WHILE swimming in the endless sea of news, blogs, social networks and mindless ballyhoo - one has to wonder how to make it stop.

The internet seems to be all-powerful and indestructible - but in theory it can be destroyed in a number of outlandish ways. check out how could you do that ...

1. Cut the cables

To destroy the internet, a strategic starting point would be to destroy the undersea cables that connect every continent.

You could use submarines with giant scissors - but the cables are not that difficult to destroy. Earthquakes, fishing trawlers and shark bites have been known to cause breaks.

2. Cyber war

Cyberspace could become the battlefield of choice for countries wishing to gain the upper hand in an international arena.

Nations could deploy armies of hackers instead of armed military forces to disrupt communications, launch unstoppable viruses and take out sections of the internet. When two superpowers go to cyberwar, the cost will not be in blood, but in 404's.

3. Subvert DNS

Security researcher Dan Kaminsky last year stumbled across a vulnerability in the Domain Name System (DNS) that had the potential to destroy the internet's foundations.

The security flaw allowed hackers to potentially reroute users to any website or block access.

According to Securosis analyst Rich Mogull: "You'd have the internet, but it wouldn't be the internet you expect. (Hackers) would control everything."

4. Eliminate the hardware

Destroying the hardware that allows internet access would be improbable, but not impossible.

This would mean that every single online communications system would have to go down.

One way would be disabling electronics with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) within a 10km radius. It's not effective on a worldwide scale, but if the idea can be manipulated for a global EMP then it might be feasible

5. Censorship

Both the internet and the World Wide Web were designed as open forums for free ideas and expression, but countries have pushed to censor objectionable materials.

Countries such as China have implemented strong censorship in an attempt to neutralize political opposition. This is dubbed "The Great Firewall of China".

Although censoring the internet only affects parts of the global community, it destroys the idea on which the network was created

6. Botnets

A botnet is the name given to a collection of infected computers (or "zombies") that automatically distribute malicious software, viruses, spam and trojans in an attempt to infect other computers.

The Conficker worm came from a particularly nasty botnet estimated to have burrowed its way into almost nine million computers worldwide. It had the potential of producing 10 billion articles of spam per day

7. Spam

Spam is an inevitable consequence of the internet with advertisers, marketers and Nigerian scams all trying to exploit users.

Spammers all over the world use thousands of zombie computers and in 2007, SophosLabs found that over a quarter of the world's spam originated in the US.

Not only is spam incredibly annoying, it may be used to transmit viruses, trojans and malicious software with the intent of corrupting more computers, turning them into zombies

8. Unstoppable virus

Similar to the scenes in Terminator 3, a self-replicating computer virus with the potential to distribute itself globally and become invulnerable to destruction may not only spell the end of the internet, but the end of humanity

9. Hack the servers

Internet service providers (ISPs) link customers to the world wide web. If they were taken down systematically, many people would lose online access.

This would essentially starve the web of users, content and traffic..

10. Switch off

Switching off means that if everyone connected to a system that accesses the world wide web turns off, it would become a barren wasteland of unclicked hyperlinks and unwatched videos.

So instead of viewing technology galleries you might actually be doing your work

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The internet is filled with threats real and imagined, from malicious hackers to government censors.

Beyond the hacks and cracks — and in celebration of Sunshine Week — we've compiled a brief list of some of the biggest public and private threats facing the internet.

1. Warrantless Government Monitoring : Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the practice of wiretapping all internet traffic began in the United States with the Bush administration, and is now being defended in court by the Obama administration. All of the nation's major internet service providers are accused of funneling Americans' online traffic to the National Security Agency without warrants.

2. Private Censorship : From the mundane to the frightening, the examples run rampant. Wikipedia, the world's most trafficked online reference tool, is subject to shameful spin from trusted names of news organizations to the not so trustworthy engines of commerce. Among the examples, The Boston Globe enhanced the biography of a columnist while deleting information about his alleged plagiarism. Diebold excised an entire section critical of the company's voting machines.

3. Government Censorship : Reporters Without Borders reported last week that 12 nations — China, Burma, North Korea, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba and Tunisia restrict internet access and often prosecute users for what they post online.

Even in democratic countries, censorship rears its ugly head. On Thursday, a secret blacklist surfaced detailing 2,395 webpages the Australian government is planning to filter from the internet. While about half of them dealt with illegal pornography, the remainder did not. Some of the sites were about gambling, dentists and even dog kennels.

In December, Wikipedia couldn't be edited by users in Britain. The entire site was put on a blacklist because it linked to the 1976 album cover of Virgin Killer by the Scorpions, which featured a nude young girl.

In the United States, a federal judge last year blocked WikiLeaks from operating in the country for a week after the renegade site posted allegedly stolen documents detailing individuals' Swiss bank accounts.

4. Deep Packet Inspection : Several U.S. internet service providers, including giants like Comcast and Cox Communications, have started inspecting the contents of internet packets, a practice (.pdf) allowing them to monitor, filter and ultimately control the traffic that passes through their pipes. In addition, online advertising services like NebuAd are paying ISPs to let it eavesdrop on web users via DPI.

5. ISP Tiered Pricing : Major ISPs, including AT&T, Time Warner and Comcast have moved or are gravitating toward pricing services based on the amount of bandwidth individuals use. Theoretically, the plans could unlock the internet door to low-income users. But we suspect the plans are designed to increase profits for ISPs as bandwidth use skyrockets — all of which may have a chilling effect on internet usage.
6. Recording Industry Association of America Proposes "Three-Strikes" Policy : The record labels are pushing for ISPs to ban service to customers the RIAA claims are file-sharing copyrighted music. Overseas, industry groups like the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry are pursuing similar efforts.

7. Digital Millennium Copyright Act Abuses : Unwarranted YouTube takedown notices by misguided copyright holders comes immediately to mind — including assertions by Universal Music that it need not consider whether a video, under the DMCA, makes a "fair use" of the copyrighted works in question. Google says 57 percent of takedown notices it received were sent by business targeting competitors and 37 percent were not valid copyright claims.

Note : Tell us what you think are the most threatening threats to the internet...

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