Taming the Hacking Storm

Chapter 3The Problem

“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask. For once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”

– Albert Einstein

This quote describes the importance of this part of the solution: When you are trying to solve something as complex as Internet cybercrime, you better start by asking the right question(s) and defining the right problem. Get the question wrong and the solution will not work. Define the problem wrong just a little bit, and attackers will simply skirt around your defenses as though there were none in place at all. And, so far, that’s what has happened to every significant cyber defense we’ve put in the way of hackers and malware.

This chapter will begin by discussing some of the ways to approach hard, complex problems and then reveal the broader underlying problem of most Internet cybercrime at a high level.

Hints to Solve Hard, Complex Problems

Cybercrime is a really hard, complex problem to solve. If it was easy, some company, person, or group would have done it long ago. In fact, it’s cybercrime’s omnipresence and nonstop continued growth, in light of the tens of billions of dollars spent each year over decades to defeat it, that proves how stubborn and complex it is. Cybercrime is so bad that most people think we have no choice but to live with it. Most people don’t even know that it is even ...