The internet is doomed
Folks, the internet is doomed, will you all please form an orderly queue for the exit…I have just got out of a session on the future of the internet, with an incredibly strong panel: the “father” of the internet, Vint Cerf, who co-developed TCP/IP, that’s the internet protocol; Michael Dell (guess what business he is in); Hamadoun Toure, the secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union; New York Times technology writer John Markoff; and Jon Zittrain, professor for internet governance at Oxford University.
Ok, I tricked you. We are not quite doomed yet. But these guys are deeply worried about security on the internet. We are not talking about tiddly-winks like a stolen credit card number here or a dodgy online retailer there.
Malicious hackers and criminals are controlling more and more computers in this world, bringing them together to form botnets, which allow them to attack websites and commit online fraud on a massive scale.
This is not new, I hear you shout. Yes, it’s a known threat. But the numbers I heard today are staggering.
According to Vint Cerf, of the 600 million computers that are connected to the internet, up to 150 million are part of botnets, and in most cases the owners of these computers have not the slightest idea what their little beige friend in the study is up to.
