service for four counties in Ohio. All att but uverse all T-Mobile andbsprint was down four about 4 hours. That should give you a idea. Shoot read up on the story about it you could use it and one like it as qouts in your book.
AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON

1 recommendation

AsherN to ashford

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to ashford
You could destroy the major interconnect points. There are way too few of those. There is one a few blocks from my office that would take down a good part of the Northern Eastern seaboard.

You'd need a coordinated attack.
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

1 recommendation

Nanaki (banned)

Member

At some point you would get a chain reaction going. You would need a continuous and sustained attack on multiple interconnects though.
HELLFIRE
MVM
join:2009-11-25

HELLFIRE to ashford

MVM

to ashford
EMP pulse is a fun one. Or try sunspot / solar flare activity. These'll work if you want an "instant death" kind of destruction.

Or don't go after the internet directly, but the underlying infrastructure that supports it ... take out a few powerplants and the equipment
in your very expensive datacenter / POP is nothing but paperweights.

My 00000010bits

Regards
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd to ashford

Premium Member

to ashford
It is impossible to kill the internet purely via hacking.

It would need a coordinated cyber attack and traditional terrorist attack on physical assets of some kind.

Brano
I hate Vogons
MVM
join:2002-06-25
Burlington, ON
(Software) OPNsense
Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-PRO
Ubiquiti NanoBeam M5 16

1 recommendation

Brano to ashford

MVM

to ashford
It's possible!

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· yYGrswtg

»www.youtube.com/watch?v= ··· 283Asrww

trparky
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH
·AT&T U-Verse

trparky

Premium Member

Send out a rogue BGP route advertisement destroying all of the routing tables. BGP is for the most part a rather insecure protocol and just about anyone can make a BGP advertisement.

BGP spoofing - why nothing on the internet is actually secure
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

Kearnstd

Premium Member

said by trparky:

Send out a rogue BGP route advertisement destroying all of the routing tables. BGP is for the most part a rather insecure protocol and just about anyone can make a BGP advertisement.

BGP spoofing - why nothing on the internet is actually secure

Interesting though I think one of the commenters put this in the best simple terms possible. Far better than the article, Its like spinning the road sign in the cartoons. Most ISP routers are dumb as the Coyote...

rolande
Certifiable
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join:2002-05-24
Dallas, TX
ARRIS BGW210-700
Cisco Meraki MR42

rolande to trparky

MVM,

to trparky
Hijack a few major carrier's BGP Route Reflectors in a few key Exchanges and advertise blackhole routes for each of the 13 root nameservers. That would be noticed very quickly and filtered but would have a devastating effect on the pwned carrier's transport networks.

trparky
Premium Member
join:2000-05-24
Cleveland, OH

trparky

Premium Member

It's a wonder this hasn't been done by the bad guys.

Yeah, that would grind a good portion of the Internet to a halt.
Kearnstd
Space Elf
Premium Member
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ

1 recommendation

Kearnstd

Premium Member

My guess is the folks who want to do bad things depend on the internet so much themselves that taking it down would harm them too.

ANd its above people who would do it for the lolz, Script kiddies.
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

Hence why these things are thought experiments. Good for sci-fi books and learning bit not Mich else. No one would likely ever TRU but sire is fun to think about.

Bill_MI
Bill In Michigan
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Royal Oak, MI
TP-Link Archer C7
Linksys WRT54GS
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Bill_MI to ashford

MVM

to ashford
OK, let's get real. The protocols are complex and, by design, have a flaw no one is aware. It makes the whole net like a fuse waiting to be lit. Like a super-worm no one can even reset a router because it's immediately participating when restored.

Of course, the only cure is shut down every part of the net and restart it but political boundaries are just as complex. Isolated networks try in vain to interconnect but it's fruitless. The story continues...

I expect my residuals soon.
ashford
join:2015-01-28

ashford

Member

You guys are awesome, thank you so much. I'm researching like a maniac now thanks to all these good ideas.
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

I hope you keep us in the loop. You also might want to have your characters include one who looks at taking out for example hard lines like under sea cables as well as other hardware physically. Example imagine the damage just from destroyed data centers for the Maher search engines large web hosts and the like.
pandora
Premium Member
join:2001-06-01
Outland

1 recommendation

pandora to ashford

Premium Member

to ashford
You may wish to reconsider your premise. Internet is a lot of interconnected networks, each of which is relatively independent, but share data at various gateways.

It is highly unlikely a "young" hero would have sufficient knowledge to destroy a single large ISP type network, let alone all Internet. Think of an older or late middle aged person with some skills and experience. Kids know enough to cause grief, to harm large scale networks is mostly a job for government with very experienced IT people from many disciplines. Even then, most of what we think of as Internet would likely be back on within hours.

It would be easier, and more feasible to take Internet down with an Electromagnetic pulse (EMP). There are many movies, and television shows about the potential horrors of AI / Internet. Start if you want with something like Person of Interest.
TheWiseGuy
Dog And Butterfly
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TheWiseGuy

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You are kidding right. How old were the founders of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. Certainly there are script kiddies but more than a few young people understand the Internet as well as or better than older people and can come up with extraordinary ideas that us old folks would never dream of occurring.

DataDoc
My avatar looks like me, if I was 2D.
Premium Member
join:2000-05-14
Hedgesville, WV

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DataDoc to ashford

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to ashford
The Elders of the Internet are monitoring this thread.
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

Hmm how many years of being online are required to be a internet elder hehe
pandora
Premium Member
join:2001-06-01
Outland

pandora to TheWiseGuy

Premium Member

to TheWiseGuy
said by TheWiseGuy:

You are kidding right. How old were the founders of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. Certainly there are script kiddies but more than a few young people understand the Internet as well as or better than older people and can come up with extraordinary ideas that us old folks would never dream of occurring.

Lol, not so much to you, as the idiots who thumbed you up. You are talking about web, about script, about Facebook that isn't even yet secure, about Google which has been repeatedly hacked.

Yeah, great ideas, scripts full of bugs, hackable by millions, and web.

You may not know this, but the Web rids on top of Internet,it's an application of Internet. I doubt anyone without years of experience and or a degree or two in Computer science will have sufficient knowledge to begin planning massive attacks on Internet such as to kill it. Planning would mean knowing who to hire, and how and where to begin.

At the very least, learn the web isn't exactly the same as the Internet.
TheWiseGuy
Dog And Butterfly
MVM
join:2002-07-04
East Stroudsburg, PA

1 edit

TheWiseGuy

MVM

Reply deleted. Not worth arguing about this.
Nanaki (banned)
aka novaflare. pull punches? Na
join:2002-01-24
Akron, OH

Nanaki (banned)

Member

He is over thinking it. Yes there is some difference between the net and the web. But for all intents and purposes taking down things like dns servers routers major data centers for the search engines and web hosts and you effectively would kill the internet. Yeh the hardware is all there and yes it can be rebuilt and or restored to get things back up and running. But if you knock out a large enough portion of the internet it will collapse further.

If all the software is well scrambled that tells end users etc that this ip goes to this computer and not this one it is all over.

Then there is the over all purpose of the OP which is a scifi book. Meaning it does not have to be 100% accurate. But closer to accurate is better. Get as many of the details you touch on accurate and who cares if there is allot you just do not deal with.

There was a time when it was thought that no one could route their connection through a satellite clear up in to the mid 80s but i know the person who proved them wrong and i know him personally i was in HS with him lol

What we say can not be done today by the younger set is what many of them will seek to do just to prove us wrong.

some people miss this fact. Mostly those with the degrees forget this simple fact. Simply put a person does not need to have a degree to well do every thing you do. Truth of the matter is this. Even for a major doctorate it only takes 12 to 16 years to get it on a schedule. Take some kid with nothing better to do but study and he can know as much as the person with the phd in half the time or less. IQ does not mean how much you know but how fast you learn and access what you learned.
OldCableGuy (banned)
join:2014-12-19

3 edits

1 recommendation

OldCableGuy (banned) to ashford

Member

to ashford
Take a look at some of the recent Snowden data. The NSA has tools that can brick network cards and also destroy the BIOS (operating code) of major server manufacturers. If that was weaponized then they could certainly wipe out major internet backbones.

From NSA intern wiki site:
Potential interns are also told that research into third party computers might include plans to "remotely degrade or destroy opponent computers, routers, servers and network enabled devices by attacking the hardware." Using a program called Passionatepolka, for example, they may be asked to "remotely brick network cards." With programs like Berserkr they would implant "persistent backdoors" and "parasitic drivers". Using another piece of software called Barnfire, they would "erase the BIOS on a brand of servers that act as a backbone to many rival governments."
Citation: »www.techdirt.com/article ··· es.shtml

It's no mistake that North Korea's routers were bricked days after the White House credited them with attacking Sony.

That was a message.

Maybe your protagonist could smuggle some of these munitions out of the NSA and release them in the wild? I think that would make a good story.

Another wrinkle to keep in mind, even script kiddies "proxy" their attacks through 3rd party compromised hosts. Most attacks are from China, but China also has more unpatched and insecure systems online. For all we know, attacks from China could be proxied from anywhere. Having your protagonist proxy his attack through another country would add some "tech creed" to your story.

I agree it would be impossible to shut down the internet. But, major swaths can be taken out. Many countries have only one or two links to the internet. Half the mideast and most of Africa. And those vendors have at best a few spare pieces of equipment. They couldn't replace every router, or server in any sort of moderate timeframe, in the peering point in Bahrain, for instance.

Good luck.
HELLFIRE
MVM
join:2009-11-25

HELLFIRE to ashford

MVM

to ashford
said by Kearnstd:

said by trparky:

Send out a rogue BGP route advertisement destroying all of the routing tables. BGP is for the most part a rather insecure protocol and just about anyone can make a BGP advertisement.

BGP spoofing - why nothing on the internet is actually secure

Interesting though I think one of the commenters put this in the best simple terms possible. Far better than the article, Its like spinning the road sign in the cartoons. Most ISP routers are dumb as the Coyote...

2nded. KISS, unless a) you know what you're talking about, and b) can describe it
in a way to keep it interesting for the reader. One or two authors were very good
at doing this in their works... but I'm pretty sure a BGP config, even a basic one,
would put 99.5% of the readership to sleep.

Also, I strongly second this quote from the link
quote:
It's important to note that in order to execute this attack you need control of an ISP router.
...which is not easy to get... but then again, people are the weaklink of the (security) chain.

Regards

Chubbzie
join:2014-02-11
Greenville, NC
Hitron CDA3
(Software) OpenBSD + pf

Chubbzie to pandora

Member

to pandora
Yep I thumbed TheWiseGuy See Profile's post up, he was giving you examples of innovation from young individuals not specifically prolific hackers. You are quite mistaken to believe only older, experienced persons are capable of such nefarious acts or the proper research & planning to crush the internet's core infrastructure.

Oh yeah, thanks for calling me an idiot without even understanding the motivation behind my up thumbing, enjoy your day.