Massive Cyberattacks Like Hacking The Weather?
from the which-is-a-bigger-worry? dept
For years, fear mongerers from industry and government have been warning about the growing threat of "cyberwar" and "cyberattacks" where hackers would totally take down important critical systems that rely on the internet. The reality, however, is that it's not so easy for hackers to do this. In fact it's been exceedingly rare that hack attacks cause huge problems, taking down critical systems on a massive basis (though, they can do plenty of localized damage). Instead, as the NY Times notes, it seems that all of the big computing disasters lately have much more to do with overly complex computing systems, where some bug triggers a catastrophic failure. The article mentions things like the recent United Airlines computer problems and the recent Skype downtime, both of which were attributed to computer failures rather than malicious attacks (though, there's some debate over how true those explanations are). One of the most interesting points made in the article is that the complexity of many computing systems has reached such a level that pinpointing problems is a lot more like forecasting the weather than anything else. You have some general idea of where the problems might occur, but there's a lot of guesswork involved. Of course, it could be that this level of complexity is exactly why hacking attacks haven't been able to bring down most major systems. It's the same thing as the various (failed) attempts to control the weather. There are just too many variables to deal with.
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Filed Under: complexity, hackers
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Ineternet and the gov.
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thanks
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why
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One example is big cities. They are easy to "cripple" by breaking a seemingly insignificant part - like garbage collection, or traffic lights, elevators, etc.
One exception is the internet, which was designed specifically to work around damaged parts of itself.
Besides, the problem of cyberattacks isn't that someone would take down the internet, it is that they could get information, plant misinformation, and break small parts of large systems.
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Re: AC
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RE: Random Thoughts Sep 12
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RE Security Observer
Here is a question. How do we know that Intel or AMD (or both) have not already put in place a way for any Internet connected computer to allow access (a backdoor) built into them? How do we know that Google doesn't do funky things from their toolbar? Skype from deep within its code providing the ability for access?
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Re: RE Security Observer
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Re #9
I started looking for the specific article to link to it, but was also reading comments here and noticed you already pointed to it.
It seems not overly hard for the hacker elites with the ginormous botnets to take stuff out.
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September 13, 2007
Russian hackers corrupt U.S. consulate site
http://weblog.infoworld.com/zeroday/archives/2007/09/russian_hackers.html?source=rss
So, it's not a problem? Get serious!
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Re:
Er. We didn't say it wasn't a problem, but it's not the type of problem that the fear mongerers keep talking about: taking down major infrastructure. This was a minor hack that installed trojans. That's not taking down significant infrastructure... it's just a nuisance.
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