• Question: Many people are depenent on the Internet. if someone, hyporthetically, sent a virus across the Internet and broke EVERYONE'S computer, what would happen?

    Asked by konekoraian to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      I think the technical term is that we would be well and truely up the creek!!

      Not only would the home computers be down, but then all the mobile phones with fancy OS’s would be too. So no digital communication via the internet or mobile phone. That would be pretty scary.

      What about the computers that controlled the road traffic? Would they stop? There’s the likelyhood of some massive crashes at the signals go down on major roads, and what with communications down, that could cause a major panic.

      What about the really important computers in power stations keeping core cool and in hospital keeping people alive – would they go down too? There’s no reason why they wouldn’t. Can you see how this theoretically could spiral out of control?

      Sounds a bit like Stuxnet to me…

      Check it :: http://vimeo.com/25118844

    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Well, just to make you more at ease, the internet is not that easy to break with one virus. You see, the internet is broken down into many many nodes and different areas, like a giant spider web. If you break one side of a spider web, what happens? Usually the rest of the web stays standing because of the many nodes that the spider builds into the web, so the spider can quickly repair the broken area! The internet is much like this… sometimes parts of the internet go down, but there is a lot of overlap and backup built into the internet web, so that one area can be independent of the other areas!!!!

    • Photo: Ashley Cadby

      Ashley Cadby answered on 30 Jun 2012:

      The person who sent the virus would make a huge amount amount of money helping countries protect their infrastructure.

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