Internet Needs To Be Redone? Yes Or No

[livinthailandos]

I'm sure i'll get many differerent answers & suggestions, so I hope to get a useful commentary on here. As I understand the internet was built around being a trusted network they eventually got out into the public. ( dont need insight into that ) Anyway the way i see it the internet is built around many different protocols and various other things like the TCP / IP model etc. As i see it the internet is broken and needs to be redone all over why you might ask

1. DNS servers can be high jacked

2. With enough knowledge successful hackers at least at the black hat convention in las vegas or somewhere have showed that using the Border Gateway Protocol anything to truly disrupt internet usage is and can be done for all kinds of bad purposes as well as good purposes

3. Between Spam, Viruses, Trojans, Rootkits, DDOS, SQL injections, Infected plugins, applications and websites that can be used to help infected people's computers. the only thing to look forward to is years and years on constant updates, antivirus, spyware scanners, and really those are just addon's because the internet is broken.

Truly no Operating system is immune to any of these as at least from what I know windows, mac's, linux all use same protocols for internet usage, downloading files. etc. For whatever comment you post is up to but lets keep it inline with the subject if possible. And if you know of possible solutions let us know, and dont say anything about just quit using the internet all together. Above is just what i've read and understand so if my knowledge is not totally right help me out

Edited November 23, 2008 by livinthailandos

[nikster]

I think you should be asking "Can the internet be redone from scratch" and the answer would be no. It's already here, all we can do is improve it.

1. DNS servers - there is surely a way to improve these to they can't be easily spoofed / broken into. The main question is who's paying for it, I think.

2. No idea about that one, a link would be nice

3. Mac OS X and Linux don't have any viruses or malware. Not that it's not possible, it just is not happening. So that's a short time solution that works very well. The long term solution is to sandbox the web browser and make email secure. Both are possible and relatively easy to do. An OS can be made secure. I am singling out the web browser because it's a special thing - with the vast amount of standards and media web browsers can display, it's impossible to make a secure browser. However, it's not impossible to sandbox the web browser from a OS perspective.

In an ideal world, we would then be left with viruses and malware you have to actively download and run on your machine. These operate on the basis of social engineering - stupidity and/or greed, and it's not something that will ever be solved

[Prasert]

The internet ain't 'broken'. Technically it works perfectly as designed.

1. DNS server issues were fixed before the bug was even exploited.

2. The BGP issue mentioned became obvious when a subnet of IP addresses were wrongly advertised and all traffic destined for this range was undeliverable. Because the traffic didn't arrive, everybody noticed. A few weeks later several technicians demonstrated that it was possible to use the same exploit to divert traffic, manipulate or copy it and then send it onto it's way to it's original destination. Nobody will notice.

Most of these situations occur because there is not a single country controlling The Internet (although the US would love to be in control). Applications are developed all over the world, with even more hackers looking for ways to exploit any flaws. At the same time, the internet is anarchy since no one is able to censor information. Several countries are trying really hard, but eventually there's always a way to get through. During the Olympics in China there were several European companies offering their services and solutions to the media to help circumvent Chinese internet blocks.

3. Malware and all related: it always requires a human to activate it. And these programs always rely on lack-of-knowledge.

So my idea is that the future of the internet relies on human knowledge as well. There will always be the large amount of end-users who simply don't want to know or understand anything. These people will continue to open unknown attachments in emails, will click on suspicious banners, etc.

It will be up the another group of people that are able to design systems that are almost impossible to mess up (I think Apple is technically doing a great job with the iPod Touch and iPhone, but their intentions are maybe too commercial...).

Microsoft also offers this in domain environments - WindowsXP can be totally closed down to a use-only environment; the company decides which programs you are allowed to run and that's it - things you don't need (to do your work) are disabled and this makes managing hundreds of workstations a easy and pleasant task for the system administrators.

But still there's the home environment where users have all rights to their own system, or better said: all responsibility. And hardly anyone puts any effort in learning anything about it. All these people are still waiting for that device that senses what you think and then tells the computer what to do. But we're still decades away from that. When you translate that fact to the internet you'll find loads of examples here - how many people do actually understand the 4 very basics of their internet connection? (IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, dns).

So the internet does not need to be redone.

It only requires users with more knowledge so more people understand what's actually going on.