Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

I for one will be on here waiting with baited breath to find out how it's going ;)

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

...or the day before April fools.

If it's anything it would most likely be some DNS exploit. Have your favourite websites IP addresses bookmarked just in case :p.

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

And internet based businesses will suffer.

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

When did Alan Fry join Anonymous and become there voice of Bull Excreta

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

I think he would love to be :D

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

And yet Anonymous have stated they have NO intention to shut down the internet.

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

Typical of Anonymous, They don't know if what they are spouting is from there bottom or there mouth

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

Not really, ALL Anonymous' operations are coordinated over an IRC network, details of all current, planned and past operations are there and the only mention of 'Operation Global Shutdown' is that it's nothing to do with them. Think about it for a moment, if they took down the internet they would also be closing their own channels of communication, would kinda be counterproductive don't you think? Also consider that every one of their past operations has been relatively surgical - One site, one agency at a time. To globally disrupt the internet would upset any supporters they have, it would turn everyone against them.

True it would be an epic hack to achieve, but at the same time they aren't the sort of group that would do that just for the sake of the notoriety, they have enough of that as it is. Not since the old german Chaos Computer Club has a hacking group been so well known as Anonymous is.

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

Well they aren't well known for their common sense are they?

Re: ‘Anonymous’ hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday
 

For those who don't understand how they can do this, let me explain...

- Browser asks Local DNS cache for records
- If the cache is expired or doesn't exist, browser asks root servers for the domain's name server IP's
- Root servers tell your browser the IP's of where to ask for the DNS records for that domain
- Browser then asks the DNS server for where to look for the site
- Browser then looks for the site.

If the root DNS servers (step 2 in bold) can't be accessed, that's it. Domains go offline because the browser doesn't know the IP's of the name servers that domain's DNS records are on, and there is no way around that. It's a fundamental part of how the domain name system works. Yes, these root servers are load balanced and there are hundreds of multi-homed servers behind each, but it is still possible to take them down with enough overwhelming traffic.

If they don't manage to take the net down, they could at the least slow it down by making DNS responses to the root servers slower than normal. Of course downloads are unaffected.