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Christopher Allan Webber

On "Someone is Learning to Take Down the Internet"

Christopher Allan Webber at

"Someone is Learning to Take Down the Internet" is an article by Bruce Schneier. And it sounds serious.

It sounds like it's the really big pieces of infrastructure being probed for vulnerabilities: the DNS system, ISPs, and SSL CA's.

Remember that most encrypted communication uses DNS and SSL CA's, which are both highly centralized systems. You only need to really compromise one "trusted" CA and MITM DNS, and you can do anything on almost all systems these days.

It would be different if we were using something "web of trust" like, but even the most popular ~decentralized systems in public use rely on what's in reality a lot of centralization.

So yeah, I think we're very vulnerable.

AJ Jordan, EricxDu likes this.

Christophe Schockaert, Claes Wallin (韋嘉誠), Kesara shared this.

I was thinking it was either for warfare or to disrupt civil unrest.

There's http://named-data.net/ which provides a new content centric set of network protocols that might be more robust to DDoS style attacks. (Since it replicates heavily accessed resources.)

Or at least self hosting video files should be safer with named data.

Diane Trout at 2016-09-16T03:34:50Z

If the general message is "the Internet can be disrupted, especially by state actors, so just be aware of that", then OK, great, we all know that. But citing anonymous sources? That's just FUD.

Maybe the problem is real, but if companies won't talk about it, I really don't care if they get burned later. (Although it could suck if when they get burned the rest of us are burdened, too, and then I would care, but only about the damage to the rest of us, not the damage to them.)

Douglas Perkins at 2016-09-16T05:51:10Z

My impression is the problem is real.

I also like the principle of a web of thrust, and I feel like it would be a good option within a community built Internet.

I was attracted by the principle of dot-bit (namecoin: https://bit.namecoin.info/), but as I am realizing that bitcoin will tend to be unsustainable and highly ressource consuming as time goes, I fear the same problem would lead to a real weakness for a DNS alternative.

Is there already work done for Internet services based on a WOT ?

Christophe Schockaert at 2016-10-09T09:10:25Z