Dear Readers,
This month marks the 20th year anniversary of the inaugural issue of "Security and Privacy" magazine, published by the Computer Society. The magazine complements the Security and Privacy Symposium with articles for a audience that includes security practitioners, interested technical experts from a general background, as well as academics. The magazine and symposium communities overlap in several dimensions, and the magazine often includes summaries of some of the Symposium papers. This month the magazine takes a look back at the papers from 2003. There were only 19 papers presented at the symposium that year, and while some were prescient in their investigations of what are today's methods and problems, it would have been difficult to foresee that 20 years later, hundreds of papers would be necessary to cover the scope of active research in security and privacy.
We see the need for this research almost daily when reading newspaper headlines about the effects of cybercrime as businesses shutdown to restore their systems, and users find their personal data has been disclosed and their personal assets are endangered. Constant vigilance is a necessity in our endangered computer world.
We have a book review this month from Sven Dietrich about the use of artificial intelligence in matters of national security. The collection of essays touch on matters such as policy, privacy, and law enforcement. AI will probably come to underpin decision-making in security systems. It is time to start thinking about the implications.
An international coalition of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, recently disabled a ransomware operation that cost businesses, especially healthcare providers, perhaps as much as $100M in ransom, not to mention the cost of restoring their systems and recovering from days or weeks of inability to function except through paper records. From the accounts, the takedown of "The Hive" was a painstaking operation involving months of surveillance and clever, legal, hacking. An amazing number of people now have expertise in combatting cybercrime, and that is a notable change from 20 years ago.
,The immortal bard saw similarities between the society of honeybees and human governments, and perhaps these hoary lines have new life, if only accidentally, in considering the FBI operation against "The Hive":
"We bring it to the hive and, like the bees,
Are murdered for our pains."
(Henry IV)"The commons, like an angry hive of bees
That want their leader, scatter up and down
And care not who they sting in his revenge."
(Henry VI)"Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
Till he hath lost his honey and his sting."
(Troilus and Cressida)May the angry and merry bees of malware keep their distance from us all.