Internet Junk Traffic Used to Uncover Censorship

[Guest]

Researchers at UC San Diego have come up with a novel idea how to detect and analyze outages on the global Internet that may be caused by censorship or natural disasters.

Internet Junk Traffic Used to Uncover Censorship : Read more

 

[confish21]

cool

 

[jonology]

I lost internet for ages from the Christchurch earthquake, slow tech news updates for 3 weeks lol

 

[john_4]

Want censorship just go to any site that has a comment section and see what all the sites do to comments they do not like. That includes the tools at Tom's.

 

[c_for]

"So far, the technology is not advanced enough to come up with an early warning system for natural disasters"

If this system is designed to detect internet outages, how could it predict future natural disasters? It's cause and effect, and you can't read the effect before it's been caused.

 

[memadmax]

john_4 smokes great doobie...

 

[tokencode]

Why would you want to utilize garbage traffic from malware and spyware to determine this? The last thing I want to see is legitmate uses for bad/dangerous traffic and software.

"No botnets reporting in from New Zealand, there must be something wrong." This seems like a bad way of determining there was an event and really tells me we have too big of a malware issue. Using malware essentially as the heartbeat of the Internet sends the wrong message about malware and basing a warning system on things people do not want and actively work to remove seems likea not so smart idea..... It's like determining the human population in an area based on the number of cockroaches.

 

[drwho1]

Researches.... or better yet, SERIOUS Researches, should find a way to clean the internet from malware, spyware, viruses and all related junk.

 

[dealcorn]

I do not see why it is hard to "clean the Internet of malware, spyware, viruses and all related junk." After all, Orwell laid out the strategic overview in 1984.

 

[A Bad Day]

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]Researches.... or better yet, SERIOUS Researches, should find a way to clean the internet from malware, spyware, viruses and all related junk.[/citation]

Easier said than done. Why not turn the lemons into lemonades?

 

[cookoy]

Right, if not enough IBR is reaching you, there may have a problem. We all need our daily dose of internet junk traffic and if you're not getting your normal dose, your antivirus or antimalware software may be too good for you.

 

[drwho1]

[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Easier said than done. Why not turn the lemons into lemonades?[/citation]


Cut lemons, squeeze juice, add water and sugar to taste.
Done.

Now how about cleaning the internet from junk?

 

[jamie_1318]

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]Cut lemons, squeeze juice, add water and sugar to taste.Done.Now how about cleaning the internet from junk?[/citation]

I believe you missed the point entirely. You can't get rid of all internet radiation. It's like trying to kill all the mice/cockroaches/disease in the world. Even if we know they are there it's another issue entirely to remove it.

As long as it is here we might as well use it for a censorship indicator. I don't see any good coming out of it as a disaster indicator though, because by the time internet goes down in an area you already should have news that something happened, in other words the data is rendered useless.

 

[GenericUser]

[citation][nom]c_for[/nom]"So far, the technology is not advanced enough to come up with an early warning system for natural disasters"If this system is designed to detect internet outages, how could it predict future natural disasters? It's cause and effect, and you can't read the effect before it's been caused.[/citation]

My thoughts exactly. If it's only detected once it's taken place, then it's already too late to give an "early" warning.

 

[ivan_chess]

[citation][nom]GenericUser[/nom]My thoughts exactly. If it's only detected once it's taken place, then it's already too late to give an "early" warning.[/citation]


Worse, even if you detect the disaster how are you doing to notify them?
"Their internet is out! Quick! Send them an email!"

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]c_for[/nom]"So far, the technology is not advanced enough to come up with an early warning system for natural disasters"If this system is designed to detect internet outages, how could it predict future natural disasters? It's cause and effect, and you can't read the effect before it's been caused.[/citation]

Early warning system means detecting the disaster as it happens rather than after or before it happens. The problem with this is that the disasters might not immediately disrupt internet traffic so it only detects the loss of internet traffic if the disaster or what have you after it has already done enough damage to disrupt internet traffic.

This is a useful way to look out for the changing internet policies set but governments such as more or less immediate notice of firewalls being set up, but it's usefulness as a disaster detection technology may be rather limited because most other detection technologies may have already noticed the disasters by the time the internet traffic is disrupted.

This may be able to detect some disasters before other detection systems so it's not useless as disaster detection. For example, an earthquake may go unnoticed for hours outside of where it hits, but the internet traffic could be down well before the seismic detectors notice the earthquake so it could tell us what happened hours before other detection tech knows about it.

This may help us get relief efforts set up a little faster. Theoretically, it could help get people saved from stuff like collapsed buildings faster and thus increase the chances of survival for the victims.

Also, knowing about another country shutting some traffic out and/or in could be an indicator of international aggression so the issues may be able to be resolved faster peacefully, or we may at least know that something worse is about to happen before there is an attack.

 

[pythy]

I doubt this system can give an early warning to any natural disasters as previous people have said. The only warning this system can probably give is Skynet is becoming self aware.

 

[f-14]

[citation][nom]tokencode[/nom]Why would you want to utilize garbage traffic from malware and spyware to determine this? The last thing I want to see is legitmate uses for bad/dangerous traffic and software. "No botnets reporting in from New Zealand, there must be something wrong." This seems like a bad way of determining there was an event and really tells me we have too big of a malware issue. Using malware essentially as the heartbeat of the Internet sends the wrong message about malware and basing a warning system on things people do not want and actively work to remove seems likea not so smart idea..... It's like determining the human population in an area based on the number of cockroaches.[/citation]
it's a pity there was never a button put in browsers to click on to report the site as spam that went to a collection report for network admins so they could ban the IP and the admin at the IP site could report that the problem was removed. an auto ban would be even nicer as people could just hit report site as spam and after so many reports generated the IP went on an internet wide reported banned IP. if any one could follow that.
patent it, free idea, i don't want to do the work.

 

[COLGeek]

This is actually quite smart and it will be interesting to see how this evolves. Good on the research team.

 

[hoof_hearted]

I believe he inherit monitoring protocols and software within routers and other internet equipment would better serve these purposes.

Personally, I would rather see all the malware makers and scipt kiddies creating this internet junk be in the earthquake.