Is it possible to "break" the Internet? Bashny.Net

Technological advances over the last century has led to an interesting paradox: people can not imagine my life without the existence of which could not afford even imagine 30-40 years ago. In the field of information once it was radio, followed by television came, and then the Internet arrived. Yes arrived so tightly that small children are no longer put in the corner, they just shut off the Internet. And my mother 60-year-old regularly looks at the tablet weather forecasts, news, and videos for the care of dogs on YouTube.

We all perceive the Internet as a given, and when he briefly lost, we will resent the driver, which at speeds cropped Daughter belovlasaya on a pink jeep. But can something cause global disruption of the whole web, at the sight of which any spider probably moved to mind?



According to some reports this is how the card looks the modern Internet. Initially, the network was conceived decentralized and flexible routed. In the case of rupture of one compound would bypass the data on the other. Looking at a map, it is difficult to imagine on what points to hit, so that everything stopped working. But let's still a little fantasize about what actions, processes and events, artificial and natural, might seriously disrupt the operation of this complex organism (do not forget that not all of this are too fancy).

Let's cuttin wire h4> No, it's not advice to girls, a guy who firmly entrenched in the games genre MMORPG. At present, about 99% of the traffic is transmitted over cable networks, on the twisted pair, dating back to the entrance, to just such deep-sea and oceanic optic trunk cables.

At the beginning of 2014, there were 285 submarine routes. They are all carefully plotted on publicly available map . The exact place of the output of some of them on the land are not known, some neat prikopat from prying eyes, while others can be found on just such a clear ads:

Damage to one or more cables will not lead to a complete collapse, the brakes will only add some resources. The total capacity of the channel, based on the extrapolation of data from previous years should be about 1Tbps for Africa to nearly 100Tbps for Europe. The use of channels is approximately 50-75%. Damage to a cable can be easily compensated spare capacity remaining. To completely separate continents, certain international terrorist Mahmoud Ivanovich Van Johnson Rabinovich Ji will need to spend a lot of resources to track down all exit points, to dig the cables and damage them simultaneously. But it is also desirable as long as possible to avoid damage to places of maintenance crews, who immediately rush to fix the problem. Whatever it was, it did not completely destroy the network, it will break it on a continental segments, each of which will continue to exist independently.

Root servers h4> The domain name was created primarily for human convenience. habrahabr.ru remember easier than 212.24.44.141 and 212.24.44.133. Information on all domains of the most popular domain zones (com, net, org) is contained in the root servers. A total of 13, they are referred to as the Latin alphabet from A to M. Hypothetically, if they are in some way disabled, after clearing caches provider domain names will no longer be permitted, and even though the network will work to get users will not be able to.

But this is the theory. If you go into the details of all there are 13 IP-addresses belonging to the root servers. Each of the servers operated by raznichnymi organizations, both commercial and public, as well as various research, including NASA and the US Army Research Laboratory. Moreover, each IP corresponds to 1-2 to the server 149 in various locations around the world. On the website root servers are listed as organizations that support the root servers, and the location of these servers. And as a result of no is 13, and 473. In addition, each of the locations also has internal redundancy of data and power.

Servers are so protected from a variety of attacks that the company Verisign Inc., which supports two of them, on the basis of its experience in the protection of servers began offering its solutions to protect against DDoS as a separate commercial product.

Thus, to make a successful attack on the root servers is more difficult than to cut cables. Although certain resources, in general, possible, and the results of a successful attack would be very harmful.

Can destroy data centers? h4> It's no secret that few places its data at the office or in an apartment / on the balcony / garage. Most of the data is concentrated in data centers, which are currently known to 3269 in 102 countries. They are all in the best traditions applied to handy map (by the way, in addition to the cards on the site has detailed information on the connection and possible threats to the characteristic each country). Data centers are scattered over all continents, except Antarctica, one is even on Greenland and Oceania.

With the destruction of the data center all the more complicated. The largest data centers are protected better than military installations and storage of property and occupy large areas that are not one of the usual air bomb destroyed. But the air defense of any country is unlikely to allow the systematic bombing of dozens of facilities on its territory. Although certain types of weapons (I will not draw the attention of nurses knowledge of their names) still can destroy all the electronics in one fell swoop. If a hypothetical terrorist somehow managed to almost simultaneously actuate a plurality of such devices aimed at key data centers, the damage would have been incredible. But the need for such an attack resources are growing exponentially in comparison with the previous.

In order to save, you can not destroy everything, but only the key, as well as the point of exchange. This will be enough to significantly disrupt the routing and transmission of data.

A more exotic options h4> Some time ago among the интернет-экспертов the view was that if you type in google the word google, the internet can break. Perhaps, in their view, after this action the whole world had turned into primeval chaos, and then collapse into a singularity. Questions about this even seriously wondered on specialized sites, and that the most paradoxical, they seriously were given answers. But, of course, there are more realistic options.

The political will h5> This option has worked in North Korea, where access to the outside Internet is only chosen people, and for the rest of its existence, as a whole, life-threatening. We also know about the existence of the Internet circuit breakers from China, Syria and Iran and some other countries. There are also cases of use of circuit breakers during the military confrontation in Syria:

Egypt, too, at one time caused a stir:

Most of these tools are kept secret by the government, because no one knows how many there are, how they operate and in which cases can be activated. In the case of military confrontation information space should work "correctly", ie as beneficial to the military. If they will be profitable ignorance of the masses, the information space should not work at all. Because shutdown of a country from the outside world or forcing service providers to disable the internal equipment looks quite real.

Solar Flare h5> As a result, not fully investigated processes within the closest stars to us, sometimes there are local emissions stream of charged particles and electromagnetic radiation in a wide range. These emissions are narrowly focused and moving at tremendous speeds from the Sun radially. If the thread meet on the way the Earth, we can observe the different phenomena, and not very interesting. Charged particles are deflected in the main magnetic field, and a rigid electromagnetic radiation is attenuated due to re-emission of secondary. One of the most beautiful and romantic manifestations such reradiations has a very unromantic name - auroral eruptions (or auroral glow):

In addition to the auroras (which are not so polar, and after strong flares are frequently observed at the latitude of Kiev), streams of particles that still erupt deeper cause magnetic storms, failures and sporadic transmission of radio waves, at least - the failure of the electronics. All effects are observed mainly one or two days, the strength and destructiveness varies during this period.

Very rarely recorded superstrong flash collision particle flux after such outbreaks can lead to catastrophic consequences. Described the passage of such an outbreak in 1859, when the telegraph was almost the peak of development of electronics. Throughout Europe and North America were observed failure of telegraph systems. Operators beat electrical discharges, sparks telegraph wires, some telegraph systems continued to send and receive messages, even when disconnected from the power supply. Auroral glow was so bright that the US miners have confused it with the dawn and started to prepare breakfast.

In these years, a coronal mass ejection forces would lead to the complete failure of the set of equipment, including routers and servers, and the restoration would take a lot of time. In 2012, the release of a similar strength passed close to Earth. Then the probability of its collision with Earth was estimated at 12%. Two years ago, we were lucky, but luck whether the next? ..

Nuclear war h5> I think that comment is superfluous here. Most of the equipment housed in the largest cities. Beats just erase them from the face of the planet, along with all the data and people. Electromagnetic surge that accompanies the explosion will damage everything what not reach the shock wave. However, after these events, and so will the people not to the Internet, you will need to somehow survive to destroy the world. Perhaps this is the most probable scenario today the destruction of the global network.

What the result? h4> What would result in the disappearance of the Internet? There remains only a dream. Will we become better? Let's start there to communicate more with each other? Or is it translated in a massive depression, alcoholism and suicide? One can only fantasize.

However, an interesting fact is known. After the fire at the Ostankino TV tower, when Moscow and the suburbs were left without television, pharmacies have recorded a surge in sales of contraceptives (Daughtery wife can begin to envy in this place). Definitely people are very dependent on the existing information environment, and many did not immediately find, what to do if they are suddenly deprived of this space. But that is another story.

Source: habrahabr.ru/company/ua-hosting/blog/235371/