Remember when Anonymous threatened to destroy the entire internet? We laughed, and ultimately their words were just hacker hubris. But it got us thinking—could someone actually destroy the Internet?
We did some digging, and guess what: With enough effort, the entire thing can be shattered. Physically. Completely. Here's how to kill the net.
Before we destroy mankind's greatest, vastest machine, let's get something polite out of the way: don't. Destroying the Internet's core infrastructure would constitute the greatest act of global terrorism in history and/or a declaration of war against every sovereign nation in existence—to say nothing of the danger it would put both you and others in. This is a thought exercise.
So put on your thought exercise caps and come with us on a journey across the world. Let's figure out how this could possibly be done. Let's figure out exactly what it would take, what cords to rip—because the Internet under attack is an oft-invoked idea. What would true defeat really mean? What would the web's downfall even look like? Where would it happen? Core parts of the Internet have been (digitally) assaulted before—and there's no reason to believe it won't happen again.
The first step on this trip is mental. We need to begin by no longer treating the Internet like a ghost. It's made of more metal, plastic, and fiber than you can fathom—and it's spread across the whole world, a monster machine that hugs the entire globe. So we hunted down the web's physical foundation, across land and sea, to pinpoint exactly what you'd need to take out. Hypothetically. It turns out, Anonymous' threat isn't insane—just the way they talked about doing it. You can't destroy a signal while using it; the Internet's destruction requires analog violence, not some beefed up DDoS strike.
We always think of threats agains the Internet as cyberwarfare or some abstraction, virtual to the point of meaningless. But this is mostly bluster and software-mongering. The enormous, invisible truth of the Internet is that it's enormously strong. There's no main switch, no self-destruct button, no wire to be snipped for an easy blackout. The Internet, through a mix of chaotic serendipity and brilliant planning, is redundant to the point of near invincibility. Like a fiber optic hydra, you can hack off great expanses of it, and the thing will keep chugging. It's smart—almost self—sustaining, able to repair and reroute its paths from one continent and country to another, making up detours on the fly. This happens from time to time. Alan Mauldin, an expert with Internet infrastructure analysis firm TeleGeography, rattles off a few recent instances:
In February, two of the three cables serving East Africa were cut in the Red Sea. It impaired connectivity for some customers in a few Eastern African countries, but most folks were smart enough to have capacity on multiple cables on both coasts. There have been many cases of multiple cables damaged in the Med., Red Sea, and South China Sea in the past 5 to 6 years. The Japanese tsunami last year damaged a lot of cables - yet, the Internet connectivity to Japan was relatively unaffected due to multiple restoration options.The internet: tsunami proof.
But for all its durability, the Internet isn't immortal. It's strong because it was built to be strong. And because it was built, like you'd build a monument or bench, it can be destroyed. Just like every other physical thing on the planet. We think of it as a crystal cloud, an inexorable force of the cosmos that runs on its own, as susceptible to destruction as gravity. But let's get one thing straight: With enough effort, you could destroy the internet as thoroughly as a tree chopped straight through. The thousand-headed beast can be decapitated in full, not just hindering it, but slaying it. You just need to know where to start slicing.
by Sam Biddle, Gizmodo | Read more:
Photo: Clay Irving
