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Possible fracturing of the internet via cyberwarfare

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posted on Mar, 7 2013 @ 02:12 AM
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This seems less of a dream or vision in terms of predictions and more of a hunch. The fracturing wont be things like firewalls put up by various countries themselves to limit the flow of information. Nor is it a hard shutdown of the internet. Rather it is the result of an information powerplay that creates different versions of the internet overlapping and interleaved amongst parts of the original. In terms of cyberwarfare and what it does to network integrity, this would be like "pushing the big button".

That is, its based on what might be possible in terms of activity and is related to spontaneous traffic outages with major hubs going down and such before being brought back online. The supposed ongoing attack on "conspriacy/fringe sites" might be one of them. What will happen is that cyberwarfare will target various backbone networks and domain servers specifically to control the flow of information and public perception of mass media. Various websites will be crawled, cloned, modified and presented as fronts for dissemination of controlled information (both in terms of releasing truth, covering it up, or trying to spread lies) or as man-in-the-middle vectors for trojan style attacks. This is because once key parts of the internet are compromised, it is possible to perform redirects - Joe Public wont know what server he's going to if it still looks like the place he's been going to. Thus by doing so you get to affect what he sees and possibly what information he could be led to believe.

Some of the stuff isn't just hacks from the outside either. There are people who may be considered disgruntled with the status quo with access to physical hardware that will open backdoors for their friends and give keys to unauthorized people. These keys are considered restricted to government agencies. It's the kind of stuff that is dubious in nature to begin with and is supposed to remain secret, but trusted in the hands of IT staff with no real loyalty to the organizations they work for. Various uses of botnets and cloud computing and such will also provide distributed hosting space for virtual servers, clones, mirrors, honeypots, etc.

So depending on how you route through jumps and such on the network you might see "natural internet" (one we were familiar with before this particular cyberwarfare game starts), "Group A's internet", "Group B's internet", etc.

If this indeed happens, we'll know "It's on!" when we see unusal information being presented at major online media outlets. Government and corporate sites will be "hacked" or defaced and restored to normal at a whim while admins scratch their heads trying to figure it out. (Because it's not the actual site being messed with, but a clone on a redirect.) Wikileaks might seem trivial in comparision. Either stuff the government doesn't want us to know, other information that should be private, or information that seems contradictory to what is already known and feels inherently false.

Of course if this gets bad enough, some officials may want to turn the internet off. However the result of that may be more disruptive than putting up with an obviously compromised information system. People will definitely freak out if that happens.

Of course this could be a dumb prediction, but you never know...



posted on Mar, 7 2013 @ 03:09 AM
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Interesting but absolutely unrealistic.

Sure, you can clone a website, even though cloning a forum like ATS without access to the database is a futile endeavour. But let's pretend here for a second they clone ATS and also have the full database with all accounts and content.

Now what ? Replace every major poster and mod and admin with a CIA agent ? How are you suggesting they clone the members or at least the majority of them. And even if they managed to install a couple shills, what use does it have if they don't start preventing information from being disseminated. And they moment they start doing that, the people will realize something is fishy.

Nah. The past has proven that the already implemented propaganda measures through mainstream media do their job just fine. The only place to post and read information that does not go conform with what the media says, are conspiracy websites. That's good enough for them.
edit on 7-3-2013 by H1ght3chHippie because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 7 2013 @ 04:40 AM
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hmm interesting read, If thats the case how would you know if we are not currently on "the cloned version of ats"?

Reading this made me think of this



sounds like Cispa and Sopa, there endgame is full control



posted on Mar, 9 2013 @ 01:46 AM
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reply to post by H1ght3chHippie
 


The thing is, you don't have to do an entire site. If you know what your mark is looking for, you can just redirect certain pages. Putting what you want on front pages or in discussions of particular topics. No point in doing it all, since that's wasted resources in terms of time and effort. (Tried to keep the explanation brief, so didn't fill in all the details. I'm sure somebody more knowledgeable could work out to what scale it's possible.) The idea is to narrow it down in terms of focus to more effectively push certain agendas.

Also if you're redirecting traffic at a key point in the architecture you could also focus on certain address ranges. People coming from .mil or something like that might see a sanitized version of a site, everyone else not so much, people from Europe might see Anon's version as they come in via a different network route, etc. (But with cross talk and such in the background, keeping up a facade could be difficult. However this doesn't mean that other modes of information flow could end up purposely DOS'd in order to push a certain bias with any remaining channels.)

In many ways it's much like doing this...
www.ex-parrot.com...
But dialed to 11 in terms of who you're messing with. Instead of a wifi network router, if you were doing this as part of an "information warfare" operation, it might be that hub 3 hops away from the website you want to mess with.

In terms of tools to do this, not just domain servers or backbone router jumps but ISPs, etc. And the stuff that allows for "six strikes" redirects or DOJ DMCA copyright takedown notices could easily be repurposed if hackers gain access. (I'd say there is some irony to that.)

Although to be more correct I should have said "web" is fractured on the title rather than "internet". (Wee hours of the morning when the idea hit me. Getting the idea out before getting tired again and losing track.) But since one is part of the other, I thought most would get the idea. Pretty much that the flow information can be messed with, and what the majority of people end up seeing may not be unadulterated by who knows what parties.

Of course there are arguments for https, TOR, etc... But how often are those used in terms of being able to quickly browse most sites? Not to mention a lot of places online seem to put fancy locks on vaults with paper walls.
edit on 9-3-2013 by pauljs75 because: (no reason given)



posted on Mar, 9 2013 @ 01:59 AM
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Originally posted by HumanitiesLastHope
...sounds like Cispa and Sopa, there endgame is full control


BINGO!... Sounds like we have a winner!
But considering all that the public doesn't know or isn't fully aware of, multiple hacking groups would be playing king-of-the-hill in terms of controlling or breaking the tools used to do this. Many parties involved and with stakes in this: Fed/NATO, China, Russia, Anon, whatever the corporate mercenary du jour is, organized crime, etc. The internet using public could be in for some interesting times.




 
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