Economically Complex Cyberattacks
Economically Complex Cyberattacks
复制标题
经济复杂的网络攻击
作者：
S. Borg
大多数从事网络安全工作的人都认识到，我们经济的相互联系和复杂性可能会对网络攻击的破坏性产生巨大影响。他们随意地提到“网络效应”、“溢出效应”或“连锁效应”。“然而，人们对这些影响实际上是如何起作用的，创造它们所必需的条件是什么，或者如何量化它们的后果，却知之甚少。从事网络安全工作的人也普遍承认，网络攻击的组合可能比单个攻击更具破坏性。然而，人们对为什么会出现这种情况，以及联合攻击产生最大破坏的原则是什么，却知之甚少。这两组问题实际上是相同的。正是考虑到我们经济中的相互联系和复杂性，网络攻击者才能设计出攻击组合，造成更大的破坏。为了理解这是如何运作的，我们需要看看我们经济的三个特征，这三个特征是造成其结构复杂性的主要原因：冗余、相互依赖和近乎垄断。然后，当我们研究这些特征时，我们需要看看它们中的每一个如何促使不同类型的攻击策略。
Most people working in cyber security recognize that the interconnections and complexities of our economy can have a huge effect on the destructiveness of cyber attacks. They refer casually to "network effects," "spillover effects" or "knock-on effects." Yet there is little understanding of how such effects actually work, what conditions are necessary to create them, or how to quantify their consequences. People working in cyber security also generally acknowledge that combinations of cyber attacks could be much more destructive than individual attacks. Yet there is little understanding of exactly why this is the case or what the principles would be for combining attacks to produce maximum destruction. These two sets of problems are actually the same. It is by taking account of the interconnections and complexities in our economy that cyber-attackers could devise combinations of attacks to cause greater destruction. To understand how this would work, we need to look at three features of our economy that are responsible for much of its structural complexity: redundancies, interdependencies, and near monopolies. Then, as we examine these features, we need to see how each of them would prompt a different sort of attack strategy.