The Threatened Net: How the Web Became a Perilous Place

The Internet can appear to be elegantly designed, but as The Washington Post's Craig Timberg demonstrated in his illuminating series "Net of Insecurity," the network is much more an assemblage of kludges—more Frankenstein than Ferrari—that endure because they work, or at least work well enough.

The defects hackers use often are well-known and ancient in technological terms, surviving only because of an industry-wide penchant for patching over problems rather than replacing the rot – and ...