The Nature of Cyber-attacks in the Future: A Position Paper

摘要

Given society's increasing dependence on networked systems, it is clear from their past occurrences that cybercrimes pose a serious threat to our long-term welfare. This article focuses on the current relationship between networked systems and cybercrimes, analyzes the nature of the relationship from a fundamental engineering perspective, and systematically explores where and how future advances in networked systems might influence the evolution of cyber-attacks, even inadvertently giving rise to new forms of cybercrimes. Historical data reveals that technological advances in engineering systems design, including communications and transportation, were often accompanied by lack of foresight, thereby inadvertently opening doors to new forms of vulnerabilities following deployment. The greater the extent of the advancement, the deeper the potential chasm and more severe the damage incurred when a clever perpetrator successfully exploits the weaknesses. For example, when the Bell Telephone System employed human operators to switch telephone calls in the early 1900s, anonymous and unauthorized long-distance calls were a rarity. As soon as automatic switching equipment replaced human operators, "phone phreaks" discovered a serious flaw in the system. First by simply whistling or using a toy whistle and later through utilizing a tone-generating bluebox, one could break into the signaling control and make unauthorized long-distance calls.