Comments on: The Internet’s 40th anniversary timeline of milestones

By: Alexandru Catalin COSOI

Alexandru Catalin COSOI — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:35:07 +0000

Turns out that, after 40 years of Internet development, the most important milestones are dominated by malware and malware proliferation.
Conficker, Koobface, Storm, Sasser and so on, are already important names in the history of the security industry and most probably, new chapters are written as I write this comment.
The new world is constantly expanding and new people are entering/joining every day. The availability of email, social networks, virtual shops and libraries, online games, free (or not) software, pornography, etc. are all easily accessible via internet. As the internet offers an endless amount of information, and as different online trends emerge – we will see that malware will adapt with the time. It is very probable that the malware world will always be a part of us (ying and yang, good vs. evil) no matter if we live in a real or virtual world, no matter what social network we use, email client, operating system, ISP, or even what planet we live.
Looking forward to read the 2010 events .

By: Vladimir Chernavsky

Vladimir Chernavsky — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:24:14 +0000

We could measure Internet milestones by information security treats and malware outbreaks, but that will be akin to measuring railroad history by train robberies. The Internet has had tremendous impact on the way we live, work, travel, shop, get information and share knowledge. Additionally, it contributed to demise of USSR which I can tell stories. The Internet opened sales and profit growing opportunities for companies that were unimaginable before (I know a bunch of successful IT companies who started as a shareware projects, with Internet sales only). Additionally, the Internet continue to re-shape industries, my IP phone replaced the previous landline, my Uverse TV (IP TV essentially) replaced my cable last year, there is free national calling now (remember interstate rates, I pay less to call international now). I look forward to seeing where the Internet takes us in the future as it has truly changed all of our lives. . While the growth of the Internet has changed the way we communicate and do business, it is not without new risks and threats. The Internet security problem is huge and the security community will constantly be addressing it.

- Vladimir Chernavsky, president, DeviceLock

By: Debbie Lewis

Debbie Lewis — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:47:01 +0000

As someone fascinated with Internet history and its impact on society, I enjoyed viewing your timeline including the classic photo of Vint Cerf in his IP on Everything t-shirt.

While ARPANET set the stage for Internet 40 years ago, the commercial Internet is a mere “twenty-something. 1988 and 1989 together marked important Internet milestones progressing the Internet from a government-funded experiment to the global economic and political engine it is today.

You may be interested in some of Verizon Business’ IP milestones especially the role its predecessor companies have played developing the commercial Internet. http://www.verizonbusiness/about/ipinnovation

By: Eduard Goodman, C.P.O.

Eduard Goodman, C.P.O. — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:12:04 +0000

This is a great chronology of the proliferation of the internet and its ever increasing effect on our lives.

However, it also shows the growing trend of privacy based threats illustrated by large data breaches such TJX and Heartland. Malware threats like the Morris worm now seem very quaint when compared to more modern malware incarnations such as the Conficker RPC-DCOM worm or the Koobface worm. This is especially true when you consider the shift from worms and viruses that were used to simply cause havoc to modern malware that are used for data mining and collecting valuable personally identifiable information(PII).

Though, at least in the U.S., we can credit our modern view of privacy and government protection against violations of consumer privacy (as enforced by the FTC) to the proliferation of the internet especially starting with the dot com boom and all of those old dot come privacy policies!

Nice job on a thorough yet succinct history of the one technology I couldn’t do without!!

By: Dan Brennan

Dan Brennan — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:47:10 +0000

This really puts into perspective how far we’ve come (and also how far hackers have come). It’s an excellent rundown that really shows the evolution of threats as well as the evolution of attack vectors.