News Roundup

THIS IS AN EXERCISE

This morning's lead story is confirmation of a large-scale attack on Internet infrastructure. Western government agencies are reporting that the telecommunications sector has put countermeasures into place. Over the course of the day, we expect to see recovery.

Here in the newsroom we see little if any difference from last night. Some services work from our computers. Services that don't work sometimes will work from our phones. We're just trying to work through it like everyone else.

Sources indicate that the attack is a sophisticated effort to attack the network itself, not the systems that use it. Technology reporter Julius Sumner explains.

Most attacks we're familiar with focus on particular sites, like that of a news organization or social media platform. This is different, aiming to disrupt the connections between systems. We can explain it with an analogy.

In the physical world, warring sides might attack buildings or other sites with command elements or with supplies. That is what cyber attacks on individual sites are like. Those locations are often heavily guarded so they can be difficult to attack successfully. Another tactic is not to attack the protected locations but the roads that the sites need. If a warehouse full of supplies can't be reached it's as good as gone.

The Internet attack we've seen this week is like an attack on tunnels and bridges that connect the roads of one side of a river the roads on the other side. Taking out one bridge means more traffic on the others but the sides stay connected. Attacking all of them at once means that even the ones that survive the attack are so overloaded that the sides are basically severed from one another.

Many questions have been raised by the events of the past few days. Officials so far have said that now is the time for response and management of the situation. The time for questions about resilience and dependence on the infrastructure will be later.

THIS IS AN EXERCISE