The Dark Side
Despite its numerous benefits, the Internet does have disadvantages.
"Around the time [the Internet] got into the consumers' hands is when we see the 'dark side' of the Internet emerge. 1988 was the first worm, 1994 with the first widespread spam; from there on there have been a variety of 'dark-side' elements, be it identity theft, fraud, spam, or hacking."
- Leonard Kleinrock, 3/13/13
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"It's become a problem that's very difficult to fix since we did not anticipate it in those early days and so we did not build in any sophisticated protection mechanisms. We did not expect a 'dark side' to emerge for a number of reasons. One reason is we didn’t realize the Internet scale would be as large as it is. Secondly, we knew everybody; I knew everybody on the ARPANET in those early days and they were all good people, agreeable, friendly, and cooperative. There was a 'net-iquette' that everybody observed." "The worst impact the Internet has had is the loss and cost due to hacking, now largely the activity of organized crime and governments. The cost is rising and the cure is extremely difficult. When I started the network I paid little attention to security since the government groups I worked with just encrypted their data, insuring security. However, as the Internet grew, the flaws in the attached computers became the weak link." |
"What we should have done was to put in two things that would have protected us to some degree from the things that we're seeing today. One of them is strong file authentication ... The second is strong user authentication.
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And had we built that into the infrastructure in those early days, the first thing we should have done was to turn it off, because in those early days our goal was to get as much acceptance and participation as possible... And as the 'dark side' began to emerge, we could have cranked those security measures up to try and tone down or tamp down the growth of this 'dark side.' But we didn’t, and it’s very difficult to do so today. We’ve got a huge legacy system, and billions of users, and a huge amount of traffic."
- Leonard Kleinrock, 3/13/13
The Internet has considerable repercussions, both positive and negative. The creation of The ARPANET was the significant turning point that resulted in these impacts.