My Bold Prediction: 2017 – The Year of the Cyber Apocalypse
Hmmm, where were you when the Internet crashed?
Don’t panic, you didn’t blink and miss it. The Internet has not crashed. But there is an ongoing debate about whether it could really occur. I should clarify my premise by explaining that I am talking about a total, world-wide crash of the Internet. It definitely would be a Where were you when moment if it did happen.
The brief research I did initially suggested that, in theory at least, it cannot happen. The Internet is a collection of independent networks maintained and controlled by different people or governments. Each network is designed to be redundant – if one network goes down, users can still gain access through another one.
The worst case scenario, again in theory, is knocking out a large portion of the Internet or even an entire country. Large power outages or an earthquake could do the deed. It has been suggested that the Internet as an entity could survive a nuclear war. That seems to me to be a moot point given that there would not be anyone left alive to confirm the hypothesis.
On the other hand, earlier this year a U.S. technology security vendor predicted that an actual shutdown would occur in 2017 for a 24 hour period and cause financial markets to nosedive.
How would you go about pulling off this feat? It involves what is referred to as a denial-of-service attack aka DoS attack – a cyber invasion where the instigator makes the network unavailable temporarily by disrupting services of a host connected to the Internet.
A DoS attack floods the targeted resource with superfluous requests to overload the system and prevent legitimate requests from being fulfilled. Think of it liking walking into a Tim Hortons at 8:00 am and ordering 783 extra-large coffees – the first one double-double, the second one double-cream no sugar, the third one double-cream one-and-a-half sugars… You get the idea.
Large scale DDoS (distributed denials of service) attacks have already occurred. Last October, a DDoS attack shut down Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify and a number of other websites for over two hours. The technology security vendor makes the case that these massive attacks were in fact cyber criminals testing out their cyber missiles in preparation for the big offensive.
Metaphors for the Internet are almost too numerous to mention. One of the early and still oft-quoted metaphors is the Internet is a highway, or perhaps more accurately, a network of highways. Once you are on it, you can go almost anywhere.
Extending the metaphor makes a massive DDoS attack the equivalent of the entire population of Toronto getting onto Highway 401 at 4:30 in the afternoon. Actually, I think I have lived that nightmare a few times. But that’s a story for another day.
The movie Field of Dreams immortalized the phrase If you build it, he will come. I tend to believe that the same principle applies in cyberspace: If you build it, they will find a way to break it – for monetary gain or just because they can.
I am officially going on record with my prediction that the Internet will crash this year. Call it the Cyber Apocalypse. Remember: You heard it here first.
~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog .
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