How an unfixed Net glitch could strand you offline

AP ^ | May 9, 2010 | PETER SVENSSON

[ConservativeStatement]

NEW YORK – In 1998, a hacker told Congress that he could bring down the Internet in 30 minutes by exploiting a certain flaw that sometimes caused online outages by misdirecting data. In 2003, the Bush administration concluded that fixing this flaw was in the nation's "vital interest."

Fast forward to 2010, and very little has happened to improve the situation. The flaw still causes outages every year. Although most of the outages are innocent and fixed quickly, the problem still could be exploited by a hacker to spy on data traffic or take down websites. Meanwhile, our reliance on the Internet has only increased. The next outage, accidental or malicious, could disrupt businesses, the government or anyone who needs the Internet to run normally.

[Repeat Offender]

Meanwhile, our reliance on the Internet has only increased. The next outage, accidental or malicious, could disrupt businesses, the government or anyone who needs the Internet to run normally.

Here's hoping it only affects the government..... at least if they can't work the taxpayer will save some money.

[Omedalus]

BGP FTL.

[taxcontrol]

Old news to the cybersecurity community. For more details see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Gateway_Protocol.

Migration to IPv6 and DNSSEC will make this less of an issue.

[bgill]

the problem still could be exploited by a hacker to spy on data traffic or take down websites.

Hussein will use this as an excuse for all the missing older sites that state he was born in Kenya.

[max americana]

It’s not old news....just Barry’s MSM friends trying to ‘educate” the masses on the upcoming net neutrality/federal control of the web.

[Tunehead54]

"It’s not old news....just Barry’s MSM friends trying to ‘educate” the masses on the upcoming net neutrality/federal control of the web."

---

Yep! And here's their justification: ""It's kind of everybody's problem, because it impacts the stability of the Internet, but at the same time it's nobody's problem because nobody owns it," says Doug Maughan, who deals with the issue at the Department of Homeland Security. "

Don't worry - the FCC will fix that ... ;-(

BTW - it seems they don't need a centralized database requiring all to rely on it - they just need numerous "mirror" sites like so many file servers use ... sigh.

[ridesthemiles]

What REALLY happened on Wall Street last Thursday????