Situational Crime Prevention, Security Awareness, and Cybercrime (Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Day 7)

This is the second part of an article in which I relate situational crime prevention to cybersecurity awareness (the first part is here, but this article also stands on its own, or at least I think it does). 

The attitude that situational crime prevention or SCP takes toward crime is "worry less about the underlying motives of people who commit crime and focus on understanding the circumstances in which it occurs." Pursuing research with this focus, social scientists Felton and Cohen found that social, economic, and technological factors drive increases in the opportunities for crime; this led to the routine activity theory of crime which holds that: 

crimes occur when there is ‘convergence in space and time of offenders, of suitable targets, and of the absence of effective guardians’ (Felson and Cohen, 1980) 

From this perspective it is possible to develop techniques for curtailing the opportunities for crime, thereby producing a drop in crime. Over time, advocates of SCP developed this table of 25 techniques within five categories: increase the effort and the risks, reduce the rewards and provocations, and remove excuses (Cornish and Clarke, 2003).

Clearly, SCP has wide application in efforts to reduce crime in cyberspace as well as meatspace, starting with things as simple as choosing stronger passwords when establishing online accounts and using different passwords for different accounts. However, SCP can also help when cybercrimes get complex, for example when criminals use malicious code to illegally access millions of computers and organize them into botnets for nefarious purposes (including emptying online bank accounts even when they have strong passwords). 

You can see how SCP helps to fight to cybercrime in this article by my friend Alexis Dorais-Joncas, Security Intelligence Team Lead at my former employer ESET, one of the world's largest security software companies: "Doing time for cybercrime: Law enforcement and malware research join forces to take down cybercriminals" is available on WeLiveSecurity. By focusing minds on the critical triad of "offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of effective guardians," SCP still has a serious role to play in crime reduction as well as security and risk management. 

Unfortunately, as the chart on the right indicates, efforts to rein in internet crime do not appear to be succeeding. (For the reasons why this chart is a valid indicator, see my notes at the end of this article.) 

Of course, you could argue that not all of those efforts are wasted since we're still making extensive use of computers and the rise in crime losses is merely a reflection of our increased use of, and reliance upon, digital technology. 

My response to that argument is four words: architecture, infrastructure, politics, and profits. The architecture of the spaces and places in which we live and work has, over the last 40 years, become less criminogenic, thanks to the influence of situational crime prevention. I don't think the same can be said of cyberspace. In fact, by the late 1980s it was clear to many technology experts that the fundamental building blocks of digital technology were riddled with holes, yet the world proceeded to build a massive global digital infrastructure out of those blocks. 

Meanwhile, politicians failed to establish norms of behavior within cyberspace, partly because abuse of those blocks can generate funds and advantage, both of which are highly sought after in politics. And of course, the demand for cybersecurity products and services has created huge profits for some companies and minted numerous multi-millionaires and several billionaires. (Disclaimer: for a short period of time, that ended over a decade ago, I was a cybersecurity millionaire; these days I am nowhere near being any kind of millionaire, except maybe in Swedish krona.)

The opportunity structure for predatory crime 

I started researching SCP to write a postgraduate essay on this topic: "The main problem with situational crime prevention is that it fails to address the root causes of crime. Critically discuss." I concluded that SCP does not even try to address the root causes of crime, but that is not its main problem. I argued that SCP cannot fully address the phenomenon of changes in society that produce new opportunities for crime at a faster rate than those opportunities can be reduced. This is the phenomenon that Felson and Cohen (1980:404) warned about in their early work on routine activity theory when they wrote: ‘opportunity for predatory crime appears to be enmeshed in the opportunity structure for legitimate activities’. Indeed, the phrase “opportunity structure for legitimate activities” is an apt description of the place where a massive and global crime wave is currently in progress: cyberspace.

Despite clear indications that the networking of computer systems greatly increases their potential for criminal abuse (Cobb, 1995), few calls for restraint in the adoption of network technologies have ever been heeded, at least on the basis of the criminal opportunities that they create. To give cybercrime some historical context, consider the 2013 attack in which 1,800 stores belonging to US retailer Target were penetrated. Thieves compromised 40 million payment card records, impacting over 100 million people (Star Tribune, 2014). By taking advantage of the opportunity that Target gave its suppliers to manage orders online, criminals earned around $54 million, based on the amount they were charging when they sold the stolen data in online markets; meanwhile, banks paid $200 million to replace compromised card (Krebs, 2014a). 

To the best of my knowledge the perpetrators of the Target hack have never been brought to justice. The politicians who promised action to angry constituents who were victimized by the attack clearly haven't  done enough to stem the tide of criminal technology abuse. This abuse generates profits at many levels, and in a rare win for law enforcement the Latvian computer programmer who designed "a program that helped hackers improve malware—including some used in the 2013 Target breach" was arrested, convicted and, in 2018, sentenced to 14 years in prison (Washington Post). 

The fact is, the failure by governments to act effectively against cybercrime in the 1990s and 2000s led to the industrialization of technology abuse. Today, many cybercrime schemes employ proven business strategies such as division of labour, specialization, modularity, and marketing, including A/B testing. Furthermore, a large percentage of cybercrime is enabled by a sophisticated system of virtual markets that facilitate the buying, selling, and renting of cybercrime tools, resources, and stolen data (Krebs, 2014b, Ablon et al., 2014). This activity is often quite brazen, as I demonstrated to a radio journalist last year (recording here and backstory plus graphics here).

Cybercrimes are often executed by ad hoc groups of geographically dispersed individuals who have been developing virtualized trust mechanisms for at least ten years (Krebs, 2014b; Holt and Smirnova, 2010). A realistic assessment of the current state of affairs is provided by the Institute of Chartered Accountants (2014): ‘there is a growing gap between business and cyber attacker capabilities … Many businesses are falling further behind and the risks are growing’.

The problem is not that SCP has been silent on fighting cybercrime. IT security practitioners regularly employ technique number one in the table of SCP strategies: target hardening. The cybersecurity concept of “kill chains” has valuable parallels in “crime scripts” (Cornish, 1994, as cited in Clarke, 2012). Some criminologists were quick to apply SCP to cybercrime (Newman and Clarke, 2003). Unfortunately, the speed at which their recommendations have been outpaced reveals the nature of the problem: it is hard to “follow the money” when today’s cybercriminals prefer to take their profits in a crypto-currency like Bitcoin that did not exist in 2003 (Bradbury, 2013). 

So I would argue that the main problem with situational crime prevention is its failure to acknowledge the following: just as crime prevention that is based on addressing the root causes of crime faces a daunting future because it requires fundamental changes in society, so too does any crime prevention approach based on reducing opportunities. 

Cybercrime is driven by the abundance of ‘opportunity for predatory crime’ that is clearly ‘enmeshed in the opportunity structure for legitimate activities’ (Felson and Cohen, 1979: 404). This makes it is hard to escape the conclusion that cybercrime will not be substantially reduced without either addressing the root causes of crime, or scaling back the use of cyber technology and thus ‘modifying much of our way of life’ (Felson and Cohen, 1979: 404).

I leave you with a slightly garish graphic that I made a few years ago, but which is probably still roughly correct, at least in terms of ratios (please DM me @zcobb if you have more recent numbers). The ratios between the spending figures tell me that the US government just does not grasp how badly wrong things could go if cybercrime prevention and reduction are not addressed with adequate resources. And while the US government does support cybersecurity awareness programs in October and throughout the year, there is way, way more work that needs to be done. The hockey stick of cybercrime needs to be turned into a downhill ski run towards a safer, brighter digital future. 

#BeCyberSmart  

Situational Crime Prevention and Security Awareness (Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Day 6)

On day six of Cybersecurity Awareness Month we're going to take a closer look at something that helps explain the origins and goals of security awareness programs: situational crime prevention (SCP). This is a perspective on crime that seeks to explain and reduce criminal activity by examining the circumstances in which it occurs, then curtail the opportunities for crime to recur (Clarke and Mayhew, 1994). 

Security awareness plays a significant role in the first of the five crime prevention strategies that evolve under SCP: increase the effort and the risks, reduce the rewards and provocations, and remove excuses (Cornish and Clarke, 2003).

For example, the SCP approach to crime reduction includes encouraging us not to park our cars on the street outside where we live, because that is an opportunity for car theft. Parking your car in a garage reduces that opportunity, although it's not option that is available to all car owners. Another example comes from studies that found placing gates across residential alleyways in English cities significantly reduced the opportunities for, and occurrence of, domestic burglary (Bowers, Johnson and Hirschfield, 2005). 

[Note: this article, which is posted in two parts—of which this is the first—draws heavily on an essay that I wrote as part of my master's in security and risk management. The second part of the article is here. You can see that left the academic references in the text and I have provided the source list at the bottom of the post. Also note the spelling is a mix of American English and English English, and both parts of the article are long, but hopefully you will find them worth reading.] 

The origins of Situational Crime Prevention

With its focus on reducing the opportunity for crime, situational crime prevention encourages “awareness” programs that urge the public to adopt crime-reducing tactics such “leaving outdoor lights on, putting indoor lights on timers, asking neighbors to watch your house, watching the neighborhood, reporting suspicious activity, and forming community groups to prevent crime” (Wikipedia).

The logic behind SCP can appear compelling; however, ever since it emerged from research on crime in the 1970s, objections have been raised on both practical and theoretical grounds. A notable and persistent charge levelled against SCP is that it fails to address the root causes of crime. This article examines this charge while considering the potential for SCP to reduce cybercrime. 

First, I will review the evolution of SCP, including objections raised by its detractors and defenses offered by its supporters. Then I will explore the implications for SCP of the current digital crime wave.

Rate of property crimes in the US,
per 100,000 people, 1960 to 1980s

As you can see from this chart based on FBI reports, a very different crime wave was occurring in the 1960s in America. A similar phenomenon was occurring in Britain: rising rates of burglary, robbery, vehicle theft, and all manner of violent crime (Home Office, 2010; Farrell, Tseloni, Mailley and Tilley, 2011). These trends caused many policymakers to question approaches to crime that had been shaped by efforts to understand criminals and the conditions in which they lived (Clarke, 1980, 1997a, 2012; Hayward, 2007). As Jeffrey (1977, 9) declaimed: ‘Deterrence and punishment are failures; treatment and rehabilitation are failures; the criminal justice system is a failure from police courts to corrections’.

In fact, the phrase “Nothing Works” began to appear in criminal justice debates after American sociologist Robert Martinson published a bleak assessment of programs intended to rehabilitate criminals in the 1950s and 1960s: ‘our present strategies … cannot overcome, or even appreciably reduce, the powerful tendencies of offenders to continue in criminal behavior’ (1974: 49 as cited in Sarre, 2001). The phrase embodied frustration with the perceived impotence of the dispositional approach to understanding why criminals offend. 

This frustration was compounded by failed attempts to reduce delinquency through welfare programs. Although Martinson recanted his “Nothing Works” assessment in 1979 (Sarre, 2001), some crime researchers were already shifting their focus from the character of criminals to the nature of the criminal act, inspired in part by an assumption that in any given situation the commission of a crime is essentially the result of a calculated decision about whether or not to offend. 

While not a new perspective – Beccaria (2008 originally 1765) had articulated a similar view of crime in the eighteenth century – the idea that offending is based on balancing ‘rational incentives and deterrence’ was given new weight by Wilson’s Thinking About Crime (1983). Analyzing the situations in which the rational decision to proceed with a crime occurs frequently was a logical next step. Manipulating those situations to reduce the frequency of crimes became the goal of SCP, which identified location, opportunity, and reasoned choices as the key elements of criminal activity. 

However, with the benefit of hindsight, I will argue that the manner in which SCP blended these elements to focus on preventing physical crimes— committed in physical spaces—obscured important implications of its theoretical underpinnings. 

Why do we need cybersecurity awareness? (Day 5 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2020)

As Cybersecurity Awareness Month gets rolling it seems reasonable to ask: why do we need cybersecurity awareness? The short and simple answer is that we humans need many kinds of security awareness to avoid or reduce the chances of bad things happening in life. For example, by the time we are adults, most of us have some level of road security awareness as well as physical security awareness. We teach children abduction awareness as well as personal hygiene.

We often think of these different "awarenesses" in terms of the phrases that awareness campaigns have used: phrases like stranger danger and see something, say something. 

The point is: some humans tend to do bad things, but knowing what those bad things are can help us to begin thinking about how to avoid them. And if we can get practical advice on how to avoid becoming victims of those bad people, even better.

That was the point of the "Take a bite out of crime" awareness campaign that launched in 1980 with a series of public service announcements "educating citizens on personal security measures" (Wikipedia). 

Featuring "McGruff the Crime Dog," the initial campaign was largely TV-based and proved very successful, garnering "over $100 million in free air time donated in the first year [and] reaching over 50% of adults." 

McGruff's early messages—such as lock your doors and put your lights on timers in order to reduce crime—might sound simplistic, just as the advice to "use strong passwords" sounds simplistic in the context of cybercrime today; however, a lot of crime prevention is pretty basic stuff, whether in cyberspace or meatspace. That doesn't mean it's not effective. 

Here's an example: some bad people steal cars. If you have a car and you park it in a locked garage overnight, it is more likely to be there in the morning than if you parked it on the street. That's not just a guess on my part, numerous studies have shown this to be the case. (Believe me, I spent two years studying in the School of Criminology at the University of Leicester and I've read the studies.)

Awareness of the risks related to car theft, and of ways to reduce them—for example, a steering wheel clamp will reduce the risk of theft for cars parked on the street—helps you to avoid the unpleasantness of having your car stolen. 

Equally as important in the larger scheme of things: your awareness of all these things also helps your local law enforcement agency to avoid all the work they are supposed to if your car is stolen. Just as any proper doctor would prefer there to be less illness, good law enforcement agencies would like there to be less crime, and not just because that would mean less paperwork. Think of all the good things that we could do with the money we save from reducing the number of bad things people do.

So, encouraging the public to "do their bit" in preventing crime makes a lot of sense, and can be a  useful component in crime reduction programs, as this graph would appear to suggest.

You can see that during the 1960s and into the 70s, the level of property crimes in America started to rise quite dramatically, despite a general increase in the standard of living. McGruff' was introduced in 1980, which is where the dark side of the chart ends and the crime rates start to fall. I am NOT suggesting that this was all down to McGruff, but the timing is interesting. It marked a shift towards "situational crime prevention" programs in many communities (I will have more on SCP in a later post). 

So, will history show that Cybersecurity Awareness Month has been having a similar effect on cybercrime? 

I am sure it is responsible for preventing some security incidents, and we should continue awareness efforts. (Maybe we could enlist McGruff—we would only need to change one letter of the classic slogan.)

Unfortunately, cybercrime is not quite the same as traditional property crime perpetrated in meatspace. Some of the important ways in which computer crime differs from traditional crime were enumerated by Brenner’s landmark 2004 law journal article on cybercrime metrics (PDF). 

When things are digital they can be scaled massively, automated, performed remotely, with scan forensic evidence: one person can break into thousands of computers in a matter of hours from 5,000 miles away. Your traditional house-breaker can only burgle one home at a time, in person, and with a relatively high probability of detection, capture, prosecution, and conviction.

There is another factor that makes some digital crimes different from physical crimes, a factor that I don't recall anyone writing about: I can steal your music collection without you losing it (assuming that your collection exists as files in digital storage). As I see it, this phenomenon really messed with the emergence of moral standards around digital technology abuse in the 1990s. I would even argue that it led too many people to ignore the rise of more directly harmful crimes in cyberspace in the early 2000s.

   

So, cybercrimes can seem to be very different from, and more complex than, traditional crimes. They may well deserve their own awareness programs. But there are some serious factors in play right now that make a dip in the level of cybercriminal activity unlikely, at least in the near future. 

However, I heartily agree with Brenner when she concluded that “cybercrime is, after all, simply crime.” So, maybe now is the time to raise awareness about crime in general. After all, these days it is true to say that, in general, most crime involves some amount of digital technology. 

#BeCyberAware 
#BeCrimeAware

Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Day 4. The week's theme? If You Connect It, Protect It

It is now Day 4 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2020. Tomorrow, Monday, October 5, marks the beginning of the first full week of messaging from the leading movers of the campaign (in the US that would be the National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security). The theme for the week is: 

If You Connect It, Protect It

Here's where the organizers are going with this theme: "The first week of Cybersecurity Awareness Month will highlight the ways in which internet-connected devices have impacted our lives and will empower all users to own their role in security by taking steps to reduce their risks." (NCSA)

To help support campaign themes, NCSA provides sample messages for use in social media, for example: Any device that connects to the internet is vulnerable to risks. The best defense is to keep device security software, web browser and operating systems up to date. #BeCyberSmart by turning on auto-updates. 

This is good advice. Following this advice would—based on my experience—help many people to "own their role in security by taking steps to reduce their risks." This has the potential to reduce the total number of security incidents that need to be dealt with.

Of course, a cynic might point out that some percentage of the total population of people who are using internet-connected devices don't know how to keep device security software, web browser and operating systems up to date. It's a short step from there to asking: what's the point?

My view is that there's no point holding back good advice just because not everyone is well-placed to follow it. Furthermore, part of the strategy developed by NCSA over the last 15 or so years is to encourage other organizations, and individuals, to fill that gap; for example, by offering free educational materials and community programs to reduce the percentage of people who are finding this whole cyber thing difficult. Searching for the hashtag #BeCyberSafe on Twitter during October is one way to find out what is available.

A better question to ask about cybersecurity awareness than "what's the point?" is this: who is responsible for all these cybersecurity problems of which we need to be aware? I will be discussing some of the possible answers during the rest of the month. 

In the meantime, here are some short awareness videos that might you find helpful on topics like phishing, ransomware, vishing, and passwords.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month, D3: Learning can be fun

As you may have noticed, Day 3 of Cybersecurity Awareness Month is a Saturday. That's my excuse for making this third article in my "31 days of Cybersecurity Awareness" a shorter one. (Plus, I was busy earlier today presenting my talk on "How Hackers Save Humanity" at an online event: CornCon 2020.)

Although this post is a short one, it is hopefully a fun one because it features a computer game that combines hand-eye coordination and quick thinking with IT security awareness. 

The game is part of something called Descobrim, a game platform created by my brother, Mike Cobb. One of the many cool things about Mike is that he's an ace coder as well as a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP).  

Mike originally developed the game to be played over the internet in a browser on a laptop or desktop computer using the arrow keys on a regular keyboard. But when he created a test version for mobile devices—played by tilting your device—the feedback was so positive that Descobrim is now an Android game, available from the Google Play store. 

You can learn about the game platform on the Descobrim website. The individual games are referred to as "exhibitions" and cover a wide range of topics—from animals and nature to food and sports—with more being added all the time. For example, here's a description of the IT Security Awareness exhibition (which was curated by me).

Each exhibition has a number of images arranged in layers which can be painted or revealed by moving tools around the screen, scoring points, earning rewards, and trying to beat the clock while avoiding hidden obstacles. 

For each image revealed there are relevant facts, useful tips, or helpful pieces of related information. This gives Descobrim considerable educational potential when combined with the very engaging game play. Here's what it looks like on my phone, where I am the player called Hexlibra, about to start the IT Security Awareness exhibition:

If you're interested and have an Android phone or tablet you can go to the Google Play store, search for Descobrim, and try it out today, and not just for the IT Security Awareness exhibit—there is one about Smiles that I really like (many exhibits leverage great photos shared @Unsplash, as well as Pexels and Pixabay). 

Please leave me feedback if you have questions, comments, or suggestions (messaging via @zcobb works quite well for that). In 2021, I may be revising the IT Security Awareness exhibit and/or creating new ones.

"Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart."

Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Day Two: Basic Training

Welcome to the second day of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, 2020. The good news today is that a. it's Friday, and b. there is a lot of good cybersecurity awareness raising resources available for free, via the Internet. In other words, for any organization or individual, the main cost of raising cybersecurity awareness—and thus improving the security of valued information and the systems that process it—is time, not money. 

Okay, so there's a good case for saying time = money, but if you're the one person in your organization—or family—who is really concerned about the bad things that can happen to valued information and the systems that process it, the fact that you don't have to lay out cash to move forward with cybersecurity awareness raising efforts.

For example, as one of the world's largest and most experienced security software companies, ESET has amassed considerable expertise in communicating all aspects of cybersecurity. Company now provides a free version of its Cybersecurity Awareness Training that is well worth checking out.

Many years ago, my good friend Winn Schwartau started The Security Awareness Company. Dedicated to producing high quality materials across all types of media, the company was acquired by a firm called KnowBe4 which now offers a range of free IT security tools. and this free online course: Social Media: Staying Connected in a Secure World.

And, as I said yesterday, for traditional cybersecurity awareness information, I suggest you start with the orange Resources button on this website: Stay Safe Online. As the month progresses, I will be posting more free resources for cybersecurity awareness training programs.

#BeCyberSmart

Cybersecurity Awareness Month: time to get smart about ending digital technology abuse

.

Cybersecurity has become such an important part of modern life that many countries now dedicate an entire month—October—to increasing the levels of knowledge and awareness of cybersecurity among organizations and the general population. Here on this blog we have 31 articles about cybersecurity.

Not all of these articles will be traditional cybersecurity awareness content. Why? These days there is, already, a large amount of very good cybersecurity awareness material already out there, and even more will be published this month by companies, organizations, agencies, and experts. 

If traditional cybersecurity awareness is what you are looking for, I suggest you start with the resources on this website: Stay Safe Online. The Stay Safe Online website is run by a US-based non-profit, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA). The NCSA coordinates Cyber Security Awareness Month activities in the US as well as the year-round STOP. THINK. CONNECT. online safety campaign. 

(Note: For much of the past decade I was closely involved in NCSA activities and served as a member of its board of directors on behalf of ESET, a founding member of STOP. THINK. CONNECT, and my employer from 2011 to 2019.)

On social media I will be pointing people to accounts like @StaySafeOnline and @Cyber to get the latest in this year's awareness month activities. These are being hash-tagged #BeCyberSmart (in previous years the hashtag #CyberAware was used).

For readers in the EU: "The European Cybersecurity Month (ECSM) is the European Union’s annual campaign dedicated to promoting cybersecurity among EU citizens and organisations, and to providing up-to-date online security information through awareness raising and sharing of good practices" (see the ECSM website for more).

Cybercrime Awareness Month?

If we step back a moment and ask why the world needs more cybersecurity awareness, an obvious answer would be "because there's so much cybercrime." That is why I think attempts to raise awareness of the need for cybersecurity need to include an explanation of why there is so much cybercrime. 

So, my focus this October is on the causes of cybercrime and other forms of digital technology abuse, the most problematic of the many challenges faced by cybersecurity. (Cybersecurity challenges that are not digital technology abuse include human error and acts of nature, like earthquakes and hurricanes.)

In a law journal article published at the beginning of this year I wrote: cybercrime is a global problem that negatively impacts everyone—from commercial enterprises to government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and the public—in every nation and territory. Multiple surveys in countries with high levels of Internet adoption suggest a high degree of concern that the risk of becoming a victim of cybercrime is increasing." Here is the chart that I provided to illustrate this:

This chart combines results from Stephen Cobb, ESET Cybersecurity Barometer, USA 2018, We Live Security, 2019, and EU Special Eurobarometer 480 Report on Europeans’ attitudes towards Internet security, 2019. 

Although my law journal article—Advancing Accurate and Objective Cybercrime Metrics—is written in the text-heavy format of that publication style, it does contain a wide range of statistics and sources that may be helpful if you want to research the question of how much cybercrime there is, and how the world currently goes about measuring cybercrime.

That article built on a variety of work I did about five years ago under the general heading "Sizing Cybercrime". One of the outputs from that work is watchable on YouTube in the form of a 25 minute talk with that title, recorded in Prague in 2015. There is also a 5,000 word paper to back that up, plus 50 references. Sadly, although I have managed to trim my weight a bit since then, the crushing weight that cybercrime imposes on human endeavors has only increased since then.

Small steps can reduce a big problem

The amount of criminal activity in cyberspace, that which involves computers and other internet-connected devices, may now be greater than the amount of purely physical crime in what I like to call meatspace. Yes, there are still meatspace burglars who break into houses to steal things and may hurt you if you get in the way. But the value of stuff that gets stolen from households by means of digital intrusions is probably a greater. One relatively recent academic study concluded that cybercrime accounts for “half of all property crime, by volume and value” (Ross Anderson et al. Measuring the Changing Cost of Cybercrime, 2019).

Given all those facts, you might wonder if there is anything at all that you—as an individual —can do to make a difference, to actually reduce the size of the cybercrime problem and improve cybersecurity in the world today. I am happy to report that there is, and some of the specific things that you can do will be covered during the month. 

Some of actions you can take to improve cybersecurity might sound trivial, but there is serious research that shows they work. Consider these meatspace examples: when more people park their cars in locked garages rather than on the street, fewer cars are stolen. Putting stronger locks on your doors makes your home less likely to be invaded than one with weaker locks. 

Of course those security measures imply availability of resources which are unequally distributed in most societies. But in cyberspace, some security measures are free, like choosing a stronger password to lock people out of your online bank account (covered on day 19). For example, look at the relative amount of computer effort, measured in time, that it would take to break each of these passwords:

• mylittlepony = 3 weeks
• mylittlepony! = 700 years
• My1littlepony! = 200 million years
• I adore my little pony = 42 sextillion years

If that inspires you to get to work on improving your passwords, then this blog post has been worth it (here is where I tested those passwords, and here is a good tool for exploring password strength). 

#BeCyberSmart

A Brief History of Digital Technology Abuse: The First 40 Chapters

Digital technology, it's at the heart of modern life—our communication systems, our methods of travel and transportation, our education, entertainment, medicine, and much, much more—and it has a problem: we keep abusing it.

 

You can think of this as a problem with the technology: it is inherently vulnerable to abuse. Or you can think of this as a problem with people: we keep exploiting those vulnerabilities for selfish ends. 

Either way, it is a big problem, one that keeps getting bigger.

[Insert standard paragraph full of statistics documenting the undeniable rise of technology abuse despite record levels of spending to prevent such abuse — including at least one graph to help visualize this trend and cite source—and remind readers the author has published peer-reviewed papers on this topic.]

Sadly, some people who develop new digital technology products continue to behave as though this problem doesn't exist, or if it does, it's not a big problem, and besides, it will soon be solved so that we can all enjoy the benefits of whatever new technology these people are bringing to market. 

It is for these people—the technophilic "an app can fix that" uber-optimistic, techbro' solutionists—that I have been sketching out a brief history of digital technology abuse. Here's a screenshot of the first 40 chapters:

[I apologize for using a screenshot and not a text-based table that folks can copy and paste (have you tried building a table in Blogger?). However, an easy to grab text list, in roughly chronological order, is included at the end of the article. Also, the table above should be read column-by-column, left to right, top-to-bottom.]

The idea is that each chapter in the list is a technology that has proven vulnerable to abuse. (You can play mix-and-match with these, for example, email is abused to distribute documents containing macro technology that is abused to infect personal computer systems with malicious code that abuses attached digital cameras to capture embarrassing images and threatens to share them through abuse of social media.)

Of course, you may take one look at this table and realize some technologies are missing. Indeed, you may want make your own list, and I think that's a great idea. My list is somewhat random and clearly not definitive. I don't apologize for this because a. I was in a hurry, and b. any attempt at a complete list would be too long for a brief history of digital technology abuse.

The Digital Technology Product Warning

The goal of the 40 chapter list is to challenge people to name one or more digital technologies that are not vulnerable to abuse. (To be clear, I can't think of one.) And if there are none, then I would argue that every new piece of code-based or code-enabled technology must now come with a warning, a warning that has to be included in any discussion, reporting, or promotion of that technology. The warning should read something like this:

This product includes digital technology that is vulnerable to abuse which could cause harm or injury, including but not limited to failure to function correctly, loss of privacy, and reduced security.

I am sure some people will object when governments start proposing that such warnings must appear prominently on existing products, and be included in any reporting of soon-to-be-released products. One likely objection is that: "There's no way you can prove our product will be abused." 

The counter argument is: "there's no way you can prove your product is immune to abuse, but there is a very long history of digital technology products being abused." (Insert handy reference to "A Brief History of Digital Technology Abuse: The First 40 Chapters," S. Cobb.)

Of course, savvy readers will know that many of the digital technology products upon which we have come to rely for the smooth running of our daily lives already include warnings. The problem is that these are not very prominent. Indeed, they are often buried deep within the manual. However, poke around and you will find that any product that runs code comes with a warning like this: 

This product uses software that is provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a purpose. In no event shall the supplier of this software/product be liable to you or any third parties for any special, punitive, incidental, indirect or consequential damages of any kind, or any damages whatsoever, including, without limitation, those resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether or not the supplier has been advised of the possibility of such damages, and on any theory of liability, arising out of or in connection with the use of this software.

So, for example, the next time you go to unlock your car with your phone and find—as thousands of Tesla owners did recently—that this feature isn't working, well, too bad. You were warned. You have no legal recourse. That's just the way it is. If you check the Tesla documentation I'm sure you will find language like the paragraph above. (You might also find that the same language applies to the self-driving software—I don't have a Tesla handy or I would look myself, but not while driving.)

The point is, even a brief history of digital technology abuse should be enough to prove that humans have been developing new technologies faster than they have established appropriate ethical norms within the societies into which these technologies are deployed. I believe there is an urgent need for us humans to get serious about monitoring and controlling technology development and deployment in ways that facilitate closing the technology-ethics gap. 

We can think of this gap as: "a mismatch between the value rationality of our ends and the instrumental rationality of our means." That's a quote Phil Torres in Chapter 6 of his excellent book Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks (available on Amazon and at Powell's, etc.). 

Another way of putting it comes from Swedish-American physicist Max Tegmark, as quoted by Torres: "A race between the growing power of technology and growing wisdom with which we manage it." There's no doubt in my mind that:

• the race is on
• it's a marathon and not a sprint
• it's probably going to be a multi-generational relay
• it's the most important race for the human race
• right now we are not looking like winners

I will be returning to this topic, but for now I'm off to the mental gym to do some circuits. I'll just leave the text of the chapter list for A Brief History of Digital Technology Abuse right below here.

The "Insider Plus" threat: what the Tesla and Twitter attacks say about the resurgence of an enduring risk

The "Insider Threat" to information system security is as old as computers, but in recent decades it has received less attention than external threats; yet there is reason to believe that the risk posed by insiders acting on instructions from outsiders may be on the rise; we can usefully refer to this as the "Insider Plus" threat. In my assessment, the number of organizations that are fully aware of, and well-prepared to defend against, this insider plus threat is problematically small. 

That's the short version of this article, which explores the implications of recent security incidents at Twitter and Tesla, finding them indicative of several different-but-related phenomena that suggest the insider plus risk will increase over time. I have also provided some hopefully useful background on insider threats.

Twitter, Tesla, and Three Things True in 2020

Reporting in July on the attack that resulted in the hijacking of Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile individuals and brands, CSO Online described it as: "the perfect example of the impact a malicious or duped insider and poor privileged access monitoring could have on businesses." (Twitter VIP account hack highlights the danger of insider threats).

The next month, Government Tech reported on "an alleged million-dollar payment offered [to an insider] to help trigger a ransomware extortion attack" on the Tesla electric car company. This appeared in Dan Lohrmann's extensive piece on ransomware during Covid 19 where he quotes Katie Nickels, the director of intelligence at security firm Red Canary: 

"It really changes the game for the defenders. Before today I would not have suggested companies include an insider attacker installing ransomware in their threat model. Now everyone has to shift their thinking. If we know about this one case that’s been documented, there might be more."

I'm willing to bet there have been more, if only because this type of attack is a natural outcome of three currently observable phenomena:

1. Some organizations have become adept at defending against external attackers.
2. Very hard times, such as a global pandemic, make some employees very susceptible to unethical conduct.
3. The ethical status of abusing access to information systems remains vague and/or malleable in the minds of many humans.

Consider This Scenario 

You want to extort a company with deep pockets that relies on computer systems that you know you can disable with code in your possession, but the company is doing a good job of preventing external access to those systems; so you decide to get an insider to help you. There are numerous ways of doing this, including but probably not limited to: 

• A monetary bribe: which might be particularly effective right now, given the current levels of economic hardship and uncertainty.
• A chance at fame: which may appeal to some individuals for whom abuse of digital technologies is a sport or side gig or a form of protest (all of which can be said to be enabled by ambiguities in the ethics of technology). 
• A promise not to reveal embarrassing or damaging information: also known as blackmail, potentially facilitated by unauthorized access to devices and accounts belonging to the targeted insider. 

Given the plausibility of this scenario, every company needs to check its approach to data privacy and cybersecurity to make sure it addresses the risk that an external attacker may "partner" with an insider. Clearly, privileged access monitoring needs to be in place and in use, but so does management's awareness that insiders may be more susceptible to breaches of IT security policy and criminal statutes during this pandemic.

Consider This Bibliography

Anyone seeking a deeper understanding of insider threats will benefit from reading insider case studies, such as those aggregated by the CERT Insider Threat Center (Cappelli, Moore and Trzeciak, 2012). The Center has documented hundreds of internal computer crimes that impacted companies in sectors like banking (Randazzo, Keeney, Kowalski, Cappelli, and Moore, 2004), information technology and telecommunications (Kowalski, Cappelli, Moore, 2008), critical infrastructure (Keeney, Kowalski, Cappelli, Moore, Shimeall and Rogers, 2005), and financial services (Cummings, Lewellen, McIntire, Moore, and Trzeciak, 2012). 

While the primary goal of the Center was to discover and disseminate practical methods of mitigating insider threats, the case studies are analysed according to academic standards; for example, methodological limitations, like the inability to generalize findings to all organizations, are duly noted (Cappelli et al, 2012). These studies reveal how a wide range of insiders exploit opportunity to commit crimes, often through a simple betrayal of the trust placed in them as employees or contractors. 

Some insiders may, like Edward Snowden (Poitras, 2014), have far-reaching “super-user” access to the organization’s assets, be they physical or digital; yet CERT has recorded many cases where the crime was committed by an insider with few technical skills and only limited access. These studies document how even limited trust can, if betrayed, enable criminal activity. It may be theorized that such betrayal, by colleagues and co-workers, chosen by management to work at the company, and of whom there is at least a minimal expectation of trustworthiness and shared interests, may have a greater negative psychological impact than the criminal act of an outsider, a person of whom there are no pre-existing positive expectations. 

As I noted in my master's degree essay—from which the preceding three paragraphs were taken—the threat of betrayal by trusted insiders is real, for there can be no doubt that the following is true: "never before have so many insiders had so much access to so much computerized information of such great value." 

Furthermore, never have there been so many ways to monetize—often at relatively low risk— unauthorized access to information systems and the information they process and store. What strikes me as particularly worrying right now is the potential for malefactors to adopt increasingly aggressive meatspace crime tactics in their quest for access to protected systems.

I will be discussing this further and providing links here.

#InsiderPlus

Quick update: malware, cybercrime, cybersecurity, and a worrying lack of trust in tech firms

As John Oliver—that other bloke from the West Midlands—might say: "Just time for a quick update."

This one's about what I've been writing and talking about recently, as in "during lock down," or "while sheltering in place." In addition to the articles posted here on the blog, I have published items on Medium and LinkedIn. I have also been quoted by Bleeping Computer and Business Insider.

And yes, my first law journal article—part of a research project that began over a year ago—finally appeared in print! As you can see from the photo on the right, I am quite pleased about this (that's my happy face). 

In addition to several copies of the journal, I received a stack of professionally bound copies of my article, nice to hand to friends and colleagues or students or clients attending in-person seminars, IF the world ever gets back to doing that sort of thing. Yes, I could pop them in the post—but the US mail service is struggling at the moment (see this LA Times editorial: Attacking the U.S. Postal Service before an election is something a terrorist would do).

In the meantime the Journal of National Security Law & Policy has graciously made the article available online: Advancing Accurate and Objective Cybercrime Metrics.

Lack of trust in tech firms starts to bite

I have long been concerned that a constant drumbeat of headlines about cybercrime attacks and data privacy breaches could undermine technology adoption and use (not to mention the debilitating effects of those attacks on people and organizations victimized by them). In recent years that drumbeat tended to drown out voices like mine warning that this was a problem. So, as a sort of sanity check I conducted a couple of surveys.

The results? Right now there appears to be a serious trust deficit and I wrote about this on Medium: Not even 10% of us trust tech firms to protect our personal information. My hot take? "This could be a big problem for current efforts to recruit technology to solve a range of problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic." In other words, "Deploying technology to tackle a pandemic—or any of a range of "tech-to-the-rescue" challenges—can quickly become problematic if people don't trust tech firms to protect their personal information."

I wrote more about the survey results on LinkedIn: What's next if only 9% of us trust tech firms to protect our personal information? (Why write about the same topic in more than one place? I'm trying to determine which platform works best for different topics and perspectives.)

Malware, Cybercrime, and COVID-19

Something else I posted on LinkedIn was a look at the relationship between the coronavirus and criminal activity that employs malicious code: The Covid Effect means we can no longer ignore the Malware Factor. For this topic I did something I've never done before: I created a narrated version and put it on YouTube. This has not been wildly popular, but I'm going to try it again with some other articles, mainly so there is a spoken version of the work.

Open society, open-source, open to attack

Obviously I'm someone who sees a lot of troubling things in the world—and who has been that way since long before the current pandemic—but I'm not blind to hopeful signs. One category of such signs is editors willing to commission writing about difficult topics, and journalists who rise to the challenge. An example is this article by Ax Sharma in Bleeping Computer. public safety systems can be abused by nation state actors

According to Stephen Cobb, an independent security researcher based in the UK, the growing use of remotely-controlled and autonomous vehicles for public safety and surveillance opens up a worrying new set of attack vectors and opportunities for criminal abuse.

"A few years ago, I coined the term jackware for a category of malware-based attacks that include hijacking of self-driving cars, but this can also apply to autonomous or remotely-controlled vehicles—in the air or on land—that are deployed for public safety purposes."

"Just as a police car or ambulance can be turned into a weapon, so can a surveillance drone or security robot. Use of autonomous or remotely-controlled vehicles for public safety is a troubling new attack vector because this technology is not in my opinion sufficiently shielded from abuse," said Cobb.

Commenting on the state of affairs we have seen in the past two decades, Cobb additionally expressed how cybersecurity efforts are frequently not prioritized for attack vectors like these until grave consequences occur.

"Detailed historical analysis of previous technology deployments strongly suggests that appropriate levels of protection will not be put in place until malicious abuse occurs at scale."

No Surprise: China Blamed for 'Big Data' Hack of Equifax

Just before lockdown I spoke to Mathew Schwartz for an article in Bank InfoSecurity, but I only just realized that I had supplied the "pull quote" near the top of the article: 

"Absent major progress toward international norms in cyberspace, crimes like this will continue to be committed." 

Given that this is something I firmly believe, and also something that I believe to be very important, it was exciting to see it given some exposure.

Is COVID-19 Driving a Surge in Unsafe Remote Connectivity?

In March, I was quoted in another Mathew Schwartz article, this time on the lockdown-driven increase in remote access to systems. Here's part of what I said: 

"Past experience predicts that a significant percentage of that [recently enabled] access will be weakly protected at best, and we know that criminals have a wide range of tools at their disposal to take advantage of such access, whether for extortion, ransomware, data theft or sabotage...Sadly, the sense of being 'all in this together' in the fight against coronavirus is not felt by all criminals, and some will have no ethical qualms about abusing RDP for profit regardless of the impact on victims."

The Amazon Dot Com of Cybercrime

Also in March, journalist Jeff Elder from Business Insider called me about the arrest of "Russian Cyber Hacker Kirill Victorovich Firsov." Allegedly, Firsov ran an illegal online marketplace called Deer.io that was "selling usernames and passwords from around the web." I characterized Deer.io as "an Amazon dot com of cybercrime." 

The article began like this: "When the FBI arrested the alleged leader of an illegal online marketplace last week, they may have made a small dent in what one expert calls "the Amazon.com of cybercrime." Here's the part that cites me directly: ""This is the Amazon.com of cybercrime, with easy-to-use, easy-to-access availability and participation – as a buyer or vendor," says independent threat researcher Stephen Cobb, who previously tracked illegal marketplace activity for ESET, a cybersecurity company."

I wrote up the backstory to this term and the phenomenon it describes on this blog, including a look back at that time I took Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal on a guided tour of the dark web "to demonstrate why cybercrime is easier than ever before."

Time to flatten the [cybercrime] curve

Recently, a journalist asked for input on this question: Do you think companies are doing enough to protect consumer data?

In my response, I pointed to the chart you see on the right, the graph that I call the IC3 Hockey Stick of Cybercrime. What the graph shows is internet crime losses reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) operated by the FBI. The X-axis covers a 17 year span, but the last five years are where things start to look truly troubling.

(Note: while IC3 is the source of the numbers in the graph, IC3 has not—to my knowledge—published them in a graph, in other words, I built the graph from their numbers.)

Back in January of 2020, even before the "Covid Effect" kicked in—a huge surge in computer-enabled crime that began to emerge in late February—I predicted that the 2020 numbers from IC3 will blow past the $4 billion mark. Then, in early March we started seeing articles on "How cybercriminals are taking advantage of covid-19: scams, fraud, and misinformation." By mid-April, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Tonya Ugoretz was saying the number of crimes reported to IC3 had "quadrupled compared to months before the pandemic."

While the methodology behind the IC3 numbers shown in this chart is likely to disappoint statisticians—an issue I covered in depth in this law journal article—the trend you see here is consistent with all the other measures of cybercrime that I have studied. And while the tall thin version of the chart exaggerates the effect, it still doesn't look particularly reassuring when you produce a squarer version like this one.

The sad reality is—as I said to the journalist—companies are falling short in their efforts to protect data and systems relative to the level of threats they face, from criminals and other threat actors.

That caveat is important: relative to the level of threats they face, from criminals and other threat actors. You can only give companies so much grief for falling victim to crimes before you're just victim blaming. And victim blaming can lead to punitive measures against organizations that failed to prevent themselves from being victimized.

(I'm sure some organizations that have fallen victim to cybercrime feel as though they've been penalized by the authorities for suffering a burglary while living in a neighborhood where police presence is practically non-existent.) 

Yes, some companies have been victimized because their security practices were not to the highest standard, but that standard is very expensive to maintain at current threat levels. Some companies—like defense contractors—may be able to get their information security costs covered by the prices they charge. Others have to pass them on to consumers. 

Either way, one thing is clear, the more cybercrime there is, the higher the cost to society at large. The counter-argument that profits from cybercrime bolster the economies of those places in which cyber-criminals spend their money, doesn't impress me. I suggest that the benefits of those ill-gotten gains are not outweighed by the social costs of creating crime-based economies.

So let me put it this way: given that our efforts to defend against such cyber-criminal activity have so far proven to be incredibly expensive relative to the limited success achieved, discouraging people from engaging in cybercrime should be our number one priority in terms of government policy and social strategy. So how might that work?

Curve flattening

As the number of COVID-19 cases started to rise in the first quarter of 2020, the governments of many countries urged all sectors of society to work together to "flatten the curve" of Coronavirus infections and this has become a key element in the global response to the pandemic. 

This type of public call to action—the "we're all in this together" strategy—has long been a theme of "cybersecurity awareness" efforts, recurrent campaigns to enlist the public's help in reversing the rise in cybercrime, essentially flattening the cybercrime curve.

The best known of these cybersecurity awareness programs has become an annual event, taking place in October as Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the US and Cybersecurity Month Europe in the EU, with many countries outside those areas also participating. 

While much of the Cybersecurity Awareness Month activity is voluntary or sponsored by companies, government agencies in US and the EU have provided leadership in establishing these programs. That leadership is a good sign, and there's no doubt in my mind that security awareness programs do reduce the number and impact of security breaches, thefts, extortion schemes, fraud, and so on. 

But I am equally certain that the governments of the world are doing far too little to make cybercrime a risky and unattractive proposition. So, maybe the next large-scale public cybersecurity awareness program needs to be:

"Awareness of how governments have seriously failed their citizens when it comes combating and deterring cybercrime, and how we can force them to do better."

Needs a catchier title—but I will work on that.

Taking down 'the Amazon of cybercrime' - a look inside a dark web story

Back in March, 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began to dominate the news, one cybercrime story seemed to get washed aside by the rising tide of COVID-themed cybercrime attacks: the taking down of the 'Amazon.com of cybercrime.' I'm fairly sure that, in more normal times, more people would have paid more attention to this headline:

The FBI arrested the alleged hacker behind the 'Amazon.com of cybercrime,' which it says sold $17 million worth of stolen accounts for Gmail and other sites

For me, there were several reasons to smile when this headline appeared, not the least of which was the fact that it represents a very positive step forward for law enforcement in the ongoing effort to rein in cybercrime, an effort I have tried to support for many years.

On top of that, I happen to know Special Agent Brian Nielsen, whose very impressive work is cited in article and in the criminal complaint filed in US District Court in San Diego. The complaint named Kirill Victorovich Firsov as "a Russian cyber hacker, and the administrator of the Deer.io cyberplatform,"

Firsov was arrested on a Sunday night in March at JFK Airport and the complaint was unsealed the next day (a PDF of the complaint is here and if you look at the timing it suggests there was some very fast and skillful foot work by the San Diego feds).

However, the aspect of this headline that really put a smile on my face was the term Amazon.com of cybercrime. This way of characterizing dark web crime markets—like those that Firsov enabled—is something that I came up with in 2018; for example, see this article: Next Generation Dark Markets? Think Amazon or eBay for criminals.

When journalist Jeff Elder from Business Insider called me about the Firsov arrest I used that same characterization. Jeff obviously found it helpful because the article began like this: "When the FBI arrested the alleged leader of an illegal online marketplace last week, they may have made a small dent in what one expert calls "the Amazon.com of cybercrime."

That expert was me. You can read the article here (apparently MSN has a "reprint" arrangement with Business Insider—the article is now pay-walled on the latter's site). This is the part that cites me directly:

"This is the Amazon.com of cybercrime, with easy-to-use, easy-to-access availability and participation – as a buyer or vendor," says independent threat researcher Stephen Cobb, who previously tracked illegal marketplace activity for Eset, a cybersecurity company.

Apart from Eset being ESET, Jeff was true to our conversation and the point I was trying to make. My efforts were undoubtedly bolstered by the fact that I had prior experience—from early 2019—covering this topic with another journalist, Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace on NPR. That meant I had quite a bit of "evidence" that I could share with Jeff. Like this screenshot of an online market, annotated here for educational purposes:

As you can see, markets like this make buying stolen payment card data as easy as buying something on eBay or Amazon. And of course, they provide an easy way for the criminals who do the data stealing to monetize their operations. Like any well-organized market there are incentives—like seller and product ratings—to ensure that shoppers get good products at competitive prices.

These Amazon-style mechanisms help to explain how a bunch of criminals can buy and sell things without ripping each other off, as does the use of digital currency and an escrow system. The marketplace provider withholds payment to the seller until the buyer gets the goods and approves them.

By charging a fee for escrow and other services, the marketplace provider stands to generate considerable revenue while maintaining a semblance of respectability as "merely enabling commerce." (That is just one of many ethical cop-outs that help to sustain cyber-criminal activity.)

Flashback: Kai goes to the Amazon (of cybercrime)

So, how did I end up to talking to journalists about dark markets like this? Journalists who cover breaking news like to talk to people who are considered experts in the field of human endeavor to which the news pertains. Some experts welcome such conversations as an opportunity to provide context and clarity to complex topics, thus helping to broaden understanding of such topics.

If the expert happens to be self-employed and short of funds for marketing and PR, this interaction can be mutually beneficial. It can also be helpful to companies who are interested in "educating the market" for their products, which is why ESET—a maker of security software—was happy for me to work on this when I worked there (disclaimer: I no longer work for ESET and have zero financial ties to the company; I think they make good products but I know I make no money if you buy them).

The radio piece that I did with Kai Ryssdal about the business of cybercrime and the online markets that support it was skillfully orchestrated by Maria Hollenhorst. A lot of preparation was needed to produce a segment that was relatively short, but full of information. I thoroughly enjoyed working on it and was very impressed with how quickly Kai saw what I was hoping he would see: that the dark web enables "crime as a business enterprise," complete with Amazon and eBay style marketing techniques. So please enjoy listening to: Ever wondered what the dark web is like?

Only 7.6% of Brits say they trust tech firms with personal information, and that's a problem for all of us

So, it’s May, 2020, and we humans are struggling to cope with a global crisis of unprecedented scope and scale, despite having unprecedented levels of technology at our disposal. Why are we struggling? One factor could be this: less than 10% of adults in the US and UK trust tech firms to protect their personal information.

That's according to a survey I commissioned around the middle of the month, a full account of which can be found in this article on Medium.

To rein in COVID-19, and future pandemics, people need to be able to share their personal information without fear that it will be misused or abused.

I think this pie chart reflects that fear. It shows the US results but the corresponding UK pie chart looks very similar: very few people say Yes when you ask them this question: “Do you trust tech firms to protect your personal information?”

Respondents could answer Yes, No, or Not sure. Less than 1 in 10 respondents answered Yes (7.6% in the UK, 8.9% in the US). More than half said No (55%). Just over one third said Not sure (36%). Who were these people? Adults in the US (n=756) and the UK (n=514).

Why is there such a lack of trust? I think that the Malware Factor has a lot to do with this. People don't trust tech firms to protect personal information because of the massive scale at which malware has enabled such information to be compromised and abused. Companies and governments just don't seem to have the ability to prevent this, either because of a shortage of concern or funds or skills or understanding, or an overabundance of criminal activity, or all of the above.

Ok, but what can we do about this?

My own opinion is that the overabundance of criminal activity, while not the whole problem, is a huge part of the problem. Yes, it's true than many organizations could do better at cybersecurity, but it's also true that the governments of the world have massively failed their citizens when it comes to malware-enabled cybercrime. This failure is so huge that it's now compounding the problems created by a deadly pandemic. Maybe, now that lives are very clearly on the line, more people in positions of power and influence will begin to take the Malware Factor more seriously.

But what would that look like? How does taking the Malware Factor more seriously at the highest levels translate into action? I'm going to list three suggestions. You may not like them. You may even scoff at some or all of them. But I'm already used to that, as I said in this blog post and Medium article from 2017 (same story, two different places). FYI, I'm still fairly sure I'm right.

1. International cooperation and global treaties are the only way to make a serious dent in cybercrime and cyberconflict, and the citizens of the world should push their governments in this direction. I realize this is going to be hard while three of the biggest malware-making countries are still run by Trump, Putin, and Xi, respectively—but that is no reason not to try.

2. Cybersecurity products and services should be made available at lower or no cost.

As I've been saying for more than a decade now, information system security is the healthcare of IT/ICT. Just as profit-based healthcare is, in my opinion and practical experience, a bad idea, so is people making large fortunes from protecting the world's digital infrastructure—as opposed to a decent wage. Besides, a profit-based approach to securing ICT has thus far failed to make any lasting dents in the cybercrime growth curves (see chart of Internet crime losses, from this IEEE blog post by Chey Cobb and myself). 

3. We need to consider an end to broadcasting and bragging about new and interesting ways to gain illegal access to information systems. Justifying this as a way to improve security and reinforce the message that it needs to be taken more seriously might have been valid at some point in the past, but that validity has been seriously eroded. Fully open, freely accessible, in-depth research on things that enable ethically-challenged individuals or governments to seriously undermine our collective future is not, in my opinion, a good idea. (Think of someone making and distributing a version of COVID-19 that doesn't give victims a tell-tale cough—cool?)

I'm happy to hear more suggestions, or your thoughts on what's wrong with these. Also happy to hear about any moves in these three directions. (I am already familiar with the work of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace—still hoping they take up the idea of an Comprehensive Malware Test Ban Treaty.)

Note: If you found this article interesting and/or helpful, please consider clicking the button below to buy me a coffee and fuel more independent, vendor-neutral writing and research like this. Thanks!

#cybercrime #dataprivacy #privacy #infosec #FTC #FCC #COVID_19 #Covid19UK $FB $AMZN $AAPL $GOOG $MSFT #technology #trust #survey 

Defcon 2020 Cancelled: Can sad news also be good news?

Now with audio!

Talk about mixed emotions! Large swathes of the hacking and information security world are feeling all kinds of sad-and-yet-glad right now. Why? Because, as of May 8, 2020, this year's Defcon is canceled. This was to have been the 28th consecutive Defcon, a very popular annual hacking conference that is traditionally held in Las Vegas around the start of August.

It was also going to be an anniversary event of sorts for me. The canceled Defcon was to have been the 25th anniversary of my first Defcon. That was in 1995 and was known as Def Con III as you can see from the t-shirt.

Looking on the bright side, Defcon 29 in 2021 is already scheduled, as a meatspace event, for August 5 to 8 (see WIRED article). But the main piece of good news is the very thing that many folks—myself included—are also sad about: we won't be seeing each other this August, at least not in person.

There is more goods news: this year there will be a virtual conference. I know that not everyone enjoys this format, but I am pleased that his path was chosen. I am also grateful the hacking community has made a very difficult, yet also very sensible decision: let's not risk spreading COVID-19 by gathering in person in Las Vegas hotels in our tens of thousands to spend several days in packed talks and crowded corridors (estimated attendance last year was 30,000).

And there's even more good news, from way back in the 1990s. Back then, Jeff Moss—the founder of the event—had the wisdom and the foresight to insist that the talks delivered at Defcon be archived. That means anyone with spare time on their hands and an internet connection—maybe in a locked-down-shelter-in-place scenario—can binge on past events.

That also means people can still listen to what I said, 25 years ago, preserved as an audio (.m4b) file. Just scroll down this page: DEFCON III Archive. My talk was titled: The Party's Over: Why Hacking Sucks. My goal was to generate dialogue about the ethics of hacking, and I think I succeeded. In fact, the audio captures that quite well. (Bear in mind that this was 1995—I spoke at numerous events in the twenty-teens where organizers seemed incapable of capturing and curating audio this efficiently.) Click this link to listen in your browser; it's about 49 minutes long and while the sound starts out rough, it gets better quickly.

As someone who had been working on the computer security problem since the 1980s, I have to say that I learned a lot from that 1995 session and really appreciated everyone's input. I was invited back the next year and my talk was about how people might go about transitioning, from hacker to infosec professional. Of course, like many early DEFCON talks this one went in several other directions at first—there was even a steam train excursion—but you might still enjoy listening. Here is a link to that talk. Be warned that there is some swearing, but it is in a very polite voice.

Over time, the Defcon archives have evolved to become a quite amazing cornucopia of knowledge and history, a feast for eager minds, and a legacy for future generations.

Thanks Jeff! Thanks to your foresight, it's possible to find some good news in this sad news.