'Doomsday Reset keyholder' can revive Internet after mega hack

If the Internet crashes down in the event of a mega hack or a terrorist attack, Internet whiz Paul Kane is one of the seven men in possession of a reset key that can be used to restart the web.

Kane is the CEO of CommunityDNS (Domain Name System) based at the University of Bath, which handles 22 per cent of all net-routing traffic.

According to the Daily Star, there are only seven Doomsday keyholders capable of relaunching the Internet and if ever the system is compromised, Kane and the other chosen keyholders would be required to fly to a top-secret location near Washington.

To revive the Internet, they would use their credit card-like keys to reboot the security system.

Kane said that if called upon, they are told to get to America as quickly as possible and organise the creation of 14 child keys, which are refreshed every six months to keep the data up to date.

The report said that when websites are hacked, the child keys could be used to reboot the websites.

However, the threat calling for resetting the Internet as whole would have to be a global one, with hackers creating a pirate site to steal web data.

The report added that Kane was selected for the five-year role in 2010 after an international agreement to shore-up internet sites using high-tech cryptographic keys identified him on a 60-strong hit list.

Other keyholders are experts selected from Trinidad and Tobago, Burkina Faso, the US, China, and the Czech Republic.