Neil Schneider wrote:
How many backbone routers are there? How many security vulnerabilities
have been reported for Cisco IOS? Take out the routers and root
servers and the network will fall to it's knees.
That's the big one from the software side. If you take out IOS on
routers, you have done the equivalent of taking out Microsoft on computers.
Taking out DNS won't stop the internet--everything communicates via IP
underneath. Everybody would just switch to IP numbers until an
alternative came up. Given the number of characters in some of these
domains, IP numbers would be an improvement.
The big things:
1) Physical links--90+% of Internet traffic in North America probably
passes through a small number of optic fiber bundles. Backhoe failure
is a wonderful way to kill traffic.
2) Exchange points--Does the vast majority of Internet traffic still go
through the MAEs--MAE East, Central, and West?
3) Router infrastructure--Compromising IOS would kill all the core
routers. Monocultures suck.
4) Traffic overload--A giant Windows botnet that does nothing but send
bogus traffic to all the non-botnet machines on the net.
5) DNS--wouldn't take it down, but included for completeness
Number 3 is the most dangerous. Number 4 is the most probable. Number
5 is the only one easily fixed.
-a
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