Cyberattacks: Contests or War?
I think that one of the major unresolved issues in cyberspace is differentiating between competitive activities and cyberwarfare. In a March 17, 2021 post on Security Boulevard, with the title “Winning the Cybersecurity Contest,” available at Winning the Cybersecurity Contest – Security Boulevard, Charles Kolodgy states that “Cybersecurity is a ... Read More
Don’t Count on Cybersecurity Data
It is a common theme of mine, but one which bears repeating. We collect and disseminate all manner of data, but not so much of data which count. In an article by mathematician Hannah Fry in the March 29, 2021 edition of The New Yorker, she reviews two new books ... Read More
Will Full Autonomy Ever Be Realized?
Matt Novak of Gizmodo posted an article on April 30, 2021 with the title “Elon Musk Shares Painfully Obvious Idea About the Difficulty of Self-Driving Cars,” available at Elon Musk Shares Painfully Obvious Idea About the Difficulty of Self-Driving Cars (gizmodo.com) Novak quotes an April 29, 2021 Tweet by Elon ... Read More
Inadequate Cybersecurity
It is customary to begin an article on cybersecurity with statements about huge increases in threats and attacks and mounting cyberspace losses from fraud, identity theft, ransoms, data exfiltration, blackmail, etc. Few, who confront cyber issues daily, question such assertions, but there are some who say “prove it!” But, when ... Read More
Will Ransomware Cause the End of the Internet as We Know It?
Is ransomware a global cyberpandemic? If not, why not? Read on … There is an article by Samuel Greengard in the April 2021 edition of Communications of the ACM with the disturbing title “The Worsening State of Ransomware: Sophisticated, dangerous ransomware is the new normal … and there is no ... Read More
Will AI Short Circuit Cybersecurity?
The general tone of Chris Baraniuk’s February 23, 2021 article on the BBC website, “How Google’s hot air balloon surprised its creators,” available at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210222-how-googles-hot-air-balloon-surprised-its-creators is one of wonderment, although he does throw in some caveats about the dangers of AI operating in unexpected ways. The article describes how engineers ... Read More
Cybersecurity Lessons from the Pandemic: Hubris
On Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,”, Kate McKinnon plays Dr. Wayne Wenowdis, the all-knowing physician. In response to COVID-19 and vaccine questions, she says “we know dis,” except when “we don’t know dis.” One of the hilarious Dr. Wenowdis sketches can be viewed at (355) Weekend Update: Dr. Wenowdis on ... Read More
Cybercrime’s Dark Triad
There is a very interesting article (at least for me) by Michele Maasberg, Craig Van Slyke, Selwyn Ellis and Nicole Beebe in the December 2020 edition of the Communications of the ACM with the title “The Dark Triad and Insider Threats in Cyber Security.” The article traces “the relationship between ... Read More
Cybersecurity Lessons from the Pandemic: Getting Lucky
Antonio Regalado’s February 5, 2021 article in the MIT Technology Review, “The next act for messenger RNA could be bigger than covid vaccines,” which is available at The next act for messenger RNA could be bigger than covid vaccines | MIT Technology Review, is a riveting account of how the ... Read More
Malicious vs. Malevolent Software Programs
I was recently criticized—and rightly so—for interpreting malware to mean “malevolent software” when indeed it is commonly used to mean malicious software, whereas malevolent is used to describe programs—malograms?! So, I decided to look up some definitions. Here is what I found. “Malware (a portmanteau for malicious software) is any ... Read More
