Debunking IT myths

of the dashing young hacker who could infiltrate the most secret of computer systems without being detected. Surely the public’s lack of technological knowledge in the early days of the Internet helped to fuel this.

What people never really considered was the billions of dollars spent each year by both governments and the private companies that they contract with on intrusion detection and prevention systems, and the speed with which authorities will respond to possible threats. Just look at what’s happening to poor Gary McKinnon just for hacking some NASA machines. Imagine the response had he accessed a truly highly sensitive system.

As Iain also points out, human error or technological failures are far more of a concern than the ability for one rogue hacker to somehow infiltrate any sort of system that controls nuclear weapons.

Myth: The Internet was developed to survive a nuclear war

Iain Thomson: This piece of technology folk law has been trotted out so many times it’s become received wisdom.

The argument goes that the military developed the Internet protocols so that in the event of a nuclear attack damaged parts of the network would be automatically be routed around and data flows would continue allowing for retaliation and the eventual triumph of the West etc. It’s a nice story, but unfortunately it’s not even remotely true.

How am I so sure of this? Well, a few years ago I was fortunate enough to share a two hour taxi ride with Bob Taylor, one of the creators of the Internet’s precursor ARPANET. I asked him about this and he had a good chuckle. Yes he said, it was possible that that excuse was made at the time by some official to Congress in order to get funding but it was rubbish, and a logical impossibility when you thought about it.

For electronics the most damaging thing about a nuclear war is not the blast itself, which has only local effects, but electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The minute a nuclear device goes off the EMP blast knocks out pretty much everything in site for miles around (see 13 February 2009 HS Daily Wire).

Both U.S. and Soviet war plans called for the detonation of nuclear warheads in space over each other’s countries to cripple as much infrastructure as possible. About four or five relatively small warheads detonated over the United States would destroy around 90 percent of unprotected electronics in the country. The Internet