Week 1, Lecture 1 - Introduction

Date: 9/26/22

Questions: - Textbook? Readings? Last year recordings?

Intro

• Not too technical
• Cybersecurity from offensive pov.
• Aim to get working understanding of common attacks (mostly from policy side)
• Lectures + sections
  • Monday: tech lecture (Alex), weekly assignment available
  • Also one discussion section on one of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
    • Lab (work together)
  • Wednesday: law lecture (Riana)
• Virtual machines reset weekly so no late work I guess
• Grading:
  • 10%: discussion attendance
  • … (see slides)

Hacking

• Snowden: exposed the capabilities of the US.
• Key to global competition for power in this day and age.
• What can hackers do?
  • Proper taxonomy is tier-ed (not based on who they work for since those lines are fluid), but based on skill level and capabilities.
  • {Paste chart}.
• Layers of abstraction hide things away
  • i.e., a hacker hacking upstream for a government would have less chance of getting caught if their position is far away from the actor.
• Zero-day exploit

Types of state actors

Now a less fine-grained taxonomy… - Superpowers: large orgs, countries, etc. - Examples: five i’s: US, UK, AUS, NZ, CAN - Rapid risers: north korea (lazarus group), vietnam, south korea… - Rapid improving, learn quickly from superpowers - Peleton: lots of people doing this work but mostly private contractors, (e.g., India). - Ambitious …: poor, not many resources

Nation state control

What control does the government have over bad actors? - Full control: In USA: non-authorized hacking is prosecuted. - Less control: e.g., Korea - No control: no laws, e.g., Nigeria

Misc.

• Side-channel attacks:
  • Not used much but lots of Phd students study this