An Internet Kill Switch ?

[Mike O'Dell]

the inclination is based on certain facts.
the NTIA does in fact have a command center wherein there are
representatives of all the major carriers all the time, and if
an emergency is declared, NTIA can assume control of the PSTN
and the long-haul fiber trunking and direct the carriers to do
whatever they say. they could order the shut down of enough
fiber transmission capacity that the effect would be indistinguishable
from a "kill switch" - not very damn much would be working
and a great many areas of the US Internet would very quickly
enter deep congestive collapse.

the implications of doing this, however, are mind-boggling.

btw - if you haven't seen Dan Geer's latest missive, wander over,
have a cup of tea, and have a read:

     http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2479677

Dan is the person that kicked the hell out of the anthill when
it published the famous paper on the danger of monoculture
in the Internet environment. His company, @Stake, was a contractor
for Microsoft at the time and he was promptly fired for provoking them.
I happen to be in the offices of @Stake for a Technical Advisory Board
meeting (of which Dan was chair) when the feces were seeking the blades.


     -mo




On 6/20/13 9:40 AM, Bob Bruhns wrote:
> Who makes this stuff up?  The USA could never have had a global 
> internet kill switch anyway.  The way the internet works, all anybody 
> needs is a routing network and name servers (and guess what, they use 
> them every day).
>
> Oh, the USA flipped their switch?  That just means that a bunch of OC 
> lines from the USA won't work any more.  All of the other ones would 
> still be zipping along.  The US would be cutting off its internet, to 
> spite its detractors.  It would take a coordinated effort of all of 
> our herd-of-cats world governments to make the whole global internet 
> stop working.  Or maybe, if one group MAKES all of the routers, then 
> some Trojan self-destruct could be built in.  That would mess up the 
> internet... for a while.
>
> But government leaders don't understand that stuff, and either do the 
> usual consumers of news.
>
> It might be interesting to shut down all public North American 
> internet systems now and then.  We would see how many supposedly 
> super-secure isolated networks actually run through it.  Will the next 
> big super-leak come from an ISP in East Podunk?  What really happened 
> to Flight 800, anyhow?  And who is in Jimmy Hoffa's tomb?
>
>    Bob, WA3WDR
>
>
> On 6/20/2013 3:27 AM, Andre Kesteloot wrote:
> http://www.infowars.com/russian-cyberspace-head-calls-for-internet-kill-switch/ 
>
>
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