Arguing about whether or not the government should be allowed a “kill switch” for the internet is a moot point.
The bottom line is they already have various capabilities that are, essentially, an internet kill switch. The following report demonstrates how easily the globe’s internet infrastructure could be taken down by government, as well as rogue criminal organizations:
Millions of computer users across the world could be blocked off from the Internet as early as March 8 if the FBI follows through with plans to yank a series of servers originally installed to combat corruption.
Last year, authorities in Estonia apprehended six men believed responsible for creating a malicious computer script called the DNSChanger Trojan. Once set loose on the Web, the worm corrupted computers in upwards of 100 countries, including an estimated 500,000 in America alone. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation later stepped up by replacing the rogue Trojan with servers of their own in an attempt to remediate the damage, but the fix was only temporary. Now the FBI is expected to end use of those replacement servers as early as next month and, at that point, the Internet for millions could essentially be over.
…
Who, exactly, will be affected? Security company IID (Internet Identity) believes that half of all Fortune 500 companies and more than two dozen major government entities in the US are still currently infected with the worm as of early 2012. Unless they take the proper steps to eradicate the Trojan from their systems, millions of users worldwide will be left hog-tied, helplessly attempting to navigate to nonexistent servers and, in effect, without the Web.
“At this rate, a lot of users are going to see their Internet break on March 8,” Rod Rasmussen, president and chief technology officer at Internet Identity, cautions Krebs On Security.
Source: RT
