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Question: What is the best way to prepare for a Belarus-style internet attack?

15 points by Arete314159 ↗ HN
In Belarus, most of the internet went down on Election Day. Authoritarian experts are saying it may be a dry run for similar events in the US in November.

ISP's and cell service were both interrupted. Major social media sites were all DDos'd.

Given that most Americans have only cell service these days, and not land lines, what would be the best way to prepare?

- Get a landline before election day

- Get a satellite phone before election day

- ???

Please do not reply with "oh that'll never happen" or some variation thereof. I'm asking what is the best preparation for if it were to happen, I'm not betting you money that it will.

Thanks!

13 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 40.4 ms ] thread
wmf
I guess you'd want to have service with multiple ISPs based on the hope that one of them would not correctly implement the order. I wouldn't try to predict which ISPs that would be.

You don't want to hear this but I think it would take a year or more to build a "great firewall of USA" that actually works.

ex3ndr
May be this 'would not happen' since most of the 'social' internet is within a single state (CA) and this state is the most hostile to current president?
wiml
What do you want to achieve? The preparation could be any of a zillion things depending on what your goal is. Do you just want to be able to successfully vote? Or exchange short "im ok" messages with friends and family? Organize resistance networks? Watch netflix without buffering? Gain enough situational awareness to escape to an unaffected region (or refugee camp)? Remain productive at your remote dev job? Silent failover without really noticing things are wrong?
Arete314159
I suppose at a minimum I would like to be able to communicate with my family, and if I see / have pictures of something that's very newsworthy, be able to get that to the world outside to be seen.
ALittleLight
Are you familiar with amateur radio? That allows communication at a distance without a centralized authority. You could probably learn to operate a radio and have it up and running by November.

To answer your question though, I think you need to know your goals. Do you want to send messages to let people know how you're doing? Organize a resistance? What goal do you want to achieve? That will help you determine how to prepare.

giantg2
It'd be an ARES/RACES operator's wet dream. Prove amateur radio is still relevant on a national scale so the bandwidth isn't taken away.
squarefoot
If the powers that be decide to cut internet access, they'll succeed, period. Any non complying ISP would be raided for acting against national security (insert political bullshit du jour here) etc. What common people can do (again: common people, do not expect any help from any corporate entities) is to create their own slow as hell Internet through mesh fault tolerant nodes that would arrange themselves automatically no matter where they are located, provided they have coverage, which would limit the global bandwidth to the bare minumum to exchange emails, small files and probably stuttering voice communication. Forget about streaming movies, online gaming and anything that requires speed and/or low latencies.

In case of real emergency however, you don't need any of the above; texting, email and slow upload of photos/videos would be more than enough, as it's extremely likely that they will become more important compared to anything else. Resurrecting USENET (like one micro server for every node) would be a nice touch since it requires a fraction of a fraction of the horsepower required to run any social network site. As for the technical side, it will require higher power output than what it's usually employed by WiFi cards and access points. Nothing exceptional, Watts instead of milliwatts, still it would be illegal, as would be the use of external directional antennas to link static nodes from longer distances, so if they need an excuse to SWAT mommy's basement to turn off that Raspberry PI based node because it poses a security risk for the country, they'll have it.

Now, if I had to build it, I'd probably start from some mesh networking software on the smallest platform I could find that could sustain the traffic (there are better and cheaper boards than the Raspberries), then would provide the system with longer and shorter distance links by using multiple WiFi NICs. The best node is something that can run off solar or any non grid power and whose OS would rearrange the links with other nodes making seamless connections.

Here are a couple links on the subject of mesh links.

https://www.cwnp.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/802.11s_mesh_net...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network

In other words, it's doable to some extent, but be prepared to encounter resistance, jamming or worse.

Thinking globally, if the shit hits the fan, and i mean real shit, then one probably has to return to analog communications; in adverse conditions, a portable CW ransmitter with concealable "tactical" antenna would have a lot more chances to reach another continent than the greatest WiFi card to make to the next city.

giantg2
One thing to point out is that the US has been paying more attention to cyber threats in the past few years, especially to infrastructure. I would hope that we have a better defense plan/reaction than Belarus.

The only part of what you mentioned that would concern me is the cells being down and then not being able to call for emergency services. It's possible some of this could be mitigated by the COWs they deploy after natural disasters (cell on wheels). Having a land line might not help since a coordinated cyber attack would probably target the computerized portions of the land line systems (also don't they VOIP between substations now?).

wmf
A government shutdown isn't really a cyber-attack though.
giantg2
The way it was put in the post suggested that the Belarus shutdown might have been a practice attack to prepare for the US in November. If it is internal, then yeah there's not a lot of options. The government can also jam frequencies it deems problematic, such as amateur bands being suggested in other comments.
znpy
1) get a car

2) live near the border with another nation