Demythifying Cybersecurity
Consider a face-to-face meeting of exactly five people in a closed and shielded room, hidden from view, with no other communications equipment present. With proper screening, participants can be reasonably sure that the conversation will only be available in real time to those in the room, that the words they hear are the ones spoken by their companions, and that everyone receives them at the same time. Now suppose this same meeting were held as an Internet video conference with the participants scattered over the globe. The attendees may have similar expectations, but meeting those expectations is considerably more difficult. For instance, the administrators of the systems that the participants are using could manipulate the flow of data to rebroadcast, or even change, what individual participants see and hear. In many cases, ISPs and other intermediate providers can do the same; at the least, they can interfere with the transmission. An external attacker who can break into the participants’ systems can do the same. And there may be no proof, or even indications, that the meeting was compromised. As cybersecurity professionals, we understand this - but does the population at large know what happens to their tweets once they leave their smart phones?
- Research Organization:
- Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC05-76RL01830
- OSTI ID:
- 991998
- Report Number(s):
- PNNL-SA-71719; TRN: US201021%%369
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Security & Privacy, 8(3):56-59, Vol. 8, Issue 3; ISSN 1540-7993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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