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It's been a weird week on the web. On the good side, despite continuing worries of economic downturns and rising oil prices, the web and e-commerce in general seem to be doing fairly well, even right here in the UAE.
While there are still people in the world who will ask guys like Ronaldo Mouchawar, who is souq.com's managing director, if what he does is a hobby (it isn't), web commerce here in the UAE is seeing good growth. There is still a long way to go, but it's improving.
Internationally, the web seems especially healthy. Companies like Yahoo and Google are constantly putting out sites with new features, or finding new ways to interact with each other.
In 2007, if you went looking for a Top Ten site for the best in Web 2.0, you would probably find the same 10 websites on just about every list.
Today, it's different. There are hundreds of sites, with new ones coming online almost daily. Some aren't very good, but some are awesome. There is already word on the web of a new dot.com "bubble", but unlike 2000, this time it looks like the strong won't have to worry about whether they will survive. There are plenty of strong sites, too.
Now on the bad side, there is the cache-poisoning issue. For anyone who missed out on this, a researcher at a security firm discovered a flaw in the way the internet directs traffic. Experts said the flaw could be exploited by hackers, who would be able to cause confusion by altering the internet's directory system, the DNS. You type in www.google.com and you end up in the cyberworld's equivalent of a dark alley with some guy holding a tire iron.
I've been telling everyone for years that the internet is safe as long as you stay out of the red-light districts, but when I heard that hackers could alter the DNS settings, I flinched. Someone told me recently that we had moved out of the "West West" era of the internet and into the "Chicago Gangster" era. I don't want cyber-Al Capone getting inside my web browser.
Lucky break
But score one for the good guys that the flaw was caught before the crooks discovered it. But let's face it. They got lucky. The researcher who found the error says he wasn't looking for it. He just stumbled across it.
Of course Microsoft, Cisco, and SunMicrosystem were quick to address the issue. They had to be. They were just told that the basis for much of what they do was compromised. Web browsers and networking equipment would be as popular as nuclear waste if hackers could control the DNS servers.
So now you have to ask? What haven't they found? Was this a case of one guy finding an obscure error in an otherwise solid system? Or are they more cracks in the foundation? The general consensus is that it's the former. One computer security guy in Dubai told me the system is still seen as "trusted". Right now computer companies and gangsters are trying to find out if that's true.
It's taken it eight years to recover from the last crisis [the dotcom bust], but the web has finally gotten to a place where it is healthy. Let's hope it stays that way.
I've been telling everyone for years that the internet is safe as long as you stay out of the red-light districts, but when I heard that hackers could alter the DNS settings, I flinched.
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