[CII] Advocatus Diaboli

[bmanning at vacation.karoshi.com]

 howdy...

	i challenge your lema that there exists a global Internet that can
	-unilaterally- fail, taking out all communications over IP.

--bill


On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 11:37:59AM +0100, Felix 'FX' Lindner wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> since the discussion about CI/CII exploded already into an
> n-dimensional problem space, I would like to approach it from a
> completely different angle and pose the following question as a
> THOUGHT EXPERIMENT for discussion:
> 
> ****************
> Which governmental or commercial entity would be unable to recover
> from a global and ongoing Internet outage?
> ****************
> 
> As we can define rules for thought experiements, here are the ones for
> this:
> 
> 1) 
> We shall not know what the reason of the outage is. Simply assume
> whereever you connect to the Internet, it simply doesn't work (no
> routing, no DNS).
> 
> 2) 
> We shall assume that POTS (Plain Old Telephony System) is still
> functioning. [Note: we all know that POTS cores are all VoIP these
> days, but it's a thought experiment, so just play along] 
> 
> 4) 
> We shall assume that all other types or infrastructure are still
> functioning, including power distribution, water and utilities.
> [Note: we all know the argument that those may fail with Internet
> outages, but it's a thought experiment, so just play along]
> 
> 5)
> How much of any localized networks will still work is up to the
> participant of the thought experiment, but you shall reason why
> something still works.
> 
> Working hypothesis:
> Any sufficiently important entity will apply creativity, priorization
> and extra effort to get around the operational problems caused by the
> unavailability of the Internet at large. The impact on societies and
> their ability to support and protect human lives will be significantly
> lower than commonly assumed.
> 
> Goal of the thought experiment:
> By identifying one or more entities that are unable to recover by any
> means from a global and ongoing Internet outage, we might be able to
> assess criticality of such entity, criticality of Internet components
> as well as mitigation strategies that people would employ if forced to
> using *actual*examples*.
> 
> Enjoy,
> FX
> 
> -- 
> Recurity Labs GmbH           | Felix 'FX' Lindner 
> http://www.recurity-labs.com | fx at recurity-labs.com 
> Wrangelstrasse 4             | Fon: +49 30 69539993-0
> 10997 Berlin                 | PGP: A740 DE51 9891 19DF 0D05  
> Germany                      |      13B3 1759 C388 C92D 6BBB
> HRB 105213 B, Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, GF Felix Lindner
> _______________________________________________
> CII mailing list
> CII at isotf.org
> http://isotf.org/mailman/listinfo/cii