Bruce Schneier über den Reset-Button

Der Bund deutscher Kriminalbeamter hat vergangene Woche die dämliche Idee eines Reset-Buttons fürs Internet im Bundeskanzleramt in die deutsche Debatte gebracht. In den USA wurde diese auch diskutiert, und von allen klar denkenden Menschen dankend abgelehnt. Der Sicherheitsexperte Bruce Schneier hat zu dem Thema gebloggt und bringt diverse Argumente vor, warum ein zentraler Reset-Button aus Sicherheitsgründen Schwachsinn ist: Internet Kill Switch.

The third flawed assumption is that we could build this capability securely. We can’t. Once we engineered a selective shutdown switch into the Internet, and implemented a way to do what Internet engineers have spent decades making sure never happens, we would have created an enormous security vulnerability. We would make the job of any would-be terrorist intent on bringing down the Internet much easier. Computer and network security is hard, and every Internet system we’ve ever created has security vulnerabilities. It would be folly to think this one wouldn’t as well. And given how unlikely the risk is, any actual shutdown would be far more likely to be a result of an unfortunate error or a malicious hacker than of a presidential order.

But the main problem with an Internet kill switch is that it’s too coarse a hammer. Yes, the bad guys use the Internet to communicate, and they can use it to attack us. But the good guys use it, too, and the good guys far outnumber the bad guys. Shutting the Internet down, either the whole thing or just a part of it, even in the face of a foreign military attack would do far more damage than it could possibly prevent. And it would hurt others whom we don’t want to hurt.

Mal schauen, ob ein Politiker in Deutschland nochmal die Idee der Polizei-Gewerkschaft aufnimmt und diesen Reset-Button fordert. Das wird dann richtig lustig werden.