RECONNOITERING THE INTERNET ~ hehe r u "watching" ...this ..."hidden system of finance" 
Two
days ago I blogged about the Dark Net and its possible role in what I
have been calling the "hidden system of finance" in various blogs,
interview, and books. I suggested in that most recent blog that perhaps
the Darknet implied the existence of an even deeper "net" which - for
want of a better term - I called the "storm shelter" - a "Dark Net"
reliant upon the latest in technologies, quantum encryption among them,
to secure its flow of information, a flow of information necessary to
any such hidden system to maintain its functioning but also to secure
its secrets and hidden participants.
The possible existence of such a scheme
can be argued from a very different basis, however, if one peruses the
following article shared by Mr. S.D.:
Note what is actually being said
in the article; someone is reconnoitering the entire Internet in such a
fashion as to suggest that whoever they are, they intend to be able to
commit cuber-attacks and bring the whole thing down:
Recently, some of the
major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the
Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly
larger than the ones they’re used to seeing. They last longer. They’re
more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the
attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up
before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and
continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure.
The attacks are also configured in such a way as to see what the company’s total defenses are.
There are many different ways to launch a DDoS attack. The more attack
vectors you employ simultaneously, the more different defenses the
defender has to counter with. These companies are seeing more attacks
using three or four different vectors. This means that the companies
have to use everything they’ve got to defend themselves. They can’t hold
anything back. They’re forced to demonstrate their defense capabilities
for the attacker. (Emphases in the original)
Then there is mention of the usual suspects:
With that in mind, a closed, not highly Internet enabled country makes the most sense- like China.”
Other commenters warn that it may be the
U.S. government, e.g., the NSA, doing the attacks — to find the
Internet’s weaknesses (in order to better defend it), or more
malevolently, as bargaining chip for more money allocated to
cyber-security.
And of course to the usual list of suspects, one might add Russia.
However, I suggest some alternatives here,
in some high octane cyber speculation. Recall that in my blog two days
ago on the "Dark Net," various groups use the DarkNet for purchase of
all manner of malfeasance, from missiles to child sex slavery, drug
trading, and so on. It is a phenomenon of a black internet subsisting on
the good old fashioned black market. And its participants - various
national mafias among them - make large profits from this activity,
profits which are of course completely hidden from the "normal" markets
and everyday commerce. The DarkNet, in short, represents not so much a
"hidden system of finance" but rather, a "hidden economy," one which,
indeed, might have required, or continue to require, a hidden system of
finance for its operation. But that hidden system itself would
need an even deeper, and much more secure, "net" of its own, a system I
called "the storm shelter." That "storm shelter" would represent some
very serious players, with some very serious capabilities in terms of
cyber warfare, both defensive and offensive. That system would represent
a genuinely breakaway civilization (to borrow once again Mr. Richard
Dolan's profound insight and term).
In short, anyone mapping or reconnoitering
the internet that most of us use, in planning for cyber attacks
designed to take the whole thing down, would, perforce, have to have
something in waiting to replace it: communication and the flow
of information are too important in today's world to think otherwise.
This raises the stakes of the apparent reconnoitering activity
considerable, since the USA basically controls the internet,
notwithstanding recent decisions to "turn it over to the UN" for the
physical reality is that it will continue to do so until such time as a
different system is completely substituted for it. For this reason I
suspect, and suggest in my high octane cyber-speculation, that while
Russia and China have and certainly are engaged in cyber warfare (along
with the USA and just about every other power), the kind of attacks
being suggested in this article exceed their ability to replace it with something else.
But for any group having access to what I
have called "the storm shelter," it makes more sense, for such a system,
or at least, major parts of it, could then be rolled out into a public
form as a "solution" to cyber warfare and cyber attacks, and keeping its
current controllers still in possession of their secrets. And to do
that, the entire current structure, including those "Dark Nets", have to
be reconnoitered, strong points and weak points mapped, and a campaign
planned.
See you on the flip side...cyber
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