Friday 27 June 2008, 10:23 PM

The Internet Is Doomed (& I feel Fine)

Posted by Christian Harris

One of the world’s leading academics, Professor Jonathan Zittrain, has warned that the Internet may come to an end under the weight of malicious code. [end dramatic music] Zittrain has called for the Internet to be locked down by a solution that does not destroy the creativity and openness that made the Internet such an enormous success in the first place.

Let’s get this right. There are over 171 million Web hosts now in use. Think of each one of these as a distinct Web site (some Web sites do span multiple hosts, but some hosts deliver multiple sites). Each Web site has content within it.

Let’s say, for argument sake, that the average Web site has 100 pages of content. That would mean there are 171,000,000 sites x 100 pages content average = 17,100,000,000 or 17 billion Web pages of content out there. So Google and Inktomi would have each indexed little more that 10% of the Internet. Is this number realistic? I cannot confirm or deny this because my brain just doesn’t do numbers, but the number of pages out there is probably a little higher. What the heck, let’s just shut the whole lot down anyway...

While it may be a little over zealous to suggest the Internet is rapidly coming to an end, it is clear that we’re all in a continuous battle to combat the threats that emerge as a result of increased malicious activity on the Internet. The widespread nature of viruses, spam, worms, phishing and fraud has meant that fending off each new piece of malware as it emerges is next to impossible, putting an end to the reliance on reactive technologies like anti-virus software.

The problem is that we now run around like headless chickens, applying emergency security updates and patching everything except the kitchen sink in response to identified threats and vulnerabilities. This reactive approach to security (typified by anti-virus solutions) has highlighted many inadequacies, placing computers at risk of security breaches. Surely, only by turning security on its head to enforce a ‘known-good’ state, can cybercrime be addressed.

The public and businesses alike need to consider deploying technologies that monitor and only allow known good applications or devices to connect to their PC or network. While this ‘whitelisting’ approach has had a reputation for impacting productivity, the technology has progressed rapidly since it emerged on the market, not prohibiting the user entirely but allowing them to access data and execute programs that are needed to perform their daily tasks while keeping the malicious activities out. Isn’t that better than shutting the whole thing down?

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