It’s been a dry period for me.  Haven’t written anything for the past two months.  Some times are like that but I was beginning to get a bit worried, and then I saw this article from the New York Times; Internet Attacks Grow More Potent. 

 

It talks about how attacks on the internet are not only growing more sophisticated but more powerful too.  Everyone seems bent on attacking the net, from lone hackers working from their parent’s basement to crime syndicates, terrorist organizations, and even legitimate governments.  It’s an interesting article and bears a quick peruse. 

 

The weapon of choice of many of these attackers is the Distributed Denial of Service, a fairly old tactic that now has new life as hackers recruit large networks of slave computers, most hijacked without their owner’s knowledge, to launch a flood of data at the target internet sites.  Most networks can handle a capacity of about 1 or 2 Gig, the largest networks about 10 Gig.  Unfortunately, attacks can now be launched as large as 40 Gig.  So far, major damage has been avoided by storing excess capacity on the networks to absorb the attack, but that tactic can’t necessarily last forever.  Granted, losing a site here or there is going to be a nuisance for some people but will not constitute a major disaster.  But what if the target is one of the networks that supports the core of the internet? 

 

Even then I find I can’t get too worried.   It’s an internet thing.  Most of my clients have the ‘i’.  Yeah, they might lose email and people might not be able to check their fantasy teams for a couple of days, but their business system is internal, it will still be humming away even if the internet goes down. 

 

But will that always be true?  We hear a lot today about ‘Software as a Service’, where you don’t really own your software.  There’s also a lot being said about Cloud Computing, a scenario where you don’t have both software and hardware, using stripped down terminals to connect to the internet and run your applications from there. 

 

Right now this is mostly talk, and I think, mostly of interest to people in the windows arena running relatively lightweight applications.  But will it always be that way?  In today’s world new ideas can go from conceptual to reality in a relatively short time if it offers the promise of reduced costs. 

 

Of course, a lot of ideas also go directly from the mind to the garbage.  Need I list all of the revolutionary ideas that have come, generated a lot of press, and then died in the harsh light of day over the past ten years?    Being dependent on the internet for your mission critical software probably won’t happen.  No body would want to give up the security of their own environment.  Even if it is cheaper based on the superficial and slanted way that we calculate value.   Man, maybe I do need to cut down on my caffeine.