New cyber weapon could take down entire internet
18 Feb 2011
University boffins say they've devised a way to take down the internet by turning core parts of its routing protocol against itself. The cyber weapon could take down the entire internet - and there is nothing current defences can do about it, say the scientists.
But thankfully they have no intention of destroying the net just yet. Instead, they are suggesting improvements to its defences.
The attack was developed by University of Minnesota PhD candidate Max Schuchard and his colleagues and presented last week at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego, California, and reported in the New Scientist.
It 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. 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.
A previously discovered method of attack, dubbed ZMW - after its three creators Zhang, Mao and Wang, researchers in the US who came up with their version four years ago - disrupts the connection between two routers by interfering with BGP to make it appear that the link is offline.
