
Conficker: The worm that nearly ate the internet - my_first_acct
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/opinion/sunday/conficker-worm-ukraine.html
======
sverige
I've sometimes wondered what would happen if World War 3 mainly involved the
destruction of the internet and/or the GPS system. Would it inevitably lead to
a hot war? Would modern economies really collapse?

I have no doubt that I could navigate a world without the internet and GPS,
because I did for half my life. And I suspect shipping goods to consumers
would be hindered, but have we gotten to the point where shippers and
receivers couldn't work it out by phone? Would the phone networks survive? I
know the landline system is a shadow of its former self, but would it suffice?

It's popular to say that the internet has created a new economy, but the
underlying realities haven't changed. People need food, shelter, clothing,
transportation. I think we could deliver that without the internet, though it
would be painful. All the doom-saying otherwise just seems hyperbolic to me,
though.

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
> involved the destruction of the internet

I think we'd probably see each individual nation end up as a pocket in such an
event. It depends on what we associate to be 'the internet' but we've seen
massive botnets in the last few years that could cripple countries just by
themselves.

------
doener
Containing Conficker (2009): [https://net.cs.uni-
bonn.de/wg/cs/applications/containing-con...](https://net.cs.uni-
bonn.de/wg/cs/applications/containing-conficker/)

------
zknz
NYT knows i am in private mode - how is it figuring that out?

~~~
catfood
A bunch of different ways probably. This method is stolen from SO (works for
Chrome):

const detect = () => { var fs = window.RequestFileSystem ||
window.webkitRequestFileSystem; if (!fs) { console.log("FS check failed..");
return; } fs(window.TEMPORARY, 100, function (fs) {}, function (err) {
console.log("Incognito"); }); };

~~~
tyingq
chrome://flags/, as of Chrome 74, has a setting "Filesystem API in Incognito".
Enable that and this way of detecting incognito stops working.

