Cognitive hacking: a battle for the mind

Author

Cybenko, George ; Giani, Annarita ; Thompson, Paul

Author_Institution

Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, NH, USA

Volume

35

Issue

8

fYear

2002

fDate

8/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

50

Lastpage

56

Abstract

On 25 August 2000, stockholders were stunned by news that server and storage provider Emulex was revising its earnings from a per-share gain to a loss, while lowering its reported net earnings from the previous quarter as well. Within minutes, Emulex shares plummeted. Yet none of this news fostered by a hacker´s bogus press release - was true. The Emulex case illustrates the speed, scale, and subtlety with which networked information can propagate and how quickly severe consequences can occur. This rapid dissemination, which makes such cognitive hacking possible, is forcing security researchers to look at yet another class of countermeasures - a class far different from solutions that seek to secure technology and network infrastructure.

Keywords

authorisation; computer crime; human factors; information dissemination; information retrieval; linguistics; message authentication; Emulex; authentication; cognitive hacking; collaborative filtering; countermeasures; information dissemination; linguistic analysis; misinformation; user perception; Companies; Computer crime; Computer hacking; Computer security; Information security; Invasive software; Marketing and sales; Military computing; Web and internet services; Wire;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computer

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9162

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MC.2002.1023788

Filename

1023788