Quaint were the days when we viewed the internet as a ‘Wild West’. I’d take a sparsely populated area of frontier towns where you could travel in a stagecoach, with minimal risk of robbery, to what we have today. Remember ‘Tombstone’? That seems like a downright safe and friendly place to spend time compared to today’s internet, where we basically have to live in miniature fortresses and travel to other larger fortresses in armored convoys, all while under constant attack by a robot-augmented army of criminals.

I got to thinking about this because I’d like to set up a Minecraft server for my kids, but with the recent hack of Mariott, where 500 Million accounts were hacked, I’m reminded (again) that it’s just not safe out there. For context, 500 million is about as many Americans who have ever lived. It’s a little shy of 10% of the world population. Once you think about the scale of these breaches, it’s time to rethink what the internet is.

What We Think The Internet Is

Safe. I think that we as people don’t comprehend the idea of an abstract thing that is simply unsafe. We look at the internet like we look at highways – safe, understandable, and modern. It is very strange for us to imagine an place so threatening, since, in general, we live in safe, neighborly communities.

We imagine nice people, supportive groups, distant threats, companies and governments that are benign and helpful.

How the Internet Really Is

An anarchist hellscape that is awash with humanity’s basest instincts, unmitigated by community. It’s basically open warfare out there for anyone who wants to be awful. You’ve all seen it in forums and online groups. Even with people to moderate them, people act terribly. Even worse are the people who work in the shadows, hacking and corrupting for fun, with essentially no consequences.

In addition to the misanthropes and people who cause trouble for sport, you have practically every government on earth, including your own, at best monitoring, and at worse, interfering with you. And we all know that there are basically no companies you can really trust. Some just want to track you to sell you more, which I have made my peace with. The worst offer nothing and have no assets, so that in bankruptcy, all they will have to sell is your data that they promised you they wouldn’t sell.

What Does This Mean For Me?

Even the world of Mad Max is Utopian compared with the internet. At least in Mad Max, if someone wanted to steal your shipment of water or write crass things about your wedding pictures, they had to get their friends, dress up in spiked outfits made from cast-off tires, and get motorcycles or cars made out of mismatched parts of other cars. Then they would need to get tattoos and Mohawks, and then hijack a fuel tanker. Once they had done that, then could come and lay waste to your tanker convoy and yell profanities at you.

These Mad Max villains are a model of cooperation compared to the internet. The leadership that Tina Turner shows in Bartertown makes it seem like a nice place compared to most of the internet.

So I Want To Set Up a Minecraft Server

In order to set up a server that allows certain authorized people to play in harmony, I’ll have to do certain things. Specifically, I’ll have to set up a server that is accessible from the internet but that won’t compromise the rest of my network if hacked. I have to build what is normally called a ‘DMZ’, a misnomer which I’ll cover later on.

You also need to set up some sort of port forwarding, which is allowing certain ports through your firewall.

The Minecraft wiki says:

“Keep in mind that port forwarding might cause security risks.”

What they really ought to say is:

“Everyone in the world knows that Minecraft uses port 25565, and nothing on earth will make you safe if you turn on port forwarding. You will definitely give attackers the ability to access your personal PC directly if you follow or instructions and install the server there. We know kids love this game so you will definitely do this. That is why Microsoft bought Us. It prints money. Our Business model can be summed up as ‘can we get kids hooked on this?’ Your kids will pester you until you follow these complicated instructions. Then you will get hacked.”

To be fair, on that page, they do warn you, but it’s very wishy-washy, in my opinion, because the truth is complicated.

Practical Security

My next project will be twofold. First, I want to walk-through a safe internet -accessible server design, and talk about security design in general. I have worked a long time in the innermost enclaves of companies, and I have learned to be paranoid. Maybe too paranoid, but as a person that I worked with abroad a long time ago who was convinced he was being followed by the FSB told me: ‘Some paranoid people really are being followed… you never know’.

Next we’ll do some design and planning, and talk about what a DMZ is.

Also, take a look here for my evidence of the constant attacks on my home network.

What I’m listening to as I do this: Guns N’ Roses’ Out ta Get Me. Because they are…