Death of the Internet ?

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Yup. Of course things will grow in scale, the scale of devices connected to the internet is increasing. Botnets have been around since the 90's, and poor default security on consumer devices is nothing new. It takes all of this throughput to target a single victim network. "Creating a recipe" and actually bringing something to fruition are vastly different. This may get more coverage now, but it's not like it's a sudden revelation, this is an evolution over time.
 
LancsRick":2ffypijm said:
Yup. Of course things will grow in scale, the scale of devices connected to the internet is increasing. Botnets have been around since the 90's, and poor default security on consumer devices is nothing new. It takes all of this throughput to target a single victim network. "Creating a recipe" and actually bringing something to fruition are vastly different. This may get more coverage now, but it's not like it's a sudden revelation, this is an evolution over time.

We'll have to disagree as I think that the scale of risk is logarithmic if not exponential.

One only has to look at past history. For many years when PC's came out, their security was really poor. Gradually software companies and manufacturers woke up to the issue with companies like Norton springing up into existence. The trouble was that many PC users were/are too stupid/lazy/mean to stay on top of malware. While it is just their own bank accounts that are getting hacked and emptied, the immediate effect is only on them but the real problem are botnets, as you know, since they can reek havoc with DDoS attacks. As in the case of the article I referred to. If we didn't have thick/stupid/lazy/mean PC users then there would most likely be no botnets.

But now we have this plethora of poorly secured IoT devices and there will be more and more of the wretched things. So botnets will get larger and larger, far easier to implement because there is NO easy means for any consumer to retro-actively apply any form of security as was the case in PCs. One is dependent on the IoT manufacturers getting it right in the first place and, as we both know, they are pretty poor at doing this. So as the number of IoT stuff out there increases (as it will do and is doing) then the DDoS attacks will become far more severe. OK - many companies have strategies in place to try and mitigate the effects of these but there still is an impact on their websites and also the additional traffic over the internet. Enough botnets and even those defences will be overwhelmed.

One only has to look at this graph

deviceforecast-1.png


Or in words ....

"The IoT will account for an increasingly huge number of connections: 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018. That year, it will be roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined."
 
I suppose I am a thick PC user, not being of the computer age, my computer knowledge/ability on a scale of 1 to 10 would be about -5.

I was told when attending a computer night class, back in the days when school computers were twin floppy drive (Pets), I think that was the model, don’t know the manufacturers name, that I would never be computer competent, by the class instructor, how right he was.

His reason for saying this was that I was trying to analyse what I was doing, instead of switching my brain off. :?

His words not mine “you do not need a brain to operate a computer”.

As Windows 10, is now onto version 1607, I think that instructor, all those years back must have been correct, because throughout my working life as an industrial electrical engineer, I had to get it right the first time, every time, not a second chance, let alone 1607 try’s and still not get it right. But in the computer world it appears that this incompetence is acceptable.

Chris, an old git.
 
You could be right Chris. Microsoft should incorporate their own protection for users, not rely on third party vendors. It would be like making cars and expecting other companies to supply and fit whatever brakes the customer thinks is necessary.

Remember this:

GM replies to Bill Gates


At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "if GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued the following press release -

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics -

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought "car NT", but then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would only run on five percent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault" warning light.

10. The airbag system would ask "are you sure?" before deploying.

11. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

12. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the cars performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Dept.

13. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

14. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
 
In the last 2 weeks windows 10 automatic updates has:

Home pc: stopped printer working and uninstalled some third party software.

Work pc: made changes to sage accounts settings meaning an hour or so to tech support to sort out.
 

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