Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy
复制标题
对民主的常识性攻击
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
B. Schneier
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
H. Farrell;B. Schneier
现有的网络安全方法要么强调国际国家间的逻辑(如威慑理论)，要么强调单个信息系统的完整性。这两家公司都没有很好地理解新的“软网络”攻击，这些攻击涉及操纵预期和共识。我们认为，将计算机安全论证扩大到国家层面，以便将整个政体视为一个具有相关攻击面和威胁模型的信息系统，提供了理解这些攻击以及如何缓解它们的最佳直接方式。我们展示了独裁和民主作为信息系统的运作方式之间的系统性差异，因为它们依赖于共同的和有争议的政治知识的不同组合。稳定的独裁政体将在谁掌权及其相关的意识形态或政策目标方面拥有共同的知识，但将产生关于社会中各种政治行为者是谁，以及他们可能如何组成联盟并获得公众支持的有争议的知识，从而使联盟更难取代政权。稳定的民主国家将在谁掌权的问题上有争议的知识，但在谁是政治参与者以及他们如何组建联盟和获得公众支持的问题上有共同的知识。这些差异与明显不同的攻击面和威胁模型相关联。具体地说，民主国家很容易受到一些措施的影响，这些措施会“淹没”公众辩论，扰乱各方和联盟之间分散的共识，而独裁政体则不会。
Existing approaches to cybersecurity emphasize either international state-to-state logics (such as deterrence theory) or the integrity of individual information systems. Neither provides a good understanding of new “soft cyber” attacks that involve the manipulation of expectations and common understandings. We argue that scaling up computer security arguments to the level of the state, so that the entire polity is treated as an information system with associated attack surfaces and threat models, provides the best immediate way to understand these attacks and how to mitigate them. We demonstrate systematic differences between how autocracies and democracies work as information systems, because they rely on different mixes of common and contested political knowledge. Stable autocracies will have common knowledge over who is in charge and their associated ideological or policy goals, but will generate contested knowledge over who the various political actors in society are, and how they might form coalitions and gain public support, so as to make it more difficult for coalitions to displace the regime. Stable democracies will have contested knowledge over who is in charge, but common knowledge over who the political actors are, and how they may form coalitions and gain public support. These differences are associated with notably different attack surfaces and threat models. Specifically, democracies are vulnerable to measures that “flood” public debate and disrupt shared decentralized understandings of actors and coalitions, in ways that autocracies are not.