Last Thursday there was a major internet outage. I call it the practice run of the planned outages that were solidified during recent meetings held and resulting hype surrounding the cyber pandemic . I mean, why not use the word "pandemic" now that everyone is paralyzed with fear for their lives.
source from same article mentioned above
The internet cannot be shut down, per se, but their is a colossal businesses that some, then many, then all sites, use to stop attacks. CloudFlare has been the "go-to" for for anti DDoS protection. Now they essentially own the internet kill switch, or at least one of them. CloudFlare is the main one that I will be covering here.
Shit heads all over the internet would set up bots that would send requests to a given website in such quantity that it would essentially shut down the site as users would be competing for attention with said bots; AKA your average DDoS attacks. Your browser will spit out an error while waiting for the words and images to be sent to you so you can see them. Huge problem right?
In comes CloudFlare to intercept all requests (usernames, passwords, personal data, emails, etc.) and quickly allow access to the site. It is a contract service that helps to keep your site up and running. When a DDoS attack strikes, CloudFlare monitors requests and slows them down - both real users and the attackers have to wait for a bit, then get their request filled.
This is all good and fine if only a few sites use the service. CloudFlare saves the day! But when every site on the internet decides on one single insurance provider (CloudFlare) and that provider has shown itself to be subservient to certain government agencies, you have the makings for a major internet blackout (including Hive).
Let me tell you a story about a one user who was just one of thousands on a certain platform. Because of that one user, the government of a large dollar based country, asked site providers and CloudFlare to stop providing services to the site. There are many web registrars but only one CloudFlare, a monopoly let's call it. The platform was down for over three months while they built their own servers to slow traffic during DDoS attacks. When I hear of any company willingly sucking the wang-doodle of any entity in order to shut down its enemies, I look to pull my support from that company, some examples are google, facebook, twitter, instagram, paypal, patreon, visa, mastercard and the list goes on.
I am not saying that CloudFlare was responsible for last Thursday's outage. Most articles that I opened were very vague about what the cause was. They say they are reporting the news, but they did not inform anyone of what was behind the outage, just that we need to be afraid of another bigger one that is coming soon.
One article said it was a DNS failure. Domain Name Servers are all over the place and not centralized, though Verisign plays a big role.
We cannot bypass CloudFlare - if hive uses it and CloudFlare does not want Hive to be working for some time, then Hive will not work (or any other of the sites that use the CloudFlare "service"). But if the DNS servers are all taken down, there is a way to bypass that for sites that you want to use. You need only do a DNS lookup, which changes https://hive.blog to 172.67.217.60 or the IP of Hive.
in the command prompt, type:
ping hive.blog
PING hive.blog (172.67.217.60) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 172.67.217.60 (172.67.217.60): icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=42.8 ms
64 bytes from 172.67.217.60 (172.67.217.60): icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=39.8 ms
64 bytes from 172.67.217.60 (172.67.217.60): icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=40.0 ms
I did that and copied the IP address into browser URL bar. You should be able to access the site, bypassing the DNS server. Unless...
What can we do then?
There is nothing anyone can do to force a widely used "service" like CloudFlare to serve up a website. We should all look for alternatives to this monopoly. If we were to decentralize DDoS protection and DNS providers, we could mitigate internet outages.
Will there be no internet then?
Fortunately there are many things that work without the need for CloudFlare or any DNS servers at all. I am testing many needed internet apps and services via TOR (the onion router). If they function well on TOR, then they will be unaffected by the coming cyber attacks.
Let's hope the ransom is ordered to be deposited in the attacker's bank account or Coinbase address again so that the FBI can order the money to be seized, again. Only the really stupid stories, I mean criminals pull cyber attacks right when something is coming out that embarrasses the government.
Crypto currencies will work perfectly. If you hold your own keys and use the recommended wallet app for each of your coins, they should work. If you think that you own crypto and it is sitting on a centralized or corporate exhanges, you will find out otherwise.
I have tested Electrum, Monero, Dash, and many other smaller core wallets that are designed for peer to peer money transfers. The work on TOR which is its own network, and I have automated the ones that I use to default to TOR or Whonix for their internet connection methods to sync up the blockchain.
Bitmessage(which includes email capabilities) and DMme also work no matter what corporations are limiting internet services.
I have converted my cell phones to android alternatives which default to NOT using google services in order to function. You should see the battery life I have recouped now that my phone only serves me and has stopped phoning home to Google.
I will be testing things like Telegram and other sites for use on privacy networks too but I am not confident that they will work. Further posts may be necessary if I find any that do.
How are you preparing for the coming internet shut down?