Who’s Trying to Murder the Internet?

As we continue to slide down the ramp of the strangest American presidential election of all time, it’s becoming harder to have the bandwidth to be aware of any other current events going on. But if there’s one story from the last few weeks that should worm its way into your purview, it’s this one, just in time for the Halloween season: Someone is trying to murder the entire Internet!

The scenario peaked earlier today, when massive numbers of websites (including Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, and scores of others) were taken down for an extended period of time after a cyber attack on the Domain Name System provider Dyn. Worse than the attack itself is the fact that really, this is just the beginning.

In a post written last month, Internet security expert Bruce Schneier discusses what sources have been telling him off the record:

[S]ome of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in [Distributed Denial of Service 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.

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