Worst Fears II / Workings of a Worm
A lot has been said about cyber terrorism. I recently attended a talk by Ira Winkler on the subject. Ira basically said that cyber terrorism is not genuinely feasible. I tend to disagree; I think that targeted cyber terrorism is hard to effectively achieve - for instance taking down the power grid of a specific country. This in itself is a complex argument, and it is not within the scope of the paper to consider it here. Instead let us consider something that I believe is a real and present threat.
If one looks at the spread of the Internet is becomes clear that it is (with the exception of Japan) concentrated around the Western world. America and Canada comprises about 64% of the Internet. Continental Europe, the UK, and Australia comprise about 22%. Additionally it is evident that countries that make use of the Internet have more internal (private) networks; the additional Internet connectivity in those countries is a symptom of those networks and their interconnectivity. So, if connected computers were to be attacked using the Internet as a distribution medium this effectively results in an attack on the information and information technology of the Western world. Innocent bystanders (e.g. Japan, India) will also feel the pain of such an attack, but it will be more severe in those countries which have a greater dependence on information and networked computers.
This document outlines the workings of a worm that could cause massive and long term damage to information, and the technology that drives it. It uses the Internet as distribution medium; I do not think of it as an Internet worm, as its main target are the internal networks interconnected connected by the Internet.
