Misplaced Pages

#160839

109-523: The Sybil attack in computer security is an attack wherein a reputation system is subverted by creating multiple identities. A reputation system's vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity, and whether the reputation system treats all entities identically. As of 2012, evidence showed that large-scale Sybil attacks could be carried out in

218-446: A blockchain and earn rewards roughly in proportion to the amount of computational effort they invest in a given time period. Investments in other resources such as storage or stake in existing cryptocurrency may similarly be used to impose economic costs. As an alternative to identity verification that attempts to maintain a strict "one-per-person" allocation rule, a validation authority can use some mechanism other than knowledge of

327-492: A generic drug . Infringers could be liable for the total loss of potential sales (implying that everyone who buys a counterfeit product would have bought the real thing). It applies to unintentional use of copyright material. It puts the onus on website owners to ensure they comply with laws across several territories. It has been negotiated secretively and outside established international trade bodies, despite EU criticisms. The history of anonymous expression in political dissent

436-424: A riot . This perceived anonymity can be compromised by technologies such as photography . Groupthink behavior and conformity are also considered to be an established effect of internet anonymity. Anonymity also permits highly trained professionals such as judges to freely express themselves regarding the strategies they employ to perform their jobs objectively. Anonymous commercial transactions can protect

545-587: A big impact on information security in organizations. Cultural concepts can help different segments of the organization work effectively or work against effectiveness toward information security within an organization. Information security culture is the "...totality of patterns of behavior in an organization that contributes to the protection of information of all kinds." Andersson and Reimers (2014) found that employees often do not see themselves as part of their organization's information security effort and often take actions that impede organizational changes. Indeed,

654-476: A colleague, which, when listened to by an attacker, could be exploited. Data transmitted across an "open network" allows an attacker to exploit a vulnerability and intercept it via various methods. Unlike malware , direct-access attacks, or other forms of cyber attacks, eavesdropping attacks are unlikely to negatively affect the performance of networks or devices, making them difficult to notice. In fact, "the attacker does not need to have any ongoing connection to

763-506: A collective voice". Guardian considers that "people will often speak more honestly if they are allowed to speak anonymously" . According to Ross Eaman, in his book The A to Z of Journalism , until the mid-19th century, most writers in Great Britain, especially the less well known, did not sign their names to their work in newspapers, magazines and reviews. Most commentary on the Internet

872-412: A consequence make a Cold boot attack possible, to hardware implementation faults that allow for access or guessing of other values that normally should be inaccessible. In Side-channel attack scenarios, the attacker would gather such information about a system or network to guess its internal state and as a result access the information which is assumed by the victim to be secure. The target information in

981-493: A conversation) capitalized on a fascination with anonymity. Apps like Yik Yak , Secret and Whisper let people share things anonymously or quasi-anonymously whereas Random let the user to explore the web anonymously. Some email providers, like Tuta also offer the ability to create anonymous email accounts which do not require any personal information from the account holder. Other sites, however, including Facebook and Google+ , ask users to sign in with their legal names. In

1090-407: A crime might seek to avoid retribution, for example, by anonymously calling a crime tipline. Criminals might proceed anonymously to conceal their participation in a crime. Anonymity may also be created unintentionally, through the loss of identifying information due to the passage of time or a destructive event. In certain situations, however, it may be illegal to remain anonymous. For example, 24 of

1199-411: A disproportionate level of control over the network, such as by affecting voting outcomes. In the context of (human) online communities , such multiple identities are sometimes known as sockpuppets . The less common term inverse-Sybil attack has been used to describe an attack in which many entities appear as a single identity. A notable Sybil attack in conjunction with a traffic confirmation attack

SECTION 10

#1732868886161

1308-445: A feature of modern computers that allows certain devices, such as external hard drives, graphics cards, or network cards, to access the computer's memory directly." Eavesdropping is the act of surreptitiously listening to a private computer conversation (communication), usually between hosts on a network. It typically occurs when a user connects to a network where traffic is not secured or encrypted and sends sensitive business data to

1417-421: A fictional collaboration by people who had never previously met and did not know who had recruited them. The anonymous purchase of a gun or knife to be used in a crime helps prevent linking an abandoned weapon to the identity of the perpetrator. There are two aspects, one, giving to a large charitable organization obscures the beneficiary of a donation from the benefactor, the other is giving anonymously to obscure

1526-496: A field or area of interest normally dominated by males (as by the famous science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr who was actually a woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon, and likely JT LeRoy ). Some seem to want to avoid the "limelight" of popularity and to live private lives, such as Thomas Pynchon , J. D. Salinger , De Onbekende Beeldhouwer (an anonymous sculptor whose exhibited work in Amsterdam attracted strong attention in

1635-470: A given Sybil attacker while preserving anonymity. Examples of such prevention techniques include SybilGuard , SybilLimit , the Advogato Trust Metric , SybilRank , and the sparsity based metric to identify Sybil clusters in a distributed P2P based reputation system. These techniques cannot prevent Sybil attacks entirely, and may be vulnerable to widespread small-scale Sybil attacks. In addition, it

1744-404: A group attempts to remain anonymous, for various reasons such as adding an element of mystique to themselves or their work, attempting to avoid what is known as the " cult of personality " or hero worship (in which the charisma , good looks, wealth or other unrelated or mildly related aspects of the people is the main reason for interest in their work, rather than the work itself) or to break into

1853-411: A hidden identity is assumed. Suppose that only Alice, Bob, and Carol have keys to a bank safe and that, one day, contents of the safe go missing (lock not violated). Without additional information, we cannot know for sure whether it was Alice, Bob or Carol who emptied the safe. Notably, each element in {Alice, Bob, Carol} could be the perpetrator with a probability of 1. However, as long as none of them

1962-592: A human, an object, a computer ), within a well-defined set (called the "anonymity set"), "anonymity" of that element refers to the property of that element of not being identifiable within this set. If it is not identifiable, then the element is said to be "anonymous". The word anonymous was borrowed into English around 1600 from the Late Latin word "anonymus", from Ancient Greek ᾰ̓νώνῠμος (anṓnumos, "without name"), from ᾰ̓ν- (an-, "un-") with ὄνῠμᾰ (ónuma), Aeolic and Doric dialectal form of ὄνομᾰ (ónoma, "name"). Sometimes

2071-476: A malicious code inside a particular HTML or web page. HTML files can carry payloads concealed as benign, inert data in order to defeat content filters . These payloads can be reconstructed on the other side of the filter. When a target user opens the HTML, the malicious code is activated; the web browser then "decodes" the script, which then unleashes the malware onto the target's device. Employee behavior can have

2180-652: A need to honor the remains of soldiers for whom identification is impossible. In many countries, such a memorial is named the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier . Most modern newspapers and magazines attribute their articles to individual editors, or to news agencies . An exception is the Markker weekly The Economist . All British newspapers run their leaders, or editorials , anonymously. The Economist fully adopts this policy, saying "Many hands write The Economist , but it speaks with

2289-493: A negative side of anonymity: The border between illegal and legal but offensive use is not very sharp, and varies depending on the law in each country. Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. A website nominally associated with the group describes it as "an internet gathering" with "a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives". The group became known for

SECTION 20

#1732868886161

2398-439: A new class of multi-vector, polymorphic cyber threats combine several types of attacks and change form to avoid cybersecurity controls as they spread. Multi-vector polymorphic attacks, as the name describes, are both multi-vectored and polymorphic. Firstly, they are a singular attack that involves multiple methods of attack. In this sense, they are “multi-vectored (i.e. the attack can use multiple means of propagation such as via

2507-413: A person may desire a long-term relationship (such as a reputation) with another party without necessarily disclosing personally identifying information to that party. In this case, it may be useful for the person to establish a unique identifier, called a pseudonym . Examples of pseudonyms are pen names , nicknames , credit card numbers , student numbers, bank account numbers, etc. A pseudonym enables

2616-453: A predetermined route through the anonymizing network. Each router sees the immediate previous router as the origin and the immediate next router as the destination. Thus, no router ever knows both the true origin and destination of the packet. This makes these services more secure than centralized anonymizing services (where a central point of knowledge exists). Sites such as Chatroulette , Omegle , and Tinder (which pair up random users for

2725-421: A prior negative experience during which they did not maintain an anonymous presence. Such experiences include stalking, releasing private information by an opposing school political group, or tricking an individual into traveling to another country for a job that did not exist. Participants in this study stated that they were able to avoid their previous problems by using false identification online. David Chaum

2834-507: A protection against legal prosecution. For example, when committing unlawful actions, many criminals attempt to avoid identification by the means of obscuring/covering their faces with scarves or masks , and wear gloves or other hand coverings in order to not leave any fingerprints . In organized crime , groups of criminals may collaborate on a certain project without revealing to each other their names or other personally identifiable information. The movie The Thomas Crown Affair depicted

2943-459: A purchase on a customer's behalf. When purchasing taboo goods and services, anonymity makes many potential consumers more comfortable with or more willing to engage in the transaction. Many loyalty programs use cards that personally identify the consumer engaging in each transaction (possibly for later solicitation, or for redemption or security purposes), or that act as a numerical pseudonym , for use in data mining . Anonymity can also be used as

3052-428: A remote identity based on a central authority which ensures a one-to-one correspondence between an identity and an entity and may even provide a reverse lookup. An identity may be validated either directly or indirectly. In direct validation the local entity queries the central authority to validate the remote identities. In indirect validation the local entity relies on already-accepted identities which in turn vouch for

3161-504: A separate machine filtering network traffic. Firewalls are common amongst machines that are permanently connected to the Internet. Some organizations are turning to big data platforms, such as Apache Hadoop , to extend data accessibility and machine learning to detect advanced persistent threats . Anonymity Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Some writers have argued that namelessness, though technically correct, does not capture what

3270-402: A series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. An image commonly associated with Anonymous is the "man without a head" represents leaderless organization and anonymity. Anonymity is perceived as a right by many, especially the anonymity in the internet communications. The partial right for anonymity

3379-632: A shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society." However, anonymous online speech is not without limits. It is clearly demonstrated in a case from 2008, one in which the defendant stated on a law-school discussion board that two women should be raped, an anonymous poster's comments may extend beyond free speech protections. In

Sybil attack - Misplaced Pages Continue

3488-601: A side channel can be challenging to detect due to its low amplitude when combined with other signals Social engineering , in the context of computer security, aims to convince a user to disclose secrets such as passwords, card numbers, etc. or grant physical access by, for example, impersonating a senior executive, bank, a contractor, or a customer. This generally involves exploiting people's trust, and relying on their cognitive biases . A common scam involves emails sent to accounting and finance department personnel, impersonating their CEO and urgently requesting some action. One of

3597-425: A soapbox for disruptive conversational behavior. The term " troll " is sometimes used to refer to those who engage in such disruptive behavior. Relative anonymity is often enjoyed in large crowds. Different people have different psychological and philosophical reactions to this development, especially as a modern phenomenon. This anonymity is an important factor in crowd psychology , and behavior in situations such as

3706-410: A specific city designation, is traditionally used by scholars in the humanities to refer to an ancient writer whose name is not known, or to a manuscript of their work. Many such writers have left valuable historical or literary records: an incomplete list of such Anonymi is at Anonymus . In the history of art , many painting workshops can be identified by their characteristic style and discussed and

3815-421: A specific individual (because other people could be using that customer's connection, especially if the customer is a public resource, such as a library), but it provides regional information and serves as powerful circumstantial evidence. Anonymizing services such as I2P and Tor address the issue of IP tracking. In short, they work by encrypting packets within multiple layers of encryption. The packet follows

3924-705: A standard computer user may be able to exploit a vulnerability in the system to gain access to restricted data; or even become root and have full unrestricted access to a system. The severity of attacks can range from attacks simply sending an unsolicited email to a ransomware attack on large amounts of data. Privilege escalation usually starts with social engineering techniques, often phishing . Privilege escalation can be separated into two strategies, horizontal and vertical privilege escalation: Any computational system affects its environment in some form. This effect it has on its environment can range from electromagnetic radiation, to residual effect on RAM cells which as

4033-789: A user's real identity – such as verification of an unidentified person's physical presence at a particular place and time as in a pseudonym party – to enforce a one-to-one correspondence between online identities and real-world users. Such proof of personhood approaches have been proposed as a basis for permissionless blockchains and cryptocurrencies in which each human participant would wield exactly one vote in consensus . A variety of approaches to proof of personhood have been proposed, some with deployed implementations, although many usability and security issues remain. A number of distributed protocols have been designed with Sybil attack protection in mind. SumUp and DSybil are Sybil-resistant algorithms for online content recommendation and voting. Whānau

4142-564: A very cheap and efficient way in extant realistic systems such as BitTorrent Mainline DHT. An entity on a peer-to-peer network is a piece of software that has access to local resources. An entity advertises itself on the peer-to-peer network by presenting an identity . More than one identity can correspond to a single entity. In other words, the mapping of identities to entities is many to one. Entities in peer-to-peer networks use multiple identities for purposes of redundancy, resource sharing, reliability and integrity. In peer-to-peer networks,

4251-485: A way of filtering network data between a host or a network and another network, such as the Internet . They can be implemented as software running on the machine, hooking into the network stack (or, in the case of most UNIX -based operating systems such as Linux , built into the operating system kernel ) to provide real-time filtering and blocking. Another implementation is a so-called physical firewall , which consists of

4360-447: A wrong password enough consecutive times to cause the victim's account to be locked, or they may overload the capabilities of a machine or network and block all users at once. While a network attack from a single IP address can be blocked by adding a new firewall rule, many forms of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are possible, where the attack comes from a large number of points. In this case, defending against these attacks

4469-485: Is a Sybil-resistant distributed hash table algorithm. I2P 's implementation of Kademlia also has provisions to mitigate Sybil attacks. Computer security Computer security (also cybersecurity , digital security , or information technology (IT) security ) is the protection of computer software , systems and networks from threats that can lead to unauthorized information disclosure, theft or damage to hardware , software , or data , as well as from

Sybil attack - Misplaced Pages Continue

4578-423: Is a potential risk, which is expected to grow as analytic techniques improve and computing power and text corpora grow. Authors may resist such identification by practicing adversarial stylometry . When it is necessary to refer to someone who is anonymous, it is typically necessary to create a type of pseudo-identification for that person. In literature, the most common way to state that the identity of an author

4687-502: Is both long and with important effect, as in the Letters of Junius or Voltaire 's Candide , or scurrilous as in pasquinades . In the tradition of anonymous British political criticism, The Federalist Papers were anonymously authored by three of America's Founding Fathers . Without the public discourse on the controversial contents of the U.S. Constitution , ratification would likely have taken much longer as individuals worked through

4796-457: Is called the Godfathers of anonymity and he has a claim to be one of the great visionaries of contemporary science. In the early 1980s, while a computer scientist at Berkeley, Chaum predicted the world in which computer networks would make mass surveillance a possibility. As Dr. Joss Wright explains: "David Chaum was very ahead of his time. He predicted in the early 1980s concerns that would arise on

4905-497: Is essentially done anonymously, using unidentifiable pseudonyms. However this has been widely discredited in a study by the University of Birmingham, which found that the number of people who use the internet anonymously is statistically the same as the number of people who use the internet to interact with friends or known contacts. While these usernames can take on an identity of their own, they are sometimes separated and anonymous from

5014-514: Is legally protected to various degrees in different jurisdictions. The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton , James Madison , and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius" and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from

5123-538: Is more centrally at stake in contexts of anonymity. The important idea here is that a person be non-identifiable, unreachable, or untrackable. Anonymity is seen as a technique, or a way of realizing, a certain other values, such as privacy , or liberty. Over the past few years, anonymity tools used on the dark web by criminals and malicious users have drastically altered the ability of law enforcement to use conventional surveillance techniques. An important example for anonymity being not only protected, but enforced by law

5232-471: Is much more difficult. Such attacks can originate from the zombie computers of a botnet or from a range of other possible techniques, including distributed reflective denial-of-service (DRDoS), where innocent systems are fooled into sending traffic to the victim. With such attacks, the amplification factor makes the attack easier for the attacker because they have to use little bandwidth themselves. To understand why attackers may carry out these attacks, see

5341-494: Is no way to trace their source and it can be disseminated widely. "Cyberbullying, as opposed to general bullying, is still a widely-debated area of Internet freedom in several states. Though Internet anonymity can provide a harmful environment through which people can hurt others, anonymity can allow for a much safer and relaxed internet experience. In a study conducted at Carnegie Mellon University, 15 out of 44 participants stated that they choose to be anonymous online because of

5450-508: Is not a perfect subset of information security , therefore does not completely align into the security convergence schema. A vulnerability refers to a flaw in the structure, execution, functioning, or internal oversight of a computer or system that compromises its security. Most of the vulnerabilities that have been discovered are documented in the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database. An exploitable vulnerability

5559-505: Is not clear whether real-world online social networks will satisfy the trust or connectivity assumptions that these algorithms assume. Alternatively, imposing economic costs as artificial barriers to entry may be used to make Sybil attacks more expensive. Proof of work , for example, requires a user to prove that they expended a certain amount of computational effort to solve a cryptographic puzzle. In Bitcoin and related permissionless cryptocurrencies , miners compete to append blocks to

SECTION 50

#1732868886161

5668-439: Is one for which at least one working attack or exploit exists. Actors maliciously seeking vulnerabilities are known as threats . Vulnerabilities can be researched, reverse-engineered, hunted, or exploited using automated tools or customized scripts. Various people or parties are vulnerable to cyber attacks; however, different groups are likely to experience different types of attacks more than others. In April 2023,

5777-494: Is protected by standard security measures, these may be bypassed by booting another operating system or tool from a CD-ROM or other bootable media. Disk encryption and the Trusted Platform Module standard are designed to prevent these attacks. Direct service attackers are related in concept to direct memory attacks which allow an attacker to gain direct access to a computer's memory. The attacks "take advantage of

5886-425: Is spear-phishing which leverages personal or organization-specific details to make the attacker appear like a trusted source. Spear-phishing attacks target specific individuals, rather than the broad net cast by phishing attempts. Privilege escalation describes a situation where an attacker with some level of restricted access is able to, without authorization, elevate their privileges or access level. For example,

5995-482: Is the 2017–2021 attack run by threat actor KAX17. This entity controlled over 900 malicious servers, primarily middle points, in an attempt to deanonymize Tor users. Known approaches to Sybil attack prevention include identity validation, social trust graph algorithms, economic costs, personhood validation, and application -specific defenses. Validation techniques can be used to prevent Sybil attacks and dismiss masquerading hostile entities. A local entity may accept

6104-476: Is the vote in free elections. In many other situations (like conversation between strangers, buying some product or service in a shop), anonymity is traditionally accepted as natural. There are also various situations in which a person might choose to withhold their identity. Acts of charity have been performed anonymously when benefactors do not wish to be acknowledged. A person who feels threatened might attempt to mitigate that threat through anonymity. A witness to

6213-583: Is unknown is to refer to them as simply "Anonymous". This is usually the case with older texts in which the author is long dead and unable to claim authorship of a work. When the work claims to be that of some famous author the pseudonymous author is identified as "Pseudo-", as in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite , an author claiming—and long believed—to be Dionysius the Areopagite , an early Christian convert. Anonymus , in its Latin spelling, generally with

6322-703: The First Amendment. The pressure on anonymous communication has grown substantially after the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the subsequent new political climate. Although it is still difficult to oversee their exact implications, measures such as the US Patriot Act , the European Cybercrime Convention and the European Union rules on data retention are only few of

6431-642: The United Kingdom Department for Science, Innovation & Technology released a report on cyber attacks over the last 12 months. They surveyed 2,263 UK businesses, 1,174 UK registered charities, and 554 education institutions. The research found that "32% of businesses and 24% of charities overall recall any breaches or attacks from the last 12 months." These figures were much higher for "medium businesses (59%), large businesses (69%), and high-income charities with £500,000 or more in annual income (56%)." Yet, although medium or large businesses are more often

6540-436: The "practice of designing computer systems to achieve security goals." These goals have overlap with the principles of "security by design" explored above, including to "make initial compromise of the system difficult," and to "limit the impact of any compromise." In practice, the role of a security architect would be to ensure the structure of a system reinforces the security of the system, and that new changes are safe and meet

6649-407: The 'attacker motivation' section. A direct-access attack is when an unauthorized user (an attacker) gains physical access to a computer, most likely to directly copy data from it or steal information. Attackers may also compromise security by making operating system modifications, installing software worms , keyloggers , covert listening devices or using wireless microphones. Even when the system

SECTION 60

#1732868886161

6758-469: The 1980s and 1990s ), and by DJ duo Daft Punk (1993-2021). For street artist Banksy , "anonymity is vital to him because graffiti is illegal". Anonymity has been used in music by avant-garde ensemble The Residents , Jandek (until 2004), costumed comedy rock band The Radioactive Chicken Heads , and DJs Deadmau5 (1998–present) and Marshmello (2015–present). This is frequently applied in fiction, from The Lone Ranger , Superman , and Batman , where

6867-487: The European Union. Japan was on 4 October 2012 the first to ratify the treaty. It creates an international regime for imposing civil and criminal penalties on Internet counterfeiting and copyright infringement. Although ACTA is intentionally vague, leaving signatories to draw precise rules themselves, critics say it could mean innocent travellers having their laptops searched for unlicensed music, or being jailed for carrying

6976-427: The Internet is accessed, it is accessed from a particular IP address, and the data traffic patterns to and from IP addresses can be intercepted, monitored, and analysed, even if the content of that traffic is encrypted. This address can be mapped to a particular Internet Service Provider (ISP), and this ISP can then provide information about what customer that IP address was leased to. This does not necessarily implicate

7085-463: The U.S. states have "stop and identify" statutes that require persons detained to self-identify when requested by a law enforcement officer, when the person is reasonably suspected of committing a crime. The term "anonymous message" typically refers to a message that does not reveal its sender. In many countries, anonymous letters are protected by law and must be delivered as regular letters. In mathematics , in reference to an arbitrary element (e.g.,

7194-528: The United States, disclosure of identity is required to be able to vote , though the secret ballot prevents disclosure of individual voting patterns. In airports in most countries, passengers are not allowed to board flights unless they have identified themselves to airline or transportation security personnel, typically in the form of the presentation of an identification card . On the other hand, some policies and procedures require anonymity. Stylometric identification of anonymous authors by writing style

7303-508: The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report 2020, which examined 3,950 security breaches, discovered 30% of cybersecurity incidents involved internal actors within a company. Research shows information security culture needs to be improved continuously. In "Information Security Culture from Analysis to Change", authors commented, "It's a never-ending process, a cycle of evaluation and change or maintenance." To manage

7412-558: The Web, email and applications." However, they are also multi-staged, meaning that “they can infiltrate networks and move laterally inside the network.” The attacks can be polymorphic, meaning that the cyberattacks used such as viruses, worms or trojans “constantly change (“morph”) making it nearly impossible to detect them using signature-based defences.” Phishing is the attempt of acquiring sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details directly from users by deceiving

7521-480: The actual author. According to the University of Stockholm this is creating more freedom of expression, and less accountability. Misplaced Pages is collaboratively written mostly by authors using either unidentifiable pseudonyms or IP address identifiers, although many Misplaced Pages editors use their real names instead of pseudonyms. However, the Internet was not designed for anonymity: IP addresses serve as virtual mailing addresses, which means that any time any resource on

7630-455: The appropriateness of anonymous organizational communication varies depending on the use, with organizational surveys or assessments typically perceived as highly appropriate and firing perceived as highly inappropriate. Anonymity use and appropriateness have also been found to be significantly related to the quality of relationships with key others at work. With few perceived negative consequences, anonymous or semi-anonymous forums often provide

7739-481: The benefactor both from the beneficiary and from everyone else. Anonymous charity has long been a widespread and durable moral precept of many ethical and religious systems, as well as being in practice a widespread human activity. A benefactor may not wish to establish any relationship with the beneficiary, particularly if the beneficiary is perceived as being unsavory. Benefactors may not wish to identify themselves as capable of giving. A benefactor may wish to improve

7848-505: The best form of encryption possible for wireless networks is best practice, as well as using HTTPS instead of an unencrypted HTTP . Programs such as Carnivore and NarusInSight have been used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and NSA to eavesdrop on the systems of internet service providers . Even machines that operate as a closed system (i.e., with no contact with the outside world) can be eavesdropped upon by monitoring

7957-416: The case of Google+, this requirement led to a controversy known as the nymwars . The prevalence of cyberbullying is often attributed to relative Internet anonymity, due to the fact that potential offenders are able to mask their identities and prevent themselves from being caught. A principal in a high school stated that comments made on these anonymous site are "especially vicious and hurtful since there

8066-542: The case, a Connecticut federal court must apply a standard to decide whether the poster's identity should be revealed. There are several tests, however, that the court could apply when considering this issue. The right to internet anonymity is also covered by European legislation that recognizes the fundamental right to data protection , freedom of expression , freedom of impression. The European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights recognizes in Article. 8 (Title II: "Freedoms")

8175-421: The disruption or misdirection of the services they provide. The significance of the field stems from the expanded reliance on computer systems , the Internet , and wireless network standards . Its importance is further amplified by the growth of smart devices , including smartphones , televisions , and the various devices that constitute the Internet of things (IoT). Cybersecurity has emerged as one of

8284-416: The entire computer." Backdoors can be very hard to detect and are usually discovered by someone who has access to the application source code or intimate knowledge of the operating system of the computer. Denial-of-service attacks (DoS) are designed to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Attackers can deny service to individual victims, such as by deliberately entering

8393-465: The faint electromagnetic transmissions generated by the hardware. TEMPEST is a specification by the NSA referring to these attacks. Malicious software ( malware ) is any software code or computer program "intentionally written to harm a computer system or its users." Once present on a computer, it can leak sensitive details such as personal information, business information and passwords, can give control of

8502-457: The following sections: Security by design, or alternately secure by design, means that the software has been designed from the ground up to be secure. In this case, security is considered a main feature. The UK government's National Cyber Security Centre separates secure cyber design principles into five sections: These design principles of security by design can include some of the following techniques: Security architecture can be defined as

8611-511: The identity is used as an abstraction so that a remote entity can be aware of identities without necessarily knowing the correspondence of identities to local entities. By default, each distinct identity is usually assumed to correspond to a distinct local entity. In reality, many identities may correspond to the same local entity. An adversary may present multiple identities to a peer-to-peer network in order to appear and function as multiple distinct nodes. The adversary may thus be able to acquire

8720-481: The immediate circle of Sandro Botticelli . In legal cases, a popularly accepted name to use when it is determined that an individual needs to maintain anonymity is " John Doe ". This name is often modified to "Jane Doe" when the anonymity-seeker is female. The same names are also commonly used when the identification of a dead person is not known. The semi-acronym Unsub is used as law enforcement slang for "Unknown Subject of an Investigation". The military often feels

8829-490: The information security culture, five steps should be taken: pre-evaluation, strategic planning, operative planning, implementation, and post-evaluation. In computer security, a countermeasure is an action, device, procedure or technique that reduces a threat, a vulnerability, or an attack by eliminating or preventing it, by minimizing the harm it can cause, or by discovering and reporting it so that corrective action can be taken. Some common countermeasures are listed in

8938-835: The internet 15 or 20 years later." There are some people though that consider anonymity in internet being a danger for our society as a whole. David Davenport, an assistant professor in the Computer Engineering Department of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, considers that by allowing anonymous Net communication, the fabric of our society is at risk. "Accountability requires those responsible for any misconduct be identified and brought to justice. However, if people remain anonymous, by definition, they cannot be identified, making it impossible to hold them accountable." he says. As A. Michael Froomkin says: "The regulation of anonymous and pseudonymous communications promises to be one of

9047-453: The issues. The United States Declaration of Independence , however, was not anonymous. If it had been unsigned, it might well have been less effective. John Perry Barlow , Joichi Ito , and other U.S. bloggers express a very strong support for anonymous editing as one of the basic requirements of open politics as conducted on the Internet. Anonymity is directly related to the concept of obscurantism or pseudonymity , where an artist or

9156-851: The latter is used to refer to both (in general, a situation where the legal identity of the person is disguised). Anonymity may reduce the accountability one perceives to have for their actions, and removes the impact these actions might otherwise have on their reputation. This can have dramatic effects, both useful and harmful to various parties involved. Thus, it may be used for psychological tactics involving any respective party to purport or support or discredit any sort of activity or belief. In conversational settings, anonymity may allow people to reveal personal history and feelings without fear of later embarrassment. Electronic conversational media can provide physical isolation, in addition to anonymity. This prevents physical retaliation for remarks, and prevents negative or taboo behavior or discussion from tarnishing

9265-449: The life-threatening risk of spoofing in the healthcare industry. Tampering describes a malicious modification or alteration of data. It is an intentional but unauthorized act resulting in the modification of a system, components of systems, its intended behavior, or data. So-called Evil Maid attacks and security services planting of surveillance capability into routers are examples. HTML smuggling allows an attacker to "smuggle"

9374-515: The main techniques of social engineering are phishing attacks. In early 2016, the FBI reported that such business email compromise (BEC) scams had cost US businesses more than $ 2 billion in about two years. In May 2016, the Milwaukee Bucks NBA team was the victim of this type of cyber scam with a perpetrator impersonating the team's president Peter Feigin , resulting in the handover of all

9483-543: The most important and contentious Internet-related issues of the next decade". Anonymity and pseudonymity can be used for good and bad purposes. And anonymity can in many cases be desirable for one person and not desirable for another person. A company may, for example, not like an employee to divulge information about improper practices within the company, but society as a whole may find it important that such improper practices are publicly exposed. Good purposes of anonymity and pseudonymity: There has always, however, also been

9592-556: The most significant new challenges facing the contemporary world, due to both the complexity of information systems and the societies they support. Security is particularly crucial for systems that govern large-scale systems with far-reaching physical effects, such as power distribution , elections , and finance . Although many aspects of computer security involve digital security, such as electronic passwords and encryption , physical security measures such as metal locks are still used to prevent unauthorized tampering. IT security

9701-473: The nature of backdoors, they are of greater concern to companies and databases as opposed to individuals. Backdoors may be added by an authorized party to allow some legitimate access or by an attacker for malicious reasons. Criminals often use malware to install backdoors, giving them remote administrative access to a system. Once they have access, cybercriminals can "modify files, steal personal information, install unwanted software, and even take control of

9810-560: The openness of the Internet. These strategies mostly include phishing , ransomware , water holing and scanning. To secure a computer system, it is important to understand the attacks that can be made against it, and these threats can typically be classified into one of the following categories: A backdoor in a computer system, a cryptosystem , or an algorithm is any secret method of bypassing normal authentication or security controls. These weaknesses may exist for many reasons, including original design or poor configuration. Due to

9919-407: The other party to link different messages from the same person and, thereby, to establish a long-term relationship. Pseudonyms are widely used in social networks and other virtual communication, although recently some important service providers like Google try to discourage pseudonymity. Someone using a pseudonym would be strictly considered to be using "pseudonymity" not "anonymity", but sometimes

10028-457: The privacy of consumers. Some consumers prefer to use cash when buying everyday goods (like groceries or tools), to prevent sellers from aggregating information or soliciting them in the future. Credit cards are linked to a person's name, and can be used to discover other information, such as postal address, phone number, etc. The ecash system was developed to allow secure anonymous transactions. Another example would be Enymity, which actually makes

10137-428: The real website. Preying on a victim's trust, phishing can be classified as a form of social engineering . Attackers can use creative ways to gain access to real accounts. A common scam is for attackers to send fake electronic invoices to individuals showing that they recently purchased music, apps, or others, and instructing them to click on a link if the purchases were not authorized. A more strategic type of phishing

10246-449: The reputation of the speaker. This can be beneficial when discussing very private matters, or taboo subjects or expressing views or revealing facts that may put someone in physical, financial, or legal danger (such as illegal activity, or unpopular, or outlawed political views). In work settings, the three most common forms of anonymous communication are traditional suggestion boxes, written feedback, and Caller ID blocking. Additionally,

10355-602: The required identity proxy: e.g., those without their own mobile phone or credit card, or users located behind carrier-grade network address translation who share their IP addresses with many others. Identity-based validation techniques generally provide accountability at the expense of anonymity , which can be an undesirable tradeoff especially in online forums that wish to permit censorship -free information exchange and open discussion of sensitive topics. A validation authority can attempt to preserve users' anonymity by refusing to perform reverse lookups, but this approach makes

10464-476: The right foundation to systematically address business, IT and security concerns in an organization. A state of computer security is the conceptual ideal, attained by the use of three processes: threat prevention, detection, and response. These processes are based on various policies and system components, which include the following: Today, computer security consists mainly of preventive measures, like firewalls or an exit procedure . A firewall can be defined as

10573-412: The right of everyone to protection of personal data concerning him. The right to privacy is now essentially the individual's right to have and to maintain control over information about him. One of the most controversial international legal acts, regarding this subject is Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) . As of February 2015, the treaty was signed -but not all ratified- by 31 states as well as

10682-432: The security requirements of the organization. Similarly, Techopedia defines security architecture as "a unified security design that addresses the necessities and potential risks involved in a certain scenario or environment. It also specifies when and where to apply security controls. The design process is generally reproducible." The key attributes of security architecture are: Practicing security architecture provides

10791-449: The signs that the exercise of the right to the anonymous exchange of information is under substantial pressure. An above-mentioned 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads: "(...) protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is

10900-448: The software at all. The attacker can insert the software onto a compromised device, perhaps by direct insertion or perhaps by a virus or other malware, and then come back some time later to retrieve any data that is found or trigger the software to send the data at some determined time." Using a virtual private network (VPN), which encrypts data between two points, is one of the most common forms of protection against eavesdropping. Using

11009-672: The system to the attacker, and can corrupt or delete data permanently. Another type of malware is ransomware , which is when "malware installs itself onto a victim's machine, encrypts their files, and then turns around and demands a ransom (usually in Bitcoin ) to return that data to the user." Types of malware include some of the following: Man-in-the-middle attacks (MITM) involve a malicious attacker trying to intercept, surveil or modify communications between two parties by spoofing one or both party's identities and injecting themselves in-between. Types of MITM attacks include: Surfacing in 2017,

11118-428: The team's employees' 2015 W-2 tax forms. Spoofing is an act of pretending to be a valid entity through the falsification of data (such as an IP address or username), in order to gain access to information or resources that one is otherwise unauthorized to obtain. Spoofing is closely related to phishing . There are several types of spoofing, including: In 2018, the cybersecurity firm Trellix published research on

11227-427: The users. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing , instant messaging , text message , or on a phone call. They often direct users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. The fake website often asks for personal information, such as login details and passwords. This information can then be used to gain access to the individual's real account on

11336-430: The validation authority a prime target for attack. Protocols using threshold cryptography can potentially distribute the role of such a validation authority among multiple servers, protecting users' anonymity even if one or a limited number of validation servers is compromised. Sybil prevention techniques based on the connectivity characteristics of social graphs can also limit the extent of damage that can be caused by

11445-640: The validity of the remote identity in question. Practical network applications and services often use a variety of identity proxies to achieve limited Sybil attack resistance, such as telephone number verification , credit card verification, or even based on the IP address of a client. These methods have the limitations that it is usually possible to obtain multiple such identity proxies at some cost – or even to obtain many at low cost through techniques such as SMS spoofing or IP address spoofing . Use of such identity proxies can also exclude those without ready access to

11554-616: The victims, since larger companies have generally improved their security over the last decade, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) have also become increasingly vulnerable as they often "do not have advanced tools to defend the business." SMBs are most likely to be affected by malware, ransomware, phishing, man-in-the-middle attacks , and Denial-of Service (DoS) Attacks. Normal internet users are most likely to be affected by untargeted cyberattacks. These are where attackers indiscriminately target as many devices, services, or users as possible. They do this using techniques that take advantage of

11663-575: The workshop's output set in chronological order. Sometimes archival research later identifies the name, as when the "Master of Flémalle"—defined by three paintings in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt — was identified as Robert Campin . The 20th-century art historian Bernard Berenson methodically identified numerous early Renaissance Florentine and Sienese workshops under such sobriquets as "Amico di Sandro" for an anonymous painter in

11772-425: The world, as long as no one knows who did it, out of modesty, wishing to avoid publicity. Another reason for anonymous charity is a benefactor who does not want a charitable organization to pursue them for more donations, sometimes aggressively. Attempts at anonymity are not always met with support from society. Anonymity sometimes clashes with the policies and procedures of governments or private organizations. In

11881-467: Was launched against the Tor anonymity network for several months in 2014. There are other examples of Sybil attacks run against Tor network users. This includes the 2020 Bitcoin address rewrite attacks. The attacker controlled a quarter of all Tor exit relays and employed SSL stripping to downgrade secure connections and divert funds to the wallet of the threat actor known as BTCMITM20. Another notable example

#160839