The Internet as We Know It Is Doomed

I have become increasingly concerned over the past several months with:

• the growing sophistication of malware and hacking such as the Tooso.B/Gleider32 trojan;
• the never-ending parade of security flaws in not just Microsoft but all operating systems on the Internet, as illustrated by last week's Javascript use of a feature for nepharious purposes;
• the relative lack of visible law enforcement activity compared to the fast growing, multinational Internet crime waves -- thus lowering deterrence;
• the complete ease at using armies of captured PCs (and servers) to launch global massive attacks for denial of service, spam, and hacking;
• the slowing responses of the heroic security professionals who have their fingers in the dikes but cannot seem to slow down let alone hold back the Internet crime floods;
• the broadening of security breeches to include heretofore generally secure router operating systems, including the Internet's directory naming services that resolve URL's into IP addresses.

So far, the public has not noticed that the battle is now being won by the black shirts. The good guys are on the defensive, defending technology that was designed to be open on purpose. But the OnComputers.info team has noted a growing number of companies that are looking to effectively disconnect from the Internet, except for a few services such as e-mail. These companies, whom I believe are trendsetters, have decided that the Internet as we know it is doomed to fall to the bad guys in black shirts. They are giving up on palliatives and pulling up the drawbridge.

When a few million households get hacked in a weekend and the nightly TV news brings everybody's attention to the war for control of the Internet, then individual consumers will also start disconnecting from the Internet -- some part-time and some full time. That event will pull down the market growth projections of a lot of technology companies who are banking on global, always-on, computing-on-demand as almost a no-risk business scenario. I no longer think that low-risk scenario is true.

A year ago, I thought only drug dealers, spies, pedophiles, and very knowledgeable, sophisticated PC consumers would want the next-generation PCs with strong hardware-enforced security, including encrypted files and hardware firewalls between applications and data. Given the rapid advances by the hacking black shirts, I now think that the technology, such as Intel's LaGrande Technology, will have a much broader consumer demand. And on the business side, virtually all large-business and the majority of medium-small business desktops and laptops will require the most secure environment that mass-market technology can deliver.

Too bad the Internet as we know it today is passing into history -- after only a decade. The next generation Internet will be a lot less open and unfettered. It remains to be seen whether technology alone can beat the criminals. I lean towards a whole lot more law enforcement attention put on Internet crime. I notice that the political sector is beginning to pay attention.

That's enough for today...but we'll be back on this topic as it evolves.

-- Peter S. Kastner