Could a virus shut down the entire internet?

Question

I know the basics about computer viruses, worms, and such but I always wonder if it is ever possible that someone could develop a virus that could wipe out all servers and such as it spreads basically taking down the entire internet within a few days?

Is it impossible because that would have already happened?

Is the internet so fail safe and resilient that it could never happen?

I wonder if the code would have to be more low scale like assembly or C or could be high scale like Java or C++.

I wonder if the code that would be required is impossible to execute?

Any ideas?

Answer 1

As far as I know, there would not be a way to do that.  Even if there was, the internet is so redundant that it wouldn't completely fail.  I don't remember the details, but a while ago, some attack took place that caused a few of the 13 servers (I forget what they do, but they are critical to internet function) down, but the rest were able to carry the load.

Answer 2

Hello --

Not anymore ... The whole net is huge and as the virus spread, the net (people) would react by shutting down uninfected parts.

There was a case though ... long ago when a student released a worm into the net and it took down huge parts of the system.  It was named after the initials of its creator RTM:

http://iss.net/security_center/advice/Ph...

Now, with all the different systems and various support systems (anti-viruses) I think it would be "almost" impossible to launch an attack that would cripple the whole net.

Best of luck,

Bill

Answer 3

Hey There. Im very into computer sercurity and malware is a massive hobby for me i study it hard. Baiscally every day.

There have been a few events in which malware has seriously damage the workings of the internet. Some have bought whole countries internet to a stand still.

Here are a few examples

1988- Morris Worm, Named the First worm its wasnt meant to cause damage just to find out the size of the internet, it spread usings exploits in the UNIX sendmail engine. It would cause a computer to run a process over and over till it crashed.

12 July 2001 - Code Red Worm, This worm was not very big till a few days later when a minor bug in its code was fixed which made a propogate much faster using the infamous buffer overflow exploit. It shutoff a large majority of the USA's Computers. After 18 hours of the fixed worms realese the worm infected 250,000 computers. It also attempted to shutdown the www.whitehouse.org computers by a massive DoS attack. But it didn't succeed.

18 Semptember 2001 - Nimda Worm, This used several methods of infection and was faster to propergate than Code Red II worm partly due to its several infection methods including Massmailing, Exploits in unpatched wreb servers and back doors left by code red! It caused the internet to slow down to a snail by sending massive amounts of information attempting to infect unpatched MS IIS Servers sending emails scanning for network shares.

18 August 2003 - Sobig Worm, this worm infected around 30million computer on its first day of release. Its a mass mailing worm which relays on people to download an attachment they think is legit. It created to much internet traffic the internet in some places was like a snail.

Those are a few examples which damaged the internet alot.

There are a few others. If you want anymore info you can mailme.

Some Worms causing trouble at the moment are ;

Storm Worm, which has a Botnet of hundreds of thousands of computers and is DoS-ing sites and sending out spam.

And the Kraken worm.

I don't think that any worm will be able to break the internet now.

Although there are always exploits in everthing. i just don't think anyone could code something to affect all the different webservers using different OS, Data Encryption methods ECT. And even if they did someone would see it before they would be able to finish thier 'project' so the worm would fail. They are 1 person working against thousands of other peoples brains.

Hope this help kthxbi.

Answer 4

There is no way that a virus could bypass every bit of encryption, algorithm, and programming used to protect the millions of servers in the world.

Sure, it could happen... In a span of 400 years, putting together time to break encryption algorithms of servers, taking into account setups, operating systems, and levels of security. In that time span, we wouldn't even notice a virus is there, because hardware is replaced so frequently.

Answer 5

It's impossible for a virus to affect everyone in the world because that means that every person has opened / downloaded the infected file. What you're talking about may be achieved through a "worm", but with all the encryption and secure code out there, I highly doubt a single worm can cause such damage.