Paul Parisi is the CTO of DNSstuff.com and has an extremely broad and deep technical background offering reality based solutions to everyday issues. In this interview he discusses the biggest threats to the communications infrastructure, the full disclosure of vulnerabilities as well as cyberterrorism.

What are currently the most significant threats to the US critical communications infrastructure?

It depends on what one defines as critical communications infrastructure. Certainly this should include:

• Radio (RF) communications for law enforcement and public safety
• Telecommunications (cellular and landline telephone communications)
• Internet communications

Each of the above can support its own rational for use and value. The simplest and most effective means to impede that use/value is to limit the effectiveness of the medium. For example, if you cannot place a phone call you have reduced the telecommunications infrastructure to zero, at least for the person trying to place the call. Similarly, operating an illegal radio frequency jamming device can yield similar results in the case of RF communications.


Again with Internet communications – similar results can be attained by employing easily executed denial-of-service (DOS) attacks. All of the modes of communication are implicitly vulnerable to DOS attacks. DOS attacks are easily mitigated by detecting the source of the attack and dealing with the cause at the originating location. Distributed denial of service attacks (DDOS) are much more difficult to mitigate as they occur from many locations and may even change locations as time progresses. Additionally, if you were to render a Venn-diagram of these three mediums, it shows that there are overlaps which could exacerbate effects in any one of the mediums.