Does this have a name?

[quest89]

I have been researching and studying computer's for a while know and have found a whole lot of information books about hacking, cracking and
almost everything else. There is one subject I can't seem to find and I know it exists. And that is hacking the internet itself to find thing. I am not sure if this is even called hacking, is it a taboo subject? The fact that I can't seem to find anything makes me ever more curious. Can anyone tell what hacking the internet is called? I know about google dorks and web crawlers, but I'm just looking for a name or nudge in the right direction, because right now I can't even find a starting point. Any help would be appreciated.

[TheCotMan]

I have been researching and studying computer's for a while know and have found a whole lot of information books about hacking, cracking and
almost everything else. There is one subject I can't seem to find and I know it exists. And that is hacking the internet itself to find thing. I am not sure if this is even called hacking, is it a taboo subject? The fact that I can't seem to find anything makes me ever more curious. Can anyone tell what hacking the internet is called? I know about google dorks and web crawlers, but I'm just looking for a name or nudge in the right direction, because right now I can't even find a starting point. Any help would be appreciated.

Your topic is a bit broad in scope. You probably need to refine it. For example, if you are looking for open ports on networks, then a "portscan" of multiple hosts is a search. If you are trying to audit the kinds of machines connected to the internet, then it is more like an audit or search for statistics, which is an entire discipline of "host fingerprinting" which now uses a collection of heuristic data to best guess which OS and which version of OS, and possibly which hardware is running and using a specific IP address. Searches for specific strings associated with at-risk hosts or services (google dorking) also is its own thing, and has its own name.

When you write "hacking the Internet" what do you mean? Can it be local on a wireless network with MitM attacks? Can is be ARP cache poisoning? Can it be domain-wide with poisoned DNS? Switch attacks? Attacks on mobile cellphone network with things like Stingray? How far removed from "local" and how broad should an item be before calling it attacking the Internet?

There have been *several* (accidental ? Intentional ?) changes applied to routing table updates on the Internet which have broken access to many large subnets at-once. Some "backbone routers" suffered from not having enough memory to store all routes and as expected, broke access to parts of the Internet in strange ways. Some ISP have historically attempted to have most Internet Traffic routed through them by (accidental? on-purpose?) publication of harmful routing updates. Under-sea cables have been broken (accidentally ? Intentionally ?) breaking Internet and other dedicated data/telecommunications. There have been many discussions on "how to break the Internet" -- is that what you are asking about? I do not know if "breaking the Internet" has a widely accepted name.

The earliest media-wide discussion on breaking the Internet was probably when several L0pht members testified in Washington DC 1998 : https://youtu.be/VVJldn_MmMY?t=922 (though breaking the Internet has been discussed online and in private long before then.)

We have seen attempt by various governments shutting down Internet access during cases the government perceives as at-risk for revolt, civil war, terrorism, anti-government communications/data, and we have seen so-called "cyber-attacks" (telecommunications and power system: denial of service, disruption and disinformation) as preludes to invasion, as was claimed by people in the country of Georgia when attacked by Russia.

We also have actions by NGO (of which some may claim members of "anonymous" would qualify) using DDoS , or disruptive attacks against individuals or groups.

Then we have legislation countries like England and members of the U.K. to break Internet access and deny access to content which is similar to China and "The Great Firewall of China" effectively breaking Internet access.

At this point, I don't think there is really one word to describe things done to the Internet. Because layers 1 through 3 of the ISO/OSI 7 layer model have enough specializations to have their own terms, and focus, and different vendors with equipment and services for equipment invent their own terms and protocols, I doubt there is one word to classify all of the ways to "hack the Internet." I'd bet that if you had an idea for a specific discipline to examine, you could find names for specific attacks or risks.

Good luck. If you do find a single term that describes what you are looking for, please return to post what you found and cite a reference to the source you claim.

[ruggles23]

Hello Thecotman,

A thought comes to mind from my years working.in my 20's for the National Security Agency. Try using other info crawler search engines like MetaSearch,Metacrawler,Snail and SimpleSearch and Gofetch .Hope this solves your problem

Thank You,
Ruggles23