25% of the World’s Internet Users Rely on Infrastructure That is Susceptible to Attacks
upstart writes:
25% of the World's Internet Users Rely on Infrastructure That Is Susceptible to Attacks:
[...] About 25% of the world's Internet users live in countries that are more vulnerable to targeted attacks on their Internet infrastructure than previously thought. Many of the at-risk countries are located in the Global South, which broadly includes the regions of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania.
That's the conclusion of a sweeping, large-scale study conducted by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). The scientists surveyed 75 countries.
[...] The structure of Internet connectivity differs dramatically in different parts of the world. In many developed countries, such as the United States, a large number of Internet providers compete to provide services for a large number of users. These networks are directly connected to one another and exchange content, a process called direct peering. All the providers can also plug directly into the world's Internet infrastructure.
[...] In other nations, many of them still developing countries, most users rely on a handful of providers for Internet access, and one of these providers serves an overwhelming majority of users. Not only that, but those providers rely on a limited number of companies called transit autonomous systems to get access to the global Internet and traffic from other countries. Researchers found that often these transit autonomous system providers are state-owned.
Journal Reference:
Gamero-Garrido, Alexander, Carisimo, Esteban, Hao, Shuai, et al. Quantifying Nations' Exposure to Traffic Observation and#1, (DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-98785-5_29)
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.