Hackers could decapitate the internet soon

live627

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ethankcvds

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #1, on March 29th, 2012, 03:05 AM »
I'll believe it when I see it. They claimed that they were going to take down Facebook on a certain date and it never happened . :whistle:

Nao

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #2, on March 29th, 2012, 11:51 AM »
That couldn't happen anyway. Worst that could happen if the top-level DNS servers went down? The low-level servers just would keep their 'old' copy of DNS records, and would supply requests with that.... i.e., the only sites that would truly break are those that change their IP on that day.

It's easy to scare people away when you're a journalist. But it's even easier to just ask around. Of course, it's also less lucrative...

Arantor

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #3, on March 29th, 2012, 11:56 AM »
All the local ones would do just that, subject to the TTL expiring on the local copies. Of course, your own computer also has a resolver cache as well, but whatever, a prolonged attack on the root servers would, for most sites, be problematic. By 'sustained', I'm talking a minimum of 8 hours, ramping up towards 24.

This, of course, assumes local servers aren't set to keep their cache longer, but that has other problems.
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Arantor

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #5, on March 29th, 2012, 07:32 PM »
I don't think that's it. I think there is a viable and credible problem here, but until now there's never been a reason for them to attack.

Nao

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #6, on March 29th, 2012, 07:36 PM »
If there was an attack, don't you think that dns servers would simply be reconfigured to keep their caches data until it's resolved..?

Arantor

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #7, on March 29th, 2012, 08:06 PM »
If they know it's coming. If it's a sneak attack, you can't configure it in advance against this because of cache poisoning and generally TTL issues.

pivotraze

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #8, on March 29th, 2012, 11:37 PM »
I agree with Aranator and Nao here.

The likelyhood of shutting down the Top-Level DNS servers is really next to zero. If that were to happen, I would be shocked into a coma for the rest of my life.
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Arantor

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #9, on March 29th, 2012, 11:44 PM »
Well, I'm not ruling out such an attack. I have seen smaller-scale attacks on individual DNS providers in the past, so such an attack on the root servers has never been a question of if, merely when.

But if they're expecting it, they can perform cache lengthening to mitigate around it - though that will in itself cause all kinds of problems, it's not a cureall and should not be considered as such.

There are enough layers of caching that DNS won't stop immediately. But if the attack is sustained (8+, or even 24+ hours), those caches will naturally expire.

Nao

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Re: Hackers could decapitate the internet soon
« Reply #10, on March 30th, 2012, 03:05 PM »
Okay, let's share our IP addresses now, in case we need to get in touch! Oh, I mean phone numbers :P
Quote from pivotraze on March 29th, 2012, 11:37 PM
I agree with Aranator and Nao here.
I think you made a typo there!

Indeed, my name is Neo! Like that awesum cool guyz from da Matrix!

Arantor

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spoogs

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Stick a fork in it SMF

MultiformeIngegno

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Arantor

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