What Could Possibly Go Wrong: An Internet "Off" Switch | Popular Science

Dropped Connection Turning off the Internet could shut down financial networks, and it wouldn't be easy to turn them back on Jamie Sneddon

The last time someone could shut down the Internet was probably in 1969, when it consisted of two computers. But in recent years, concerned with the possibility of a “cyberattack,” Congress has been exploring such an option.

In 2009, senator Jay Rockefeller sponsored a bill to give the president the right to “order the disconnection” of “critical infrastructure information systems or networks.” That went nowhere, but now there’s Senate bill 3480, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010. As its sponsor, Senator Joe Lieberman, told CNN, the bill will allow for the president to order Internet service providers to “disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from another foreign country.”

Constructing such a switch would be extremely difficult. Borders are porous. Data packets originating in, say, Iran or China can enter the U.S. in many different ways—via satellite or submarine cable or packet radio, or routed through other countries. And packets can be “spoofed,” or assigned a forged IP address, which means there’s no foolproof method to be sure which packets are from home and which from abroad. [...]

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