Do Governments Even Need An Internet Kill Switch?
The recent internet shut downs in Egypt and Libya have highlighted just how easy it is to take down the internet if the governments want it disabled. Whilst it’s not a true disabling of the internet, it’s more of an organised demand that Tier-1 ISP’s stop traffic being able to flow through their networks.
The focus has now shifted onto other countries like the United States and if a kill switch is even needed.
Why does any government even need a kill switch? I thought important government run infrastructure are on their own private and heavily secure networks completely separate and isolated from the internet.
The justification in the U.S is that the president should be able to shut down the internet in the event of cyber war or sabotage to critical infrastructure like dams, classified documents and banks.
Considering all important infrastructure (especially bank infrastructure) runs on secured private network grids that are isolated from the internet makes the arguments redundant. Vital infrastructure cannot be hacked by someone in Romania or China with a laptop and internet connection even if the government is telling you that it can.
Seriously, what is a terrorist going to do; delete your email? Send you an email bomb? Control your mouse and open up notepad and write a scary hacker message? Please.
There is only one type of effective attack and it’s called a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack and once again it doesn’t damage anything, just overloads a server whilst the attacks are taking place.
Now if you would excuse me, I’m just going to pay a visit to my local dam website and perhaps mess around with the flood gates a little bit.