New Frontiers #
China #
- 5 of the largest Internet platforms are Chinese
- TikTok: first to become dominant globally without Chinese government help
- PRC-based companies:
- Have to deal with political content moderation requirements
- Less experienced with safety issues as Western companies are
- Are not experienced with Western privacy laws
- Might store data in the PRC
- Could decide to not follow ECPA
- Crackdown on PRC-based tech CEOs that publicly disagree with CCP policies or that present a threat to Xi Jinping’s power
Synthetic Media #
- Example: DNC email hack in 2016
- Can create fake Facebook/Twitter profiles to mislead
- Types of abuse where falsity isn’t relevant to impact:
- Fake accounts
- Sextortion
- Harassment
- Spam
- Hate speech
- NCII
- These are ripe grounds for deepfakes
IOT #
- Everything is a computer! (@internetofshit on Twitter)
- Computers are easy to hack, especially given trickle-down of attacks from state actors when they are released
- Combination of the two is very dangerous - lots of potential for spying or other harassment
State and financial attacks on individuals #
- Just two days ago (11/27/2021): NYT article on Iran-Israel hacking of gas IT and dating apps
- Cryptocurrency scams and hacking, etc
Security is only the tip of the harm iceberg #
Alternatively: Stamos’s hierarchy of bad stuff that happens on the internet
- Biggest issue: abuse (technically legal use of a platform to cause harm)
- Infosec: only 20% of the iceberg
- Account lifecycle/passwords (large majority)
- Corporate patching (attacks from security updates not being applied)
- Config errors
- Old app vulns
- Tip of this iceberg: new research
- Tip of this iceberg: 0-day
- Even smaller: side-channel attacks