Showing posts with label Cyber Attacks. Show all posts

Tuesday, 10 May 2016

Investigation Report: How Firewalls Works?

How Firewalls Work?

If you have been using the Internet for any length of time, and especially if you work at a larger company and browse the Web while you are at work, you have probably heard the term firewall used. For example, you often hear people in companies say things like, "I can't use that site because they won't let it through the firewall."

If you have a fast Internet connection into your home (either a DSL connection or a cable modem), you may have found yourself hearing about firewalls for your home network as well. It turns out that a small home network has many of the same security issues that a large corporate network does. You can use a firewall to protect your home network and family from offensive Web sites and potential hackers.
Basically, a firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away from your property. In fact, that's why its called a firewall. Its job is similar to a physical firewall that keeps a fire from spreading from one area to the next. As you read through this article, you will learn more about firewalls, how they work and what kinds of threats they can protect you from.

What Firewall Software Does?

A firewall is simply a program or hardware device that filters the information coming through the Internet connection into your private network or computer system. If an incoming packet of information is flagged by the filters, it is not allowed through.

If you have read the article How Web Servers Work, then you know a good bit about how data moves on the Internet, and you can easily see how a firewall helps protect computers inside a large company. Let's say that you work at a company with 500 employees. The company will therefore have hundreds of computers that all have network cards connecting them together. In addition, the company will have one or more connections to the Internet through something like T1 or T3 lines. Without a firewall in place, all of those hundreds of computers are directly accessible to anyone on the Internet. A person who knows what he or she is doing can probe those computers, try to make FTP connections to them, try to make telnet connections to them and so on. If one employee makes a mistake and leaves a security hole, hackers can get to the machine and exploit the hole.

With a firewall in place, the landscape is much different. A company will place a firewall at every connection to the Internet (for example, at every T1 line coming into the company). The firewall can implement security rules. For example, one of the security rules inside the company might be:

Out of the 500 computers inside this company, only one of them is permitted to receive public FTP traffic. Allow FTP connections only to that one computer and prevent them on all others.

A company can set up rules like this for FTP servers, Web servers, Telnet servers and so on. In addition, the company can control how employees connect to Web sites, whether files are allowed to leave the company over the network and so on. A firewall gives a company tremendous control over how people use the network.

Firewalls use one or more of three methods to control traffic flowing in and out of the network:

Packet filtering - Packets (small chunks of data) are analyzed against a set of filters. Packets that make it through the filters are sent to the requesting system and all others are discarded.
Proxy service - Information from the Internet is retrieved by the firewall and then sent to the requesting system and vice versa.
Stateful inspection - A newer method that doesn't examine the contents of each packet but instead compares certain key parts of the packet to a database of trusted information. Information traveling from inside the firewall to the outside is monitored for specific defining characteristics, then incoming information is compared to these characteristics. If the comparison yields a reasonable match, the information is allowed through. Otherwise it is discarded.

Firewall Configuration

Firewalls are customizable. This means that you can add or remove filters based on several conditions. Some of these are:

IP addresses - Each machine on the Internet is assigned a unique address called an IP address. IP addresses are 32-bit numbers, normally expressed as four "octets" in a "dotted decimal number." A typical IP address looks like this: 216.27.61.137. For example, if a certain IP address outside the company is reading too many files from a server, the firewall can block all traffic to or from that IP address.
Domain names - Because it is hard to remember the string of numbers that make up an IP address, and because IP addresses sometimes need to change, all servers on the Internet also have human-readable names, called domain names. For example, it is easier for most of us to remember www.howstuffworks.com than it is to remember 216.27.61.137. A company might block all access to certain domain names, or allow access only to specific domain names. Protocols - The protocol is the pre-defined way that someone who wants to use a service talks with that service. The "someone" could be a person, but more often it is a computer program like a Web browser. Protocols are often text, and simply describe how the client and server will have their conversation. The http in the Web's protocol. Some common protocols that you can set firewall filters for include:

IP (Internet Protocol) - the main delivery system for information over the Internet
TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) - used to break apart and rebuild information that travels over the Internet
HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) - used for Web pages
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - used to download and upload files
UDP (User Datagram Protocol) - used for information that requires no response, such as streaming audio and video
ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) - used by a router to exchange the information with other routers
SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) - used to send text-based information (e-mail)
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) - used to collect system information from a remote computer
Telnet - used to perform commands on a remote computer

A company might set up only one or two machines to handle a specific protocol and ban that protocol on all other machines.

Ports - Any server machine makes its services available to the Internet using numbered ports, one for each service that is available on the server (see How Web Servers Work for details). For example, if a server machine is running a Web (HTTP) server and an FTP server, the Web server would typically be available on port 80, and the FTP server would be available on port 21. A company might block port 21 access on all machines but one inside the company.

Specific words and phrases - This can be anything. The firewall will sniff (search through) each packet of information for an exact match of the text listed in the filter. For example, you could instruct the firewall to block any packet with the word "X-rated" in it. The key here is that it has to be an exact match. The "X-rated" filter would not catch "X rated" (no hyphen). But you can include as many words, phrases and variations of them as you need.

Some operating systems come with a firewall built in. Otherwise, a software firewall can be installed on the computer in your home that has an Internet connection. This computer is considered a gateway because it provides the only point of access between your home network and the Internet.

With a hardware firewall, the firewall unit itself is normally the gateway. A good example is the Linksys Cable/DSL router. It has a built-in Ethernet card and hub. Computers in your home network connect to the router, which in turn is connected to either a cable or DSL modem. You configure the router via a Web-based interface that you reach through the browser on your computer. You can then set any filters or additional information.

Hardware firewalls are incredibly secure and not very expensive. Home versions that include a router, firewall and Ethernet hub for broadband connections can be found for well under $100.

Why Firewall Security?

There are many creative ways that unscrupulous people use to access or abuse unprotected computers:

Remote login - When someone is able to connect to your computer and control it in some form. This can range from being able to view or access your files to actually running programs on your computer.
Application backdoors - Some programs have special features that allow for remote access. Others contain bugs that provide a backdoor, or hidden access, that provides some level of control of the program.
SMTP session hijacking - SMTP is the most common method of sending e-mail over the Internet. By gaining access to a list of e-mail addresses, a person can send unsolicited junk e-mail (spam) to thousands of users. This is done quite often by redirecting the e-mail through the SMTP server of an unsuspecting host, making the actual sender of the spam difficult to trace.
Operating system bugs - Like applications, some operating systems have backdoors. Others provide remote access with insufficient security controls or have bugs that an experienced hacker can take advantage of.
Denial of service - You have probably heard this phrase used in news reports on the attacks on major Web sites. This type of attack is nearly impossible to counter. What happens is that the hacker sends a request to the server to connect to it. When the server responds with an acknowledgement and tries to establish a session, it cannot find the system that made the request. By inundating a server with these unanswerable session requests, a hacker causes the server to slow to a crawl or eventually crash.
E-mail bombs - An e-mail bomb is usually a personal attack. Someone sends you the same e-mail hundreds or thousands of times until your e-mail system cannot accept any more messages.
Macros - To simplify complicated procedures, many applications allow you to create a script of commands that the application can run. This script is known as a macro. Hackers have taken advantage of this to create their own macros that, depending on the application, can destroy your data or crash your computer.
Viruses - Probably the most well-known threat is computer viruses. A virus is a small program that can copy itself to other computers. This way it can spread quickly from one system to the next. Viruses range from harmless messages to erasing all of your data.
Spam - Typically harmless but always annoying, spam is the electronic equivalent of junk mail. Spam can be dangerous though. Quite often it contains links to Web sites. Be careful of clicking on these because you may accidentally accept a cookie that provides a backdoor to your computer.
Redirect bombs - Hackers can use ICMP to change (redirect) the path information takes by sending it to a different router. This is one of the ways that a denial of service attack is set up.
Source routing - In most cases, the path a packet travels over the Internet (or any other network) is determined by the routers along that path. But the source providing the packet can arbitrarily specify the route that the packet should travel. Hackers sometimes take advantage of this to make information appear to come from a trusted source or even from inside the network! Most firewall products disable source routing by default.

Some of the items in the list above are hard, if not impossible, to filter using a firewall. While some firewalls offer virus protection, it is worth the investment to install anti-virus software on each computer. And, even though it is annoying, some spam is going to get through your firewall as long as you accept e-mail.
The level of security you establish will determine how many of these threats can be stopped by your firewall. The highest level of security would be to simply block everything. Obviously that defeats the purpose of having an Internet connection. But a common rule of thumb is to block everything, then begin to select what types of traffic you will allow. You can also restrict traffic that travels through the firewall so that only certain types of information, such as e-mail, can get through. This is a good rule for businesses that have an experienced network administrator that understands what the needs are and knows exactly what traffic to allow through. For most of us, it is probably better to work with the defaults provided by the firewall developer unless there is a specific reason to change it.

One of the best things about a firewall from a security standpoint is that it stops anyone on the outside from logging onto a computer in your private network. While this is a big deal for businesses, most home networks will probably not be threatened in this manner. Still, putting a firewall in place provides some peace of mind.

Proxy Servers and DMZ:

A function that is often combined with a firewall is a proxy server. The proxy server is used to access Web pages by the other computers. When another computer requests a Web page, it is retrieved by the proxy server and then sent to the requesting computer. The net effect of this action is that the remote computer hosting the Web page never comes into direct contact with anything on your home network, other than the proxy server.

Proxy servers can also make your Internet access work more efficiently. If you access a page on a Web site, it is cached (stored) on the proxy server. This means that the next time you go back to that page, it normally doesn't have to load again from the Web site. Instead it loads instantaneously from the proxy server.
There are times that you may want remote users to have access to items on your network. Some examples are:

Web site
Online business
FTP download and upload area

In cases like this, you may want to create a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). Although this sounds pretty serious, it really is just an area that is outside the firewall. Think of DMZ as the front yard of your house. It belongs to you and you may put some things there, but you would put anything valuable inside the house where it can be properly secured.

Setting up a DMZ is very easy. If you have multiple computers, you can choose to simply place one of the computers between the Internet connection and the firewall. Most of the software firewalls available will allow you to designate a directory on the gateway computer as a DMZ.

Once you have a firewall in place, you should test it. A great way to do this is to go to www.grc.com and try their free Shields Up! security test. You will get immediate feedback on just how secure your system is!

Investigation Report: Secure Your Home Network

How to Secure Your Home Network?

We've been treated to some pretty entertaining feats of espionage courtesy of Hollywood. Who can forget the way Tom Cruise dangled from the ceiling as he attempted to crack into a computer security system in "Mission Impossible?" Or how about the mysterious hacker who seems to slip past every security to corrupt the Rossum Corporation's data in the "Dollhouse" television series? Hacking into a network must require superhuman skills and knowledge, right?

You might be surprised to learn how easy it is for someone to hack into a computer network. The fact is that many computer networks are practically defenseless to intruders. In the early days of home computer networks, the people who put the networks together were experts and enthusiasts. They put their systems together knowing how computers can communicate with each other and built in protective measures to prevent other computer users from snooping.

Today, home computer networks are popular among a broad range of consumers. User knowledge spans from expert to newbie. Some users may be unaware of the dangers they can encounter if they don't properly secure their network. Others may think home network security is too complicated or confusing. But network security is more important than ever and it's worth the effort to learn more about it.

An unprotected network could allow malicious hackers -- known as crackers -- access to your data. It might even allow someone to take control of your computers and use them to commit crimes like a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). Even if no one snoops on your information or controls your computer, someone might use your network to access the Internet. As more ISPs begin to place caps on how much data you can download, it becomes even more important to control your network. You don't want to get slapped with a huge bill for Internet services you didn't even use.

With the right tools and knowledge, you can minimize your chances of having your security compromised by malicious hackers or computer viruses. Let's get started.

Network Security Hardware:

When we talk about home networks, we generally mean a system composed of at least two devices connected to each other. Usually, these devices also connect to the Internet. Technically, if you have only one device connected to the Internet, it's part of a larger network. But you wouldn't have a network of your own.
Computers running on the Windows operating system are more at risk of security invasions than Mac computers. That's to be expected -- the Windows operating system dominates the computer market. That means the Windows platform is a big target for people who want to exploit computers -- they've got a much larger target and potential payoff.

Other devices that can comprise a home network include routers, firewalls, cable or DSL modems, printers, video game consoles, smartphones and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) phones. Depending upon the protocols you use, you may have even more devices linked to your network. For example, Bluetooth gadgets can sync with each other when they come within range of the network.

From a security standpoint, the pieces of hardware that will help provide security are firewalls and routers. Firewalls come in two varieties: hardware and software. You can purchase a physical firewall device or run a firewall application. Many routers have firewall software built into them.

Firewalls act like filters. They help you monitor data traffic between your network and the Internet. If you detect unusual traffic, that's a potential sign that someone has compromised your home network's security. Most firewalls have several security settings to choose from. The most restrictive settings are generally the safest, but they also limit your options. Most firewalls will allow you to create a list of Web addresses that are off limits.

If you use a wireless router, you should make sure you set a password and enable encryption. Unprotected wireless networks are a bad idea. Most routers have either Wireless Encryption (WEP) or Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) encryption options. Some have both. WPA is more secure than WEP. Enabling encryption and choosing a strong router administrator password are two steps that will help keep your network secure.

Network Security Software

On the software side of the security issue are several important applications. As we mentioned earlier, firewalls come in both hardware and software varieties. If you don't have a hardware firewall, you can use a firewall application to help protect your network. You can even use both a hardware and software version if you like.

There are several firewall programs available on the market. Some of them are free. Many are part of a larger software package that includes other important applications.

Almost as important as a firewall is anti-virus software. While you may be able to avoid most computer viruses, Trojans and other forms of malware through careful Web surfing habits, the truth is sometimes things slip through. All it takes is one mistake and you'll end up with an infected computer. A robust anti-virus program can help keep your computer safe.

Anti-virus software isolates and neutralizes malware. Most anti-virus software searches for viruses by comparing the applications on your computer against a huge database of malware. If something matches, the software alerts the user and attempts to neutralize the program. For anti-virus software to remain effective, it's important that you keep it up to date. Many programs have an auto-update feature that will download new virus definitions on a weekly basis.

Other useful applications to look into are anti-spyware or anti-adware programs. Like anti-virus software, these programs search your computer for applications that can affect your network's security. Spyware and adware can track your online activities and send information to another computer.

Many of these programs have active scan modes that will help you keep an eye on your computer in real time. Others may require you to set up a scanning schedule or run a scan manually. It's a good idea to run scans on a regular basis -- at least once a week.

Detecting Wireless Network Intrusions

A strong firewall should help you keep an eye on attempts to contact your computer. It should also alert you if an application on your machine is attempting to contact another computer. Keep a close eye on these messages. Some are harmless or even beneficial -- you wouldn't want to block your anti-virus program from downloading the latest updates. But others can be signs that someone is trying to access your information or control your machine from a remote location.

Most Web browsers have security settings that can help you keep your network safe. Several will warn you if you are about to visit a site known to host malware. You can also adjust settings such as whether or not your browser will accept cookies or run Java applications. Disabling cookies, Java and other options will help keep your network safe but it will also affect your browsing experience. You may not be able to interact with sites the way the webmaster intended if you turn off these options.

Administrators of commercial computer networks sometimes rely on special software and hardware called intrusion detection systems (IDS). These systems monitor data traffic across host computers and networks. A good IDS can compare this data against known malware patterns and alert the administrator if there's a problem. But that's a solution for a much larger computer network than your typical home network.

Most anti-virus software won't detect an intruder. But you might discover a malware application that makes intrusions possible. Run anti-virus software frequently to make sure your system is safe. You should also be sure to install updates and patches for your operating system as they become available. These patches may help seal up vulnerabilities on your computer.

Tips on Safe Wireless Networks:

Setting up a secure network is one thing -- keeping it secure is another. All your hard work will go to waste if you aren't careful about how you use the Internet. But if you follow a few guidelines, you'll greatly reduce your chances of compromising your network's security.

The first tip is to avoid clicking on hyperlinks in e-mail or instant messages, particularly if you don't recognize the name of the person sending it to you. The link may lead you to a site hosting malware. It might even initiate a malware download. Tell your friends and family that you avoid clicking on hyperlinks unless you are sure they lead to a safe destination.

Sometimes links on Web pages can also lead to malware. You might click on a link thinking you're going to one site when you're really going to another. Some malware designers will go so far as to create a copy of a legitimate Web page and use it to host their malware. It's called spoofing. Fortunately, it's not that common -- most legitimate sites are quick to take action when they discover a spoofed version.

If you want to make sure you're visiting the right Web site, you shouldn't rely on hyperlinks at all. The most reliable way to reach the site you want is to type the URL into your browser's address bar. Even this method isn't completely foolproof, but it's the most reliable way to make sure you go to the site you want to visit.
Another thing to watch out for are peer-to-peer services. These services allow you to download files hosted on other users' computers. Most of these services rely on users to share files. Usually, the service will create a shared folder. Any file within that folder is fair game -- other users of the service can download a copy of it. If you aren't careful, you could allow unfettered access to all the files on your computer. If you store any private information on your machine, it might not be private for long.

As long as you're cautious when you set up a peer-to-peer service, you should be fine. Just keep in mind that by the very nature of the service, you'll be compromising your network's security.

It might seem like the tips we've shared in this article are excessive. But think about how important your personal information is to you. If someone else had access to that information, he or she could steal your identity. A malicious hacker could raid a banking account, ruin your credit rating or use your machines to attack a Web server or send out spam. While no network is ever 100 percent immune to attack, following these tips will greatly reduce the risk of a security compromise.

Sunday, 8 May 2016

Investigation Report: Hack a Drone !

Can you hack a drone?

We live in an age of hackers. Whether it's yanking payment and credit card information from large retailers, pilfering personnel information from the U.S. government or snatching a treasure trove of juicy emails, salary information and unreleased films from Sony Pictures, the black hats are out there and they're trying to get in. Everything is a potential target, and that includes drones. Hackers have developed malware designed to infiltrate and overtake the small quadcopters that you might find hovering around your local park or eventually dropping off your Amazon packages. They've also come up with a way to bring down the high-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increasingly employed by military forces [sources: de Looper, Sternstein].

Maldrone is a type of malware specifically aimed at UAVs and intended to hack into drones via Internet connections. Drones, after all, are essentially flying computers. As such, they're susceptible to the same type of hacks as a laptop or smartphone. Drone hacking technology can be used to either swipe the data that the machines collect or even take over their physical control [sources: de Looper, Sternstein, Moskovitch].

SkyJack, for example, looks like a run of the mill drone, but is designed to hunt down other UAVs, hack into them and control them. In other words, it could potentially be used to amass a fleet of zombie drones. Samy Kamkar, the hacker behind the Internet worm that crippled MySpace in 2005, has publicly released the specs for the SkyJack drone, giving hackers all the info they need to build their own versions. The machine runs on software that directs it to locate other drones within a certain area and take over their control by severing the drones' Internet connection with its rightful owner [source: Crook].

Meanwhile, military drone hackers look to bring down UAVs by confusing them. Iranian officials, for example, say that they were able to ground a U.S. Air Force drone flying along the country's border with Afghanistan in late 2011 by manipulating its global positioning system (GPS). It's believed that the hackers first jammed the drone's communication links, leaving it unable to send and receive information and controls to and from operators on the ground. The move also disconnected the drone from the GPS system that it used to coordinate its path. As the drone switched to autopilot control, it also went looking for unencrypted GPS frequencies. The hackers sent the drone "spoof" coordinates that led the machine to believe that it was close to its home base in Afghanistan. Instead, the machine landed in Iran [sources: Moskvitch, Sternstein].

The spoofing attack has led to an arms race of sorts, with military drone outfits scrambling to beef up their protections against hackers. Among other moves, experts recommend hiding the exact positions of GPS receivers to make them more difficult to locate. The U.S. military is currently working with Boeing to develop a "hacker-proof" drone which would shield its onboard communications system from potential attacks. The computers operate on a new programming language that creators say is less vulnerable to hacks. At least for the time being [source: Sternstein, Sternstein].

Sunday, 1 May 2016

Investigation Report: Protect IP

How Protect IP Works!

In 1998, United States President Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. The purpose of the legislation was to bolster protection of copyright in a world where piracy and copyright infringement is easier than ever. If you wanted to sell illegal copies of a book 500 years ago, you had to have access to a printing press or have a lot of spare time and immaculate handwriting. These days, a couple of clicks with a mouse can net you an author's entire bibliography in a few moments. Just pop on the Internet and you can distribute those works to millions of people. Piracy has become a very big deal.

While the DMCA gives copyright holders some protection, there are limits to its scope. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- some limitations protect innocent parties. For example, under the DMCA, sites like YouTube are protected if users upload material that infringes upon some other entity's intellectual property. In these cases, the sites are providing a service rather than the content itself.

But there are other limitations to the DMCA that have inspired lawmakers to propose new legislation to fill in some gaps. One big problem is that the Internet is global. When you visit a Web site, the server that hosts the files you're viewing could be on the other side of the world. The United States government has no jurisdiction over computers that exist outside its borders. So how can a copyright holder pursue a complaint if someone in another country steals intellectual property?

In 2011, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced an act in the United States Senate called Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property (Protect IP). The purpose of this act is to target Web sites hosted on servers outside the jurisdiction of the United States that perpetuate piracy of United States goods.

Let's take a look at how this proposed legislation tries to combat the problem of piracy.

The Nuts and Bolts of Protect IP:

The first part of Protect IP gives the United States attorney general the opportunity to get a restraining order or injunction against any Web site that provides access to pirated content. There are a few limitations to this ability: The site must have a domain name that is used within the United States, and the site must both conduct business within the United States and cause harm to those who hold intellectual property rights within the United States.

Assuming the site fits the criteria, the attorney general would then notify the site of the alleged violation. That's assuming it's possible to track down an address, physical or otherwise, for the site's registrant. But what if a sternly worded notice from a U.S.official isn't enough to convince a Web site to abandon its allegedly wanton ways?

Without a means to punish the site, the bill would have little impact. But how can a United States court punish someone who doesn't reside in the United States? The answer lies in an indirect approach. Instead of shutting down the site directly, Protect IP gives the attorney general and Department of Justice the power to limit access to the site from the United States. It can also cut off the flow of cash from the United States to the site.

Under the terms of Protect IP, the government can order non-authoritative domain name servers, search engines and even social networking services to block traffic to alleged piracy sites. The domain name servers would be required to prevent domain names from resolving into IP addresses. This is the basis for the domain name system (DNS) -- each Web site has its own unique IP address, such as 216.27.61.137. But these addresses aren't easy for us to remember. The DNS maps text to IP addresses so that we don't have to remember the numeric addresses, which can change over time.

Protect IP would require domain name servers to prevent these domain names from resolving to the proper IP addresses. If you tried to navigate to such a site, you might get an error message or even be redirected to a different site -- perhaps the site of a law enforcement agency like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The Department of Justice could also notify financial transaction providers like PayPal or Internet advertising services of the violation and require these companies to cut off payments from people within the United States to the sites. The goal is to deprive piracy sites of revenue so that it's not profitable to host pirated content.

These actions might upset users within the United States. The legislation would protect companies that comply with Protect IP from lawsuits brought against them by users. And if a company resists following the instructions set under Protect IP, it could become the target of the attorney general and be subject to fines.
Many people have criticized Protect IP and the similarly-designed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). In our next section, we'll learn why.

The Problems with Protect IP:

One concern critics have raised about Protect IP is that it could harm free speech. For example, the site WikiLeaks is a whistleblower outlet where people can submit documents from government agencies or corporations that reveal unethical or perhaps even illegal activities. Its stated purpose is to provide transparency so that the average Internet surfer can learn what these powerful organizations are up to. Part of the power of WikiLeaks is that it hosts thousands of documents belonging to other organizations. Under Protect IP, WikiLeaks could be in danger of being hamstrung financially and it would be more difficult for someone in the United States to visit the site.

Then there's a fear that messing with the domain name system could compromise a security protocol that's been in development for several years. It's called DNSSEC, and its purpose is to provide end-to-end encryption between two machines on the Internet. If you want to use the Internet to access sensitive data such as medical or financial records, you'd probably want a secure connection and encrypted data so that other people can't snoop on your personal business. DNSSEC helps provide this connection. But if the government requires ISPs to block or redirect traffic to certain domain names, the connections between your machine and the one you're communicating with could be compromised. That's because information doesn't flow in a simple pathway on the Internet -- it's broken down into chunks that travel via different pathways to get to the computer on the other side, where files are reassembled for the user.

Then there's the argument that legislation like Protect IP has little justification. Organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America claim that piracy costs the industry billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year. Yet, the United States Government Accountability Office published a report in 2010 that revealed it is impossible to determine what the actual damages due to piracy could be. That's because not every person who pirates a piece of content would have otherwise purchased it legitimately. And since digital content can be copied an indefinite number of times, there's no demonstrable loss because the content owner can still sell legitimate copies of the content. It's complicated.

But perhaps the most damaging criticism leveled by critics is that Protect IP wouldn't really stop piracy. While blocking or redirecting domain names would be a nuisance, it's not difficult to get around the problem. You could navigate to sites by typing in the IP address directly. It's not hard to imagine Web sites dedicated to maintaining lists of IP addresses that direct to blocked sites. And users can even navigate to foreign servers to resolve domain names without being blocked or redirected. Several hackers have released extensions for popular Web browsers that will do all the work for users behind the scenes, meaning there will be no noticeable effect on the user experience.

Cutting off funds could potentially impact piracy sites but not all piracy sites are profit-oriented. But this part of Protect IP could be the most effective means for intellectual property holders to protect their interests.
Next, we'll learn about what's happened with Protect IP since it was introduced in the Senate in 2011.

The Fate of Protect IP:

In May 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved Protect IP in a unanimous vote. The next move for the legislation was to go to the Senate floor for a general vote. But it faced an opponent -- Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. Senator Wyden expressed concerns that the bill would harm innovation, hurt the job market and cause other unintended consequences that could do more harm than good. He decided to place a hold on the legislation, delaying the vote until 2012.

As 2011 drew to an end, Wyden renewed his commitment to fighting Protect IP. He said he would filibuster the bill. But what does that mean?

Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid would first have to move the bill toward a vote on the Senate floor, which is called cloture. Cloture creates a 30-hour time limit for debate on a subject, after which at least three-fifths of the Senate must vote in favor to end debate in order to move on to voting on the legislation. If after 30 hours, three-fifths of the Senators don't vote to end debate, the debate could continue indefinitely. If he filibusters, Wyden and senators who feel the same about Protect IP as he does could take up that time saying anything they like, including reading every name off a petition signed by thousands of citizens opposing Protect IP.

At the start of 2012, 40 senators had signed on support for Protect IP. To get the three-fifths majority needed to invoke cloture, at least 20 more senators would have to add support. Without that support, it's likely that the bill would go back into a committee for edits and markups. It could also simply fade away.
In the end, it's clear that piracy is a problem. It definitely impacts revenue even though the actual dollar amount may be impossible to determine. The companies and organizations that lobby the government for legislation protecting them from piracy aren't going to give up if Protect IP fails. It falls to senators and representatives to learn as much as they can about how the Internet works so that they can make the right decisions. It also falls to U.S. citizens letting their own opinions be known by contacting their respective Senators and Representatives.

To learn more about the U.S. government, the Internet and censorship, follow the links on the next page.

Investigation Report: The Deep Web

How the Deep Web Works!

What a tangled web we weave, indeed. About 40 percent of the world's population uses the Web for news, entertainment, communication and myriad other purposes [source: Internet World Stats]. Yet even as more and more people log on, they are actually finding less of the data that's stored online. That's because only a sliver of what we know as the World Wide Web is easily accessible.

The so-called surface Web, which all of us use routinely, consists of data that search engines can find and then offer up in response to your queries. But in the same way that only the tip of an iceberg is visible to observers, a traditional search engine sees only a small amount of the information that's available -- a measly 0.03 percent [source: OEDB].

As for the rest of it? Well, a lot of it's buried in what's called the deep Web. The deep Web (also known as the undernet, invisible Web and hidden Web, among other monikers) consists of data that you won't locate with a simple Google search.

No one really knows how big the deep Web really is, but it's hundreds (or perhaps even thousands) of times bigger that the surface Web. This data isn't necessarily hidden on purpose. It's just hard for current search engine technology to find and make sense of it.

There's a flip side of the deep Web that's a lot murkier -- and, sometimes, darker -- which is why it's also known as the dark Web. In the dark Web, users really do intentionally bury data. Often, these parts of the Web are accessible only if you use special browser software that helps to peel away the onion-like layers of the dark Web.

This software maintains the privacy of both the source and the destination of data and the people who access it. For political dissidents and criminals alike, this kind of anonymity shows the immense power of the dark Web, enabling transfers of information, goods and services, legally or illegally, to the chagrin of the powers-that-be all over the world.

Just as a search engine is simply scratching the surface of the Web, we're only getting started. Keep reading to find out how tangled our Web really becomes.

Hidden in Plain Site:

The deep Web is enormous in comparison to the surface Web. Today's Web has more than 555 million registered domains. Each of those domains can have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of sub-pages, many of which aren't cataloged, and thus fall into the category of deep Web.

Although nobody really knows for sure, the deep Web may be 400 to 500 times bigger that the surface Web [source: BrightPlanet]. And both the surface and deep Web grow bigger and bigger every day.
To understand why so much information is out of sight of search engines, it helps to have a bit of background on searching technologies.

Search engines generally create an index of data by finding information that's stored on Web sites and other online resources. This process means using automated spiders or crawlers, which locate domains and then follow hyperlinks to other domains, like an arachnid following the silky tendrils of a web, in a sense creating a sprawling map of the Web.

This index or map is your key to finding specific data that's relevant to your needs. Each time you enter a keyword search, results appear almost instantly thanks to that index. Without it, the search engine would literally have to start searching billions of pages from scratch every time someone wanted information, a process that would be both unwieldy and exasperating.

But search engines can't see data stored to the deep Web. There are data incompatibilities and technical hurdles that complicate indexing efforts. There are private Web sites that require login passwords before you can access the contents. Crawlers can't penetrate data that requires keyword searches on a single, specific Web site. There are timed-access sites that no longer allow public views once a certain time limit has passed.
All of those challenges, and a whole lot of others, make data much harder for search engines to find and index. Keep reading to see more about what separates the surface and deep Web.

Just Below the Surface:

As we've already noted, there are millions upon millions of sub-pages strewn throughout millions of domains. There are internal pages with no external links, such as internal.howstuffworks.com, which are used for site maintenance purposes. There are unpublished or unlisted blog posts, picture galleries, file directories, and untold amounts of content that search engines just can't see.

Here's just one example. There are many independent newspaper Web sites online, and sometimes, search engines index a few of the articles on those sites. That's particularly true for major news stories that receive a lot of media attention. A quick Google search will undoubtedly unveil many dozens of articles on, for example, World Cup soccer teams.

But if you're looking for a more obscure story, you may have to go directly to a specific newspaper site and then browse or search content to find what you're looking for. This is especially true as a news story ages. The older the story, the more likely it's stored only on the newspaper's archive, which isn't visible on the surface Web. Subsequently, that story may not appear readily in search engines -- so it counts as part of the deep Web.

Deep Potential:

Data in the Deep Web is hard for search engines to see, but unseen doesn't equal unimportant. As you can see just from our newspaper example, there's immense value in the information tucked away in the deep Web.

The deep Web is an endless repository for a mind-reeling amount of information. There are engineering databases, financial information of all kinds, medical papers, pictures, illustrations ... the list goes on, basically, forever.

And the deep Web is only getting deeper and more complicated. For search engines to increase their usefulness, their programmers must figure out how to dive into the deep Web and bring data to the surface. Somehow they must not only find valid information, but they must find a way to present it without overwhelming the end users.

As with all things business, the search engines are dealing with weightier concerns than whether you and I are able to find the best apple crisp recipe in the world. They want to help corporate powers find and use the deep Web in novel and valuable ways.

For example, construction engineers could potentially search research papers at multiple universities in order to find the latest and greatest in bridge-building materials. Doctors could swiftly locate the latest research on a specific disease.

The potential is unlimited. The technical challenges are daunting. That's the draw of the deep Web. Yet there's a murkier side to the deep Web, too -- one that's troubling to a lot of people for a lot reasons.

Darkness Falls:

The deep Web may be a shadow land of untapped potential, but with a bit of skill and some luck, you can illuminate a lot of valuable information that many people worked to archive. On the dark Web, where people purposely hide information, they'd prefer it if you left the lights off.

The dark Web is a bit like the Web's id. It's private. It's anonymous. It's powerful. It unleashes human nature in all its forms, both good and bad.

The bad stuff, as always, gets most of the headlines. You can find illegal goods and activities of all kinds through the dark Web. That includes illicit drugs, child pornography, stolen credit card numbers, human trafficking, weapons, exotic animals, copyrighted media and anything else you can think of. Theoretically, you could even, say, hire a hit man to kill someone you don't like.

But you won't find this information with a Google search. These kinds of Web sites require you to use special software, such as The Onion Router, more commonly known as Tor.

Tor is software that installs into your browser and sets up the specific connections you need to access dark Web sites. Critically, Tor is an encrypted technology that helps people maintain anonymity online. It does this in part by routing connections through servers around the world, making them much harder to track.
Tor also lets people access so-called hidden services -- underground Web sites for which the dark Web is notorious. Instead of seeing domains that end in .com or .org, these hidden sites end in .onion. On the next page we'll peel back the layers of some of those onions.

Titillating Tor:

The most infamous of these onion sites was the now-defunct Silk Road, an online marketplace where users could buy drugs, guns and all sorts of other illegal items. The FBI eventually captured Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, but copycat sites like Black Market Reloaded are still readily available.

Oddly enough, Tor is the result of research done by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, which created Tor for political dissidents and whistleblowers, allowing them to communicate without fear of reprisal.
Tor was so effective in providing anonymity for these groups that it didn't take long for the criminally-minded to start using it as well.

That leaves U.S. law enforcement in the ironic position of attempting to track criminals who are using government-sponsored software to hide their trails. Tor, it would seem, is a double-edged sword.
Anonymity is part and parcel on the dark Web, but you may wonder how any money-related transactions can happen when sellers and buyers can't identify each other. That's where Bitcoin comes in.

If you haven't heard of Bitcoin, it's basically an encrypted digital currency. Like regular cash, Bitcoin is good for transactions of all kinds, and notably, it also allows for anonymity; no one can trace a purchase, illegal or otherwise.

Bitcoin may be the currency of the future -- a decentralized and unregulated type of money free of the reins of any one government. But because Bitcoin isn't backed by any government, its value fluctuates, often wildly. It's anything but a safe place to store your life savings. But when paired properly with Tor, it's perhaps the closest thing to a foolproof way to buy and sell on the Web.

The Brighter Side of Darkness:

The dark Web has its ominous overtones. But not everything on the dark side is bad. There are all sorts of services that don't necessarily run afoul of the law.

The dark Web is home to alternate search engines, e-mail services, file storage, file sharing, social media, chat sites, news outlets and whistleblowing sites, as well as sites that provide a safer meeting ground for political dissidents and anyone else who may find themselves on the fringes of society.

In an age where NSA-type surveillance is omnipresent and privacy seems like a thing of the past, the dark Web offers some relief to people who prize their anonymity. Dark Web search engines may not offer up personalized search results, but they don't track your online behavior or offer up an endless stream of advertisements, either. Bitcoin may not be entirely stable, but it offers privacy, which is something your credit card company most certainly does not.

For citizens living in countries with violent or oppressive leaders, the dark Web offers a more secure way to communicate with like-minded individuals. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, which are easy for determined authorities to monitor, the dark Web provides deeper cover and a degree of safety for those who would badmouth or plot to undermine politicians or corporate overlords.

A paper written by researchers at the University of Luxembourg attempted to rank the most commonly accessed materials on the dark Web. What they found was that although sites trading in illegal activities and adult content are very popular, so too are those concerned with human rights and freedom of information [Source: ArXiv].

So although the dark Web definitely has its ugly side, it has great potential, too.

Even Deeper:

The deep Web is only getting deeper. Its store of human knowledge and trivialities grows more massive every day, complicating our efforts to make sense of it all. In the end, that's perhaps the biggest challenge behind the Internet that we've created.

Programmers will continue to improve search engine algorithms, making them better at delving into deeper layers of the Web. In doing so, they'll help researchers and businesses connect and cross-reference information in ways that were never possible before.

At the same time, the primary job of a smart search engine is not to simply find information. What you really want it to do is find the most relevant information. Otherwise, you're left awash in a sea of cluttered data that leaves you wishing you had never clicked on that search button.

That's the problem of so-called big data. Big data is the name for sets of data that are so large that they become unmanageable and incoherent. Because the Internet is growing so quickly, our whole world is overrun with data, and it's hard for anyone to make sense of it all -- even all of those powerful, all-knowing computers at Bing and Google headquarters.

As the Internet grows, every large company spends more and more money on data management and analysis, both to keep their own organizations functioning and also to obtain competitive advantages over others. Mining and organizing the deep Web is a vital part of those strategies. Those companies that learn to leverage this data for their own uses will survive and perhaps change the world with new technologies. Those that rely only on the surface Web won't be able to compete.

In the meantime, the deep Web will continue to perplex and fascinate everyone who uses the Internet. It contains an enthralling amount of knowledge that could help us evolve technologically and as a species when connected to other bits of information. And of course, its darker side will always be lurking, too, just as it always does in human nature. The deep Web speaks to the fathomless, scattered potential of not only the Internet, but the human race, too.

Author's Note: How the Deep Web Works

The Deep Web is a vague, ambiguous place. But while researching this story, it was easy to conclude at least one thing for sure -- most news headlines tend to sensationalize the dark Web and its seedier side, and rarely mention the untapped potential of the deep Web. Articles about illegal drugs and weapons obviously draw more readers than those detailing the technical challenges of harvesting data from the deep Web. Read the negative, breathless articles with a grain of salt. It's worth remembering that there's a whole lot more to the deep Web than the obvious criminal element. As engineers find better, faster ways to catalog the Web's stores of data, the Internet as a whole could transform our society in amazing ways.

Investigation Report: Internet Folklore

How Internet Folklore Works!

In incredible ways, the Internet has remade the way people communicate with one another. In centuries past, humans relied on word of mouth, handwritten letters, cave drawings, stone tablets and telegraph machines to convey messages and stories. Computers, satellites and cell phones have changed all of that. Text, pictures and videos all flow nearly instantaneously through the Web to just about anywhere on the planet.
This fundamental shift in communication is altering our cultures and traditions in countless ways. It's also morphing our collective folklore. Folklore has a whole lot of definitions that change depending on whom you ask. But the New York Folklore Society has one of the most succinct. The society indicates that folklore is made up of "cultural ways in which a group maintains and passes on a shared way of life."

A group can be just two people. Or it can be millions. And they need to have only one common factor that links them, be it dance, song, food recipes, myths, exercise routines, pets, video games, chain letters, costumes or even graffiti. All group members typically have some idea of the core concepts of their subculture.

It's clear that the digital pathways of the Web are critical to modern-day folklore. How it's changed folklore is less certain. When the Web first gathered momentum in the early 1990s, a lot of folklorists (people who study folklore) bypassed this new technology as a source of material. Some of them felt the Web was too abstract – too coldly technological – to warrant deeper inquiry.

Nowadays, the 1990s are practically ancient history. The Web is deeply ingrained into all of our lives. It's an indisputable cultural force that's upended the way we communicate our most basic missives to family and friends. It's overturned the way we perceive the world all around us. And in many cases, although the Web allows for nearly unfettered and unthinkable levels of communication, it has also isolated us in ways that old means did not.

But we humans have an insatiable need to gather in groups and subdivisions of society, whether we do so in person or online. We tell stories that perpetuate our groups and lifestyles because we understand a particular way of life. The Internet is a valuable tool for helping all of us pass along not just technological tips and tricks, but traditions and legacies that last far longer than the latest memes or online fads.

Keep reading and you'll see how folklore is changing in the age of digital immediacy and shorter attention spans. You'll find out that our human need for lasting folklore is elastic and powerful even in the age of email and text messaging.

Newfangled Folklore:

For many people, the word "folklore" comes loaded with dusty, old baggage. They immediately think folklore refers to fairy tales, mythological creatures, fables, proverbs or any sort of story in which unicorns or witches might make an appearance.
But as we've pointed out already, folklore is just the stories of a group that shares at least one thing in common. That's it, really.
There's also a perception that in today's revved-up Internet age, folklore is a folksy, antiquated term that has little bearing on our current society. That it's diluted and made meaningless in a world dominated by digital devices of all kinds.
The reality is that technology isn't wrecking folklore. Instead, it's enriching it, according to the man many people recognize as the father of folklore studies. The late Alan Dundes, who taught about folklore at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote that fears of technology killing off folklore are vastly overblown.
Dundes indicated that technologies such as phones, radios and computers have accelerated the spread of folklore in amazing ways. In past generations, stories spread in days, weeks or months. Now, thanks to the power of the Internet, those same tales spread like digital wildfire.
There's more to the tango between technology and folklore than simply faster transmission. Before his death in 2005, Dundes said the folklore of computers would become a defining feature of modern folklore. He was dead on. Computers, smartphones and the Internet are the basis for countless subcultures. On the next page you'll see how those subcultures thrive in a digitized world.

Inside Jokes Galore:

What is the Internet if not just a massive blob of interconnected inside jokes? It's apparent from the comments sections of sites such as YouTube, Sports Illustrated, Reddit, 4Chan and Xbox Live that there's a certain lingo for communicating with your peers. Each site draws upon shared stories that immediately make sense to people in the know but may draw bemused looks from people who aren't familiar with a group's shorthand.
But more than linguistic twists connects users of the Internet. Some of our new technologies create entirely new tales, tall and otherwise.
For example, Facebook has always been fertile ground for all sorts of digital contrivances. One of the most frequent requests of avid Facebook users is an application that allows them to see who's been peeking at their profiles. Such an application would help pinpoint potential new suitors or see which old flames might still be feeling a spark for old times.
Of course, there is no application that allows you to see who's trying to view your Facebook profile. If Facebook allowed such a program, there would be all sorts of privacy repercussions. But that doesn't stop marketing schemes and fake app developers from trying to capitalize on a collective desire for such a capability. They promise to show you who's been looking for you – only they really can't [source: Facebook].
There are even sillier Facebook examples. For instance, posting a legal notice of any kind on your Facebook status won't protect your privacy rights in any way, nor will it serve as evidence of copyright for your kitty pictures.
Those are just a couple of examples of how bits of misinformation weave themselves into our lives. Keep reading, and you'll see more about how online rumors start and how some of them turn into bigger-than-life myths that ingrain themselves into our collective folklore.

Pasta Served with Urban Legends:

The Internet is teeming with urban legends and myths and rumors and outright lies. Sometimes a few quick Google searches will confirm a source or outright debunk the premise of a tale. Other times you have to rely on the research of others. That's why sites such as Snopes.com are so interesting.

Snopes is sometimes called the urban legends reference pages. It's filled with Internet urban legends and their origins. Sometimes, those legends turn out to have basis in truth. Other times, they're complete hooey, like the ones about the Obama administration banning sprinkles on donuts or Michael Jordan (now older than 50) returning to play in the NBA.

Sites like Snopes are very much a reflection of Internet folklore. They're an immediate glimpse into the concerns and interests of people browsing the Web.

Rumors and urban legends spread quickly on the Internet because of the way people perpetuate them. On the Internet, it's common for people to copy and paste popular bits of content (called copypasta in Internet slang), which then spread throughout forums and social networking sites. Content that takes a weird or scary turn is sometimes then called creepypasta, for obvious reasons.

Like ghost stories around a campfire, creepy online stories tend to grab our attention.

Take the story of Ted the Caver, which is basically a journal of man who finds a cave and begins exploring it. He details the cave's features in lengthy narrative passages and includes grainy (and claustrophobia-inducing) pictures of his discoveries. After several trips underground, his experiences in the cave become unsettling and he begins having hallucinations and almost supernatural experiences that he attributes to his subterranean escapades.

Is the cave haunted? Is it driving him mad? Ted seems to think so. And so too will you, if you read his story in full.

The last entry of his journal indicates that he's returning to the cave one last time in hopes of returning his life to normal. He also writes that he'll update the site immediately up returning. The final page, appropriately, is never updated.

Although Ted the Caver is all fictitious, it's also gripping in the way that only the Internet can be. It speaks to the anonymity and helplessness of witnessing strange and even harrowing things on the Web. It's a ghost story for modern times, echoing through the digital crevasses all around us.

As folklore, Ted the Caver is powerful. But even as folklore, Ted is a pretty minor character compared to our friend on the next page.

Slenderman:

The pervasive presence of the Internet means it seeps into every facet of our lives. It becomes the perfect medium for steeping our collective consciousness – our common folklore – in stories that may have no basis in reality yet become a looking glass for our dreams ... or our fears. Sometimes those fears turn a bit nightmarish, as in the case of Slenderman.

Some people call Slenderman the Internet's first celebrity of legend and folklore. He's an ominous supernatural character that appears all over the Internet, a sort of boogeyman that's out to get you even if you aren't sure why or how.

Slenderman got his start on an Internet forum where users manipulated pictures to make them seem as though they'd captured ghosts or other supernatural creatures. Eric Knudsen (who went by the online alias Victor Surge) created two black-and-white images featuring a warped, faceless man wearing a suit, and notably, they had creepy captions that referenced a mysterious, dangerous "Slender Man."

The suspenseful and harrowing images seized the imaginations of like-minded users. They copied the theme and made new Slenderman images, adding their own text to suit their preferences. From there, the legend took on a life of its own, spreading across the Internet.

As the blurry man in the suit made his way around the Web, his origins quickly became equally blurry. Although most people generally accepted him as an urban legend of sorts, other people wondered if there wasn't some truth to his existence. In 2014, that idea went to an extreme in Wisconsin.
It was then that two 12-year-old girls lured an acquaintance into a wooded area and then stabbed her 19 times. The victim survived and her attackers were arrested. One of the offenders told authorities that she wanted to become a follower of the mystical Slenderman, and that to do so, she had to begin by carrying out a murder.

Although the Wisconsin events set a high (or, rather, low) bar for Slenderman-inspired violence, there have been other incidents linked to his legend. Typically it's young adolescents who buy into the Slenderman mythos, committing strange or scary acts to bring Slenderman into their lives in some way, even if it lands them in handcuffs.

That young girls might commit murder because of an Internet urban legend is certainly awful. But that fact speaks to the power of online storytelling and folklore. The stories we humans tell each other hold real meaning. How we interpret and act on that meaning affects our society in profound ways.

Godlike Machines:

Slenderman is a specific online legend. Beyond particular stories, there are more amorphous references to technology itself as a part of modern folklore. At a time when the Internet is nearly everywhere, it's more than a little scary to some people. The Internet seems like an omnipresent, omniscient, almost godlike entity that holds the answers to all of your questions about life.

It's no wonder that Google and its brethren take on outsize importance in our lives. The Internet provides answers to nearly every question, feeds on our privacy, rules our social lives, drives our work, offers parenting instructions and tells us how to make the best possible cup of coffee, too. It's no wonder that some people feel as though they're trapped in some digital dystopia ruled by their master, the Internet. One wonders if future civilizations will excavate our remains and speculate as to the significance of the Google logo.

Without a doubt, as they reconstruct the flecks of silicon and circuitry, they will come to see how a digitized planet spawned all manner of cultural symbols. They will realize how our society's folklore within the Internet was a living, breathing, dynamic thing. How it churned its details, not just from month to month or day to day, but from second to second.

On our contemporary Internet, old tales take on new life. New tales quickly become stale and lifeless as even newer versions go viral. And as for picking through the pieces to trace the origins of those tales? In today's unimaginably vast Internet, data is fractured and misplaced or frequently simply impossible to find.
But folklore doesn't demand rigid answers about a story's origins. All it demands is that we humans share our lives with one another. And with the Internet, we can share more about our lives and cultures than at any point so far in history.

Author's Note: How Internet Folklore Works:

I remember the first time I connected to an infant version of the Internet. I used a 300-baud modem to dial up a local bulletin board system with a rudimentary chat feature and a text-based adventure game. Even as a child, I knew my life would never again be the same. The online universe connected me, a rural kid, to a vast world full of stories, fun and (sometimes) danger that transfixed my friends and me. We still played outside, swapping ridiculous kid stories and playing in the dirt, but we also connected online, developing an entirely new type of culture that mystified our parents but seemed as important to us as anything that happened IRL (in real life). Our shared folklore then wasn't just in the flesh. It was – and is -- digitized, too.

Investigation Report: Internet Infrastructure

How Internet Infrastructure Works!

One of the greatest things about the Internet is that nobody really owns it. It is a global collection of networks, both big and small. These networks connect together in many different ways to form the single entity that we know as the Internet. In fact, the very name comes from this idea of interconnected networks.

Since its beginning in 1969, the Internet has grown from four host computer systems to tens of millions. However, just because nobody owns the Internet, it doesn't mean it is not monitored and maintained in different ways. The Internet Society, a non-profit group established in 1992, oversees the formation of the policies and protocols that define how we use and interact with the Internet.

In this article, you will learn about the basic underlying structure of the Internet. You will learn about domain name servers, network access points and backbones. But first you will learn about how your computer connects to others.

The Internet: Computer Network Hierarchy:

Every computer that is connected to the Internet is part of a network, even the one in your home. For example, you may use a modem and dial a local number to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP). At work, you may be part of a local area network (LAN), but you most likely still connect to the Internet using an ISP that your company has contracted with. When you connect to your ISP, you become part of their network. The ISP may then connect to a larger network and become part of their network. The Internet is simply a network of networks.

Most large communications companies have their own dedicated backbones connecting various regions. In each region, the company has a Point of Presence (POP). The POP is a place for local users to access the company's network, often through a local phone number or dedicated line. The amazing thing here is that there is no overall controlling network. Instead, there are several high-level networks connecting to each other through Network Access Points or NAPs.

Internet Network Example:

Here's an example. Imagine that Company A is a large ISP. In each major city, Company A has a POP. The POP in each city is a rack full of modems that the ISP's customers dial into. Company A leases fiber optic lines from the phone company to connect the POPs together (see, for example, this UUNET Data Center Connectivity Map).

Imagine that Company B is a corporate ISP. Company B builds large buildings in major cities and corporations locate their Internet server machines in these buildings. Company B is such a large company that it runs its own fiber optic lines between its buildings so that they are all interconnected.
In this arrangement, all of Company A's customers can talk to each other, and all of Company B's customers can talk to each other, but there is no way for Company A's customers and Company B's customers to intercommunicate. Therefore, Company A and Company B both agree to connect to NAPs in various cities, and traffic between the two companies flows between the networks at the NAPs.

In the real Internet, dozens of large Internet providers interconnect at NAPs in various cities, and trillions of bytes of data flow between the individual networks at these points. The Internet is a collection of huge corporate networks that agree to all intercommunicate with each other at the NAPs. In this way, every computer on the Internet connects to every other.

The Function of an Internet Router

All of these networks rely on NAPs, backbones and routers to talk to each other. What is incredible about this process is that a message can leave one computer and travel halfway across the world through several different networks and arrive at another computer in a fraction of a second!
The routers determine where to send information from one computer to another. Routers are specialized computers that send your messages and those of every other Internet user speeding to their destinations along thousands of pathways. A router has two separate, but related, jobs:

It ensures that information doesn't go where it's not needed. This is crucial for keeping large volumes of data from clogging the connections of "innocent bystanders."
It makes sure that information does make it to the intended destination.

In performing these two jobs, a router is extremely useful in dealing with two separate computer networks. It joins the two networks, passing information from one to the other. It also protects the networks from one another, preventing the traffic on one from unnecessarily spilling over to the other. Regardless of how many networks are attached, the basic operation and function of the router remains the same. Since the Internet is one huge network made up of tens of thousands of smaller networks, its use of routers is an absolute necessity.

Internet Backbone:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) created the first high-speed backbone in 1987. Called NSFNET, it was a T1 line that connected 170 smaller networks together and operated at 1.544 Mbps (million bits per second). IBM, MCI and Merit worked with NSF to create the backbone and developed a T3 (45 Mbps) backbone the following year.

Backbones are typically fiber optic trunk lines. The trunk line has multiple fiber optic cables combined together to increase the capacity. Fiber optic cables are designated OC for optical carrier, such as OC-3, OC-12 or OC-48. An OC-3 line is capable of transmitting 155 Mbps while an OC-48 can transmit 2,488 Mbps (2.488 Gbps). Compare that to a typical 56K modem transmitting 56,000 bps and you see just how fast a modern backbone is.

Today there are many companies that operate their own high-capacity backbones, and all of them interconnect at various NAPs around the world. In this way, everyone on the Internet, no matter where they are and what company they use, is able to talk to everyone else on the planet. The entire Internet is a gigantic, sprawling agreement between companies to intercommunicate freely.

Internet Protocol: IP Addresses

Every machine on the Internet has a unique identifying number, called an IP Address. The IP stands for Internet Protocol, which is the language that computers use to communicate over the Internet. A protocol is the pre-defined way that someone who wants to use a service talks with that service. The "someone" could be a person, but more often it is a computer program like a Web browser.

A typical IP address looks like this: 216.27.61.137.
To make it easier for us humans to remember, IP addresses are normally expressed in decimal format as a dotted decimal number like the one above. But computers communicate in binary form. Look at the same IP address in binary: 11011000.00011011.00111101.10001001.

The four numbers in an IP address are called octets, because they each have eight positions when viewed in binary form. If you add all the positions together, you get 32, which is why IP addresses are considered 32-bit numbers. Since each of the eight positions can have two different states (1 or zero), the total number of possible combinations per octet is 2⁸ or 256. So each octet can contain any value between zero and 255. Combine the four octets and you get 2³² or a possible 4,294,967,296 unique values!

Out of the almost 4.3 billion possible combinations, certain values are restricted from use as typical IP addresses. For example, the IP address 0.0.0.0 is reserved for the default network and the address 255.255.255.255 is used for broadcasts.

The octets serve a purpose other than simply separating the numbers. They are used to create classes of IP addresses that can be assigned to a particular business, government or other entity based on size and need. The octets are split into two sections: Net and Host. The Net section always contains the first octet. It is used to identify the network that a computer belongs to. Host (sometimes referred to as Node) identifies the actual computer on the network. The Host section always contains the last octet. There are five IP classes plus certain special addresses.

Internet Protocol: Domain Name System:

When the Internet was in its infancy, it consisted of a small number of computers hooked together with modems and telephone lines. You could only make connections by providing the IP address of the computer you wanted to establish a link with. For example, a typical IP address might be 216.27.22.162. This was fine when there were only a few hosts out there, but it became unwieldy as more and more systems came online.

The first solution to the problem was a simple text file maintained by the Network Information Center that mapped names to IP addresses. Soon this text file became so large it was too cumbersome to manage. In 1983, the University of Wisconsin created the Domain Name System (DNS), which maps text names to IP addresses automatically.

URL: Uniform Resource Locator

When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) "http://tecinvestigation.blogspot.com" contains the domain name howstuffworks.com. So does this e-mail address: example@howstuffworks.com. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's DNS servers to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address.
Top-level domain names, also called first-level domain names, include .COM, .ORG, .NET, .EDU and .GOV. Within every top-level domain there is a huge list of second-level domains. For example, in the .COM first-level domain there is:

Google
Yahoo
Microsoft

Every name in the .COM top-level domain must be unique. The left-most word, like www, is the host name. It specifies the name of a specific machine (with a specific IP address) in a domain. A given domain can, potentially, contain millions of host names as long as they are all unique within that domain.
DNS servers accept requests from programs and other name servers to convert domain names into IP addresses. When a request comes in, the DNS server can do one of four things with it:

It can answer the request with an IP address because it already knows the IP address for the requested domain.
It can contact another DNS server and try to find the IP address for the name requested. It may have to do this multiple times.
It can say, "I don't know the IP address for the domain you requested, but here's the IP address for a DNS server that knows more than I do."
It can return an error message because the requested domain name is invalid or does not exist.

A DNS Example:

Let's say that you type the URL http://tecinvestigation.blogspot.com into your browser. The browser contacts a DNS server to get the IP address. A DNS server would start its search for an IP address by contacting one of the root DNS servers. The root servers know the IP addresses for all of the DNS servers that handle the top-level domains (.COM, .NET, .ORG, etc.). Your DNS server would ask the root for www.howstuffworks.com, and the root would say, "I don't know the IP address for www.howstuffworks.com, but here's the IP address for the .COM DNS server."
Your name server then sends a query to the .COM DNS server asking it if it knows the IP address for www.howstuffworks.com. The DNS server for the COM domain knows the IP addresses for the name servers handling the http://tecinvestigation.blogspot.com domain, so it returns those.

Your name server then contacts the DNS server for http://tecinvestigation.blogspot.com and asks if it knows the IP address for http://tecinvestigation.blogspot.com. It actually does, so it returns the IP address to your DNS server, which returns it to the browser, which can then contact the server for http://tecinvestigation.blogspot.com to get a Web page.
One of the keys to making this work is redundancy. There are multiple DNS servers at every level, so that if one fails, there are others to handle the requests. The other key is caching. Once a DNS server resolves a request, it caches the IP address it receives. Once it has made a request to a root DNS server for any .COM domain, it knows the IP address for a DNS server handling the .COM domain, so it doesn't have to bug the root DNS servers again for that information. DNS servers can do this for every request, and this caching helps to keep things from bogging down.
Even though it is totally invisible, DNS servers handle billions of requests every day and they are essential to the Internet's smooth functioning. The fact that this distributed database works so well and so invisibly day in and day out is a testimony to the design.

Internet Servers and Clients:

Internet servers make the Internet possible. All of the machines on the Internet are either servers or clients. The machines that provide services to other machines are servers. And the machines that are used to connect to those services are clients. There are Web servers, e-mail servers, FTP servers and so on serving the needs of Internet users all over the world.
When you connect to Investigation Report to read a page, you are a user sitting at a client's machine. You are accessing the HowStuffWorks Web server. The server machine finds the page you requested and sends it to you. Clients that come to a server machine do so with a specific intent, so clients direct their requests to a specific software server running on the server machine. For example, if you are running a Web browser on your machine, it will want to talk to the Web server on the server machine, not the e-mail server.

A server has a static IP address that does not change very often. A home machine that is dialing up through a modem, on the other hand, typically has an IP address assigned by the ISP every time you dial in. That IP address is unique for your session -- it may be different the next time you dial in. This way, an ISP only needs one IP address for each modem it supports, rather than one for each customer.

Ports and HTTP:

Any server machine makes its services available using numbered ports -- one for each service that is available on the server. For example, if a server machine is running a Web server and a file transfer protocol (FTP) server, the Web server would typically be available on port 80, and the FTP server would be available on port 21. Clients connect to a service at a specific IP address and on a specific port number.
Once a client has connected to a service on a particular port, it accesses the service using a specific protocol. Protocols are often text and simply describe how the client and server will have their conversation. Every Web server on the Internet conforms to the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). You can learn more about Internet servers, ports and protocols by reading How Web Servers Work.

Networks, routers, NAPs, ISPs, DNS and powerful servers all make the Internet possible. It is truly amazing when you realize that all this information is sent around the world in a matter of milliseconds! The components are extremely important in modern life -- without them, there would be no Internet. And without the Internet, life would be very different indeed for many of us.

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