On the morning on November 7, while folks in my part of the country (Oklahoma) were still trying to come to grips with being rocked by two damage-causing earthquakes in less than 24 hours (that’s unheard of for OK), a previously unknown software bug in the BGP function of Juniper routers caused a major hiccup in the Internet. Details on what exactly the problem was are very thin, but Juniper acknowledged that “a small percentage of customers” was affected. Unfortunately, that small percentage happened to be companies that run routers in the core of the Internet (like Level 3). The outage was widespread, but short.

A CNN story leads with a sentence beginning “The seemingly indestructible Internet…” Seemingly indestructible? For years I have been of the opinion that the Internet is extremely fragile and has only been able to survive this long because of sheer momentum. Here’s my analogy: The Internet is like a runner stumbling over a hurdle. While it may still be on its feet, the inevitable outcome is that its momentum will bring it to a spectacular, smashing conclusion.

So, if the Internet is so fragile, you may ask, why has it not crashed yet as a result of terrorism, nation-state attack, or simple accident? Allow me to present my theories.

• The terrorists want to cause terror, not boredom, which is exactly what most of the developed world would experience if the Internet failed.  Large numbers of dead bodies get more media attention than 5 billion people bored to tears, not to mention that the media wouldn’t be able to distribute images of the terrorism without the Internet, and the terrorists wouldn’t be able to take credit without it.  So no, they won’t take down the Internet.

• The nation-state attackers would love to take down the Internet because of the economic damage it would do to their adversary, but they realize this: their nation and its economy is in the same boat as who they would be attacking.  If the Internet core failed, the world would end up with several dozen very small and useless Internets.  E-commerce would cease to exist until everything was put back together.  You can’t wage war if you can’t fund it, or communicate to your troops, or schedule the movement of supplies.  Nope, these guys aren’t that dumb either.  (Although a leader like the one the North Koreans had might just be crazy enough to do it anyway.)

• That leaves us with a simple accident.  Why has this not happened yet?  Good question.  We’ve gotten close, although I think some of the close calls may have been made to look like accidents.  Some very smart people watch the core of the Internet, though, and so far they’ve been able to stem the damage of these accidents very quickly.

I will tell you who is going to take down the Internet: it’s going to be some crazy, over-worked, computer nerd at a small regional ISP who’s just going to snap one day and unleash hell upon the Tubes.  Sure, the Feds will label this nerd a “terrorist,” but he/she will really be nothing more than a nut job.  Mark my words.

Many of my friends call me a cynic.  I believe I am a realist.

Brett Edgar

Brett is a Founder and the Director of Managed Security Services at TRUE. He has been working in the system and network forensics field since graduating from the University of Tulsa with a B.S. Computer Science in 2003. He speaks hexadecimal fluently and is TRUE's resident human Ethernet transceiver. He holds CISSP, CSSLP, and CNSS 4011-4015 certificates, loves MLB and NCAA Football, and when he gets tired of hexadecimal, he goes home to hang out with his wife and kid.

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Reuters is reporting[reuters.com] that Canadian soldiers have been ordered not to post personal information to social networking sites like MySpace[myspace.com] and Facebook[facebook.com]. The apparent motive is safety – “Al Qaeda operatives are monitoring Facebook and other social networking sites.”

Many have heard of the potential effects that sharing the wrong information online can have on our careers and social lives, but few would view death as one of those potential effects.  “This may seem over dramatic … (but) the information can be used to target members for further exploitation. It also opens the door for your families and friends to become potential targets as well.”

Are these soldiers and their families really in danger or is this an exaggeration or a command with a hidden motive?

Dominic Schulte

Dominic Schulte currently serves as the Managing Director of Security Services & Consulting at TRUE, where he is responsible for the execution of a wide range of security and regulatory compliance services. Previously, Dominic worked with the National Security Agency (NSA) as a Global Network Exploitation and Vulnerability Analyst in the National Security Incident and Response Center (NSIRC). He holds CISSP, QSA and CNSS 4011-4015 certifications.

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner has been widely reported as a feat of technological engineering. The plane has three separate networks on-board: an administrative network, a flight control/navigation network, and a passenger network. Everything about this plane seems cool from the Ethernet jacks in the armrest of every seat, to the completely computerized flight controls system, to the ability for the plane to automatically adjust humidity settings based on the number of passengers on-board. There’s just one problem. Reports indicate[foxnews.com] that the three networks (administrative, flight, and passenger) are not completely separated. There is at least the ability for one-way communications from one of the networks to another. But unless this is a connectionless, no guarantee of delivery, UDP-like fire-the-message-and-hope-it-arrives communications protocol, there are obviously two-way connections, even if control information was designed (in software) to be transmitted in only one direction.

So these networks are not air-gapped, the only foolproof way to prevent one network from talking to another. To make matters worse, it seems that the administrative network is accessible via Wi-Fi (for maintenance personnel), particularly while the aircraft is sitting at the gate. So a sufficiently skilled 16-year-old Johnny Q. Hacker could sit comfortably in an airport terminal with his laptop and attempt to hack into a 787′s administrative network.

I hope they are using WPA2 with AES encryption and rolling keys…

Brett Edgar

Brett is a Founder and the Director of Managed Security Services at TRUE. He has been working in the system and network forensics field since graduating from the University of Tulsa with a B.S. Computer Science in 2003. He speaks hexadecimal fluently and is TRUE's resident human Ethernet transceiver. He holds CISSP, CSSLP, and CNSS 4011-4015 certificates, loves MLB and NCAA Football, and when he gets tired of hexadecimal, he goes home to hang out with his wife and kid.

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We can all breathe a collectively sigh of relief – terrorists now have the ability to communicate securely[reuters.com]. I was really starting to be concerned for their privacy…

Dominic Schulte

Dominic Schulte currently serves as the Managing Director of Security Services & Consulting at TRUE, where he is responsible for the execution of a wide range of security and regulatory compliance services. Previously, Dominic worked with the National Security Agency (NSA) as a Global Network Exploitation and Vulnerability Analyst in the National Security Incident and Response Center (NSIRC). He holds CISSP, QSA and CNSS 4011-4015 certifications.