What you see here are actually smart cards that hold the power of the Internet. There are seven of them and their goal is to restore the world wide web in the case of a catastrophic event.
Here’s how this works.
The idea is that in the event of a catastrophe, the DNSSEC (the domain name system security) could be damaged and therefore there would be no way of verifying if a URL is pointing to the correct website. And that’s when the holders of these smart cards would be called into action. (the article continues after the ad)
A minimum of five of the seven keyholders – one each from the UK, the U.S., Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Burkina Faso and Trinidad and Tobago – would have to meet at a U.S. base with their keys to restart the whole system and connect everything together.
A minimum of five people is needed because each of the smart cards contains only a fraction of the recovery key necessary to set things right. This means that no single person will hold all the power needed to reset our little cyber world.
If you like what you read, then you will definitely love this one: How Much Does The Entire Internet Weight?
Source: Gizmodo.com
Photo: Popsci.com
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