Talk:Main Page
Avichal 10:47, 2 November 2005 (PST) FYI, I created a page which may help in team formation White_Paper_Projects It lists project topics and people can edit to indicate the ones that they may be interested in.
Professor Voelker, you mentioned the “Black Unicorn,” can you provide some more background on this individual?
Professor Voelker, can you distinguish “integrity” from “authentication” for me a bit more – does authentication allow us to ensure integrity or …? Is it that “confidentiality” and “integrity” are what we are striving for and that “authentication” and “non-repudiation” allow us to achieve those goals?
Professor Voelker, during your presentation, you stated several times that the knowledge needed for carrying out various computer/cyber attacks is relatively low, how low – that is, is this something we’d expect non-university educated persons living in the Middle East or the remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan to be able to do (assuming they had the equip and some basic instruction/manuals)? Do we know of any incidences of al Qaeda, or those organizations loosely affiliated with it, attempting such cyber attacks? Do advanced states, such as the US and the EU countries, have the ability to crash easily another state’s internet if they choose to do so – is that a weapon the US can and would likely employ if were to engage in inter-state conflict in the future?
Could someone with a computer science background please roughly label and order the types of cyber attacks according to how difficult they are to develop and how devastating they are likely to be with respect to one another (i.e. Trojan horse, worm, shell, etc.)?
Professor Voelker, you mentioned that forensic tracing on the internet is extremely difficult. When al Zarwaqawi posts warnings and/or takes credit for attacks that have been carried out (such as he did with respect to attacks on the Kearsarge and Ashland), is there anyway to approximate or glean his location – how much and what kinds of knowledge, if any, can we get from such postings?
Professor Maurer and/or Dean Nacht, in the last couple of days there has been quite a bit of talk regarding a letter from al Zawahiri to al Zarwaqawi. It seems that the former believes that the latter’s brutality has gotten a little out of hand and has asked him to halt extremely violent acts such as beheadings, lest they lose the support of many of the Muslims they are trying to court or at least drum up sympathy from. This is the first I have heard of al Qaeda being concerned with such things. Maybe al Qaeda’s ideology does not put it beyond the “invisible man” scenario after all. Do you have any thoughts on the letter?
Professor Maurer and/or Dean Nacht, what do you make of the recent “specific” but “non-credible” threats with respect to the NY subway system? Is there any indication of which agency in the US federal government or from a foreign government came across the info (or is it really likely to have come from a raid in Iraq as has been reported by some news organizations)? Also, do either of you make any of the fact that the Homeland Security Dept didn’t make too much of it but that the NY City authorities did? Is that a lack of communication problem or are the local authorities responding as they should and is the federal government leaving the initial response to the local authorities as one might expect? Should the situation there make us worry, as the post-Katrina fiasco did? It has also been reported that three suspects have been arrested but the arresting authorities have not been identified – any thoughts?
Professor Maurer and/or Dean Nacht, do either of you have a take on the McCain push to limit and clearly establish what is permitted with respect to interrogation? Would that be a good thing, a bad thing, …?
Professor Maurer made the point often, during his initial lectures on terrorism, that democracy and development should not be viewed as the cure all for terrorism. There is an interesting and well-written article that supports that view in the current edition of Foreign Affairs – F. Gregory Gause III, Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?, FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sept./Oct. 2005).
Daryl Sterling Jr. What sort of defenses are in routers to help defend against DDoS attacks across the net?
