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“The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” Even if you physically firewalled every connection into a country all it takes is one littl

by rlt 5y ago

“The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” Even if you physically firewalled every connection into a country all it takes is one little node connected via RF (satellite, HF, etc) dropped near an open WiFi hotspot.

handrous 5y ago
Wifi hotspot asks for personal or corporate/server ID of the sender of packets coming from this new node, since it can't route the traffic any farther without that. Gets nothing. Drops that node's packets as either hostile or malfunctioning, and, regardless, useless, since it can't route them anywhere. OK, so maybe you manage to steal an ID. See how this is making attacks harder? Now you're stealing or forging identities just to get any packets routed, and if you do anything suspicious-looking you'll rapidly get your stolen ID on the automatically-managed collective shit-list and it'll stop being very useful. Because the volume of attacks is so much lower, your drop-a-radio-near-a-hotspot trick might even trip enough flags to get someone to come find the device, if you use it very much—and if you can't use it much without "burning" the hardware, then, well, sure seems like it made your job as an attacker a lot harder, right? There is nothing that guarantees the Internet will keep working the way it does now, and if an open Internet causes enough problems, it will be reigned in. How it works now is a choice, not a law of nature. I'm not happy about it, but that's just how it is. Either these kinds of attacks won't get much worse, or they'll get a lot worse and something like that will be what happens.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Wouldn't it be easier for the vulnerable beef packers and pipelines to simply disconnect from the public internet? What qualities do they have that would force them to burn down the world rather than fixing their shit?
  - handrous 5y ago
    I think between telling big businesses to spend a bunch of money and fix their shit and do things without the Internet, and adjusting the Internet—which would also make state-level attacks and foreign astroturf disinfo/propaganda campaigns harder to carry out—we're going to pick the latter. Again, unless these threats don't keep getting worse, though I expect they will.
fredophile 5y ago
The topology for the commercial internet today is not the same as the topology for the early internet which that quote is from. Today's internet is more of a hub and spoke model that is much more susceptible to damage if certain nodes are affected.

by rlt 5y ago

handrous 5y ago

Wifi hotspot asks for personal or corporate/server ID of the sender of packets coming from this new node, since it can't route the traffic any farther without that. Gets nothing. Drops that node's packets as either hostile or malfunctioning, and, regardless, useless, since it can't route them anywhere. OK, so maybe you manage to steal an ID. See how this is making attacks harder? Now you're stealing or forging identities just to get any packets routed, and if you do anything suspicious-looking you'll rapidly get your stolen ID on the automatically-managed collective shit-list and it'll stop being very useful. Because the volume of attacks is so much lower, your drop-a-radio-near-a-hotspot trick might even trip enough flags to get someone to come find the device, if you use it very much—and if you can't use it much without "burning" the hardware, then, well, sure seems like it made your job as an attacker a lot harder, right? There is nothing that guarantees the Internet will keep working the way it does now, and if an open Internet causes enough problems, it will be reigned in. How it works now is a choice, not a law of nature. I'm not happy about it, but that's just how it is. Either these kinds of attacks won't get much worse, or they'll get a lot worse and something like that will be what happens.

jessaustin 5y ago
Wouldn't it be easier for the vulnerable beef packers and pipelines to simply disconnect from the public internet? What qualities do they have that would force them to burn down the world rather than fixing their shit?
- handrous 5y ago
  I think between telling big businesses to spend a bunch of money and fix their shit and do things without the Internet, and adjusting the Internet—which would also make state-level attacks and foreign astroturf disinfo/propaganda campaigns harder to carry out—we're going to pick the latter. Again, unless these threats don't keep getting worse, though I expect they will.

fredophile 5y ago

The topology for the commercial internet today is not the same as the topology for the early internet which that quote is from. Today's internet is more of a hub and spoke model that is much more susceptible to damage if certain nodes are affected.