Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World, 15th Anniversary Edition

3

Attacks

I'm going to discuss three broad classes of attacks. Criminal attacks are the most obvious, and the type that I've focused on. But the others—publicity attacks and legal attacks—are probably more damaging.

CRIMINAL ATTACKS

Criminal attacks are easy to understand: “How can I acquire the maximum financial return by attacking the system?” Attackers vary, from lone criminals to sophisticated organized crime syndicates, from insiders looking to make a fast buck to foreign governments looking to wage war on a country's infrastructure.

Fraud

Fraud has been attempted against every commerce system ever invented. Unscrupulous merchants have used rigged scales to shortchange their customers; people have shaved silver and gold off the rims of coins. Everything has been counterfeited: currency, stock certificates, credit cards, checks, letters of credit, purchase orders, casino chips. Modern financial systems—checks, credit cards, and automatic teller machine networks—each rack up multi-million-dollar fraud losses per year. Electronic commerce will be no different; neither will the criminals’ techniques.

Scams

According to the National Consumers League, the five most common online scams are sale of Internet services, sale of general merchandise, auctions, pyramid and multilevel marketing schemes, and business opportunities. People read some enticing e-mail or visit an enticing Web site, send money off to some post office box for some reason or another, and end up either getting nothing ...