Could terrorists destroy the Internet

Answer 1

The internet can be thought of as the nervous system of modern civilization.

Could the Internet be destroyed by terrorists or other hostile factions?

This is an important and justified question, as major Internet attacks have become increasingly common.

Some Internet attacks inflict actual physical damage to Internet hardware, but most involve the use of hostile computer code, such as viruses, worms and logic bombs.

Physical Attacks

Near Santa Cruz, CA in April, 2009, vandals climbed down an unguarded manhole and cut key Internet and phone lines. Much disruption ensued. Nursing home employees were unable to call ambulances, and had to run down to the fire station to get help. Few citizens were able to call the police. Looters took advantage of the situation, knowing police probably wouldn't be notified in time to stop thieving. To allow citizens to flag them down, police started driving slowly up and down the streets. Many stores couldn't make card transactions. Many ATMs couldn't dispense money. Several large stores stopped conducting business during the outage because they needed the Internet in order to function. Much business revenue was lost. Workers earned smaller paychecks.

Could such disruption occur on a national or global scale? Could a motivated group paralyze the world's cyber nervous system by physically disabling its Internet hardware?

The short answer: it's possible, but quite unlikely. Such an act would require a vast, coordinated effort. The global Internet is distributed and resilient; it is very good at finding ways around breaks in its webwork. Further, technicians stand at the ready to promptly fix holes in the Internet. Factions trying to physically disable the Internet would find themselves up against a giant game of whack-a-mole, with a disabled area popping back up into action soon after being damaged.

Cyber Attacks

What about cyber attacks, involving disabling or corrupting the Internet with malicious computer code?

This is a far more serious concern.

Major cyber attacks have become commonplace globally. An indication of this proliferation: General Keith Alexander, head of the U.S. National Security Agency, said that there had been a 17-fold increase in computer attacks on American infrastructure from 2009 to 2011.

Here are three examples of the untold number of ongoing cyber assault incidents:

In September, 2012, the world's biggest oil company, Saudi Arabian-based Aramco, had all of its offices' hard drives wiped clean by a virus. The hackers stated that their motive was political.

In June, 2012, The New York Times wrote that the Obama Administration has been engaged in an escalating series of cyber attacks against Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities.

In August, 2008, according to high-level U.S. security consultant Jeffrey Carr, during the Russo-Georgian war, Russia attacked Georgia with both conventional weapons and cyber assaults on Georgian government websites.

A New Arena for War

The U.S. Government is taking cyber warfare very seriously.

"The Pentagon has formally recognized cyberspace as a new domain in warfare," according to William J. Lynn, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense. "[Cyberspace] has become just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space."

The U.S. Air Force has been continuously improving its cyber fighting capability. Instead of fighting physical battles in physical space, cyber fighters wage cyber warfare in cyber space using logic bombs and other computer code constructs.

What would happen if the U.S. found itself losing a major cyber battle?

According to the magazine NetworkWorld, the President is prepared to order airstrikes on physical sources of Internet disruption.

This could be a very difficult decision to make, however, because a physical attack on a cyber target could lead to a physical war.

China, Russia, Iran and Korea have strong cyber armies. "China has plans of winning informationised wars by the mid-21st century," according to the magazine The Economist. Launching a physical airstrike against a belligerent cyber installation in a country like China could ignite a global powder keg.

Is the Internet in danger of a terrorist attack? A widespread physical disabling of the Internet appears quite unlikely, but a hostile commandeering and disruption of the world's cyber highways is an increasingly grave concern of major governments.