| Firesale!
Posted: 7/9/2009 1:32:27 PM | The recent NK Cyber D.O.S. attack had me remember about the now (in)famous 2001 China-U.S. plane collision incident, where Chinese hackers declared an anti-American Battle. It affected us in Canada too (at least at the public company I worked at was hacked).
I saw a movie a while back with... oh ya... Bruce Willis. The latest Die Hard flick. I know, I know.... it's only a movie. But how likely do you think it is that we could have a Firesale?
A Firesale is a massive cyber-attack on infrastructure where "everything must go" -- hence the term Firesale. It involves the simultaneous disruption of communication, transportation, commerce, etc. So far it's strictly the stuff of Hollywood fantasy.... or is it? | |
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| Firesale!
Posted: 7/9/2009 2:52:21 PM |
So far it's strictly the stuff of Hollywood fantasy.... or is it?
It depends where the attack originates really. Government and important sites will presumably have backup contingencies for these things (at least if they don't, someone isn't doing their job right!). If the attack is coming from outside, well, a little sub can go and cut a cable, or someone can take down a satellite. Another way of doing it is to widen the pipe to accept all of the DOS requests (I read a great story about a guy who effectively stopped a DOS attack using some rather advanced network management techinques - his company was being shaken down for 30k by the attackers).
Ultimately these attacks are nothing more than an annoyance. It's just e-peen waving, especially in the case of North Korea (the recent attacks) and Russia (against, I think, Latvia or some other Baltic state). I'm sure if the US or Europe really put our minds to bringing down the Nigerian Interweb, we'd be able to do it in a matter of seconds ;). | |
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| Firesale!
Posted: 7/9/2009 10:28:18 PM | There is a *huge* difference between DDoSing a website and attacks against infrastructure. The former is extremely easy to pull off with access to the right tools.
It's important to keep in mind that this isn't done by NK (where people don't have Internet access - at all), but by suspected NK sympathizers. My guess is that its probably some Chinese group. To give you an idea about net access in NK: even the DPRK official news site is hosted in Japan. And it looks like a Geocities website.
Anyways, this is no big deal. Really. DDoS happen everyday, and are easy to recover from. The news media are just making a story out of it because of the novelty of cyber-anything and the fact that NK is still a hot topic. | |
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| Firesale!
Posted: 7/10/2009 8:20:32 AM |
A Firesale is a massive cyber-attack on infrastructure where "everything must go" -- hence the term Firesale. It involves the simultaneous disruption of communication, transportation, commerce, etc. So far it's strictly the stuff of Hollywood fantasy.... or is it? It's very much fantasy. DoS attacks are the website version of women on POF who get 100 emails a day from players. They still can sift through most of the garbage, and it doesn't hamper their use of POF. Even if it does, it doesn't have to wreck their lives. Properly managed websites do the same, and sort out the good from the bad, and even if they are not properly managed, they don't need to expose your computer systems to the internet.
Frankly, if you have a system that is insecure enough to allow your system to crash because of DoS attacks, you've really not designed your computer system properly, and even if you cut the internet off, by just pulling the broadband cable out of the computer, you'd still be better off getting someone to rebuild your computers, because you have no idea how to make a decent computer system. | |
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| Firesale!
Posted: 7/10/2009 11:51:12 AM |
a little sub can go and cut a cable, or someone can take down a satellite.
There was a case about 7 or 8 years ago where there was a major accident and fire in a interstate tunnel(somewhere in the New York/New Jersey area) which damaged a large internet cable link. The resultant loss/slowness of service was quite significant until repairs could be made. | |
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| Firesale!
Posted: 7/11/2009 9:20:47 AM | I have seen similar movies in the past. How likely? Very much so. What could dereail a modern economy and military faster than shutting down the tech?  | |
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