Posts Tagged ‘Internet’
The Cyber-Weapon that Could Take Down the Internet
JACOB ARON-NEW SCIENTIST: A new cyberweapon could take down the entire internet – and there’s not much that current defences can do to stop it. So say Max Schuchard at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and his colleagues, the masterminds who have created the digital ordnance. But thankfully they have no intention of destroying the net just yet. Instead, they are suggesting improvements to its defences.
Schuchard’s new attack pits the structure of the internet against itself. Hundreds of connection points in the net fall offline every minute, but we don’t notice because the net routes around them. It can do this because the smaller networks that make up the internet, known as autonomous systems, communicate with each other through routers. When a communication path changes, nearby routers inform their neighbours through a system known as the border gateway protocol (BGP). These routers inform other neighbours in turn, eventually spreading knowledge of the new path throughout the internet.
OMG, LOL, WTF, ILY: Peeps now talk n txt msg lingo
ASSOCIATED PRESS: “ILY!” Susan Maushart’s 16-year-old daughter often calls out over her shoulder as she leaves the house. Sure, actual words would be better. But Mom knows not to complain.
“A mother of teenagers is pathetically grateful for an ‘I love you’ no matter what form it takes,” she observes.
Then there are the various forms of “LOL” that her teens use in regular parlance – it’s become a conjugable verb by now. And of course, there’s the saltier acronym used by son Bill: “WTF, Mom?!” But before you judge, note that former VP candidate Sarah Palin just used that one in a TV interview. And CNN’s Anderson Cooper used it on his show the other night.
Acronyms have been around for years. But with the advent of text and Twitter-language, it certainly feels like we’re speaking in groups of capital letters a lot more. It’s a question that intrigues linguists and other language aficionados – even though they’ll tell you they have absolutely no concrete research on it.
Egypt crisis shows how easily the government can turn off Internet
CNBC: The move by Egyptian authorities to seal off the country almost entirely from the Internet shows how easily a state can isolate its people when telecoms providers are few and compliant.
In an attempt to stop the frenzied online spread of dissent against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, not only Facebook and Twitter but the entire Internet was shut down overnight, leaving some 20 million users stranded.
Hundreds of service providers offer connections in Egypt, but just four own the infrastructure..
Daniel Karrenberg, chief scientist at RIPE NCC, a European not-for-profit Internet infrastructure forum, says immature markets with few providers can achieve such shutdowns relatively easily.
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