Module 9 Summary
Module 9 Summary
Module 9 Summary
SUMMARY
Cybersecurity originated from a research project in 1969 when UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock
sent the first electronic message to Stanford Research Institute programmer Bill Duvall. The message
was "login," which crashed after typing "lo." In the 1970s, Robert Thomas created the first computer
worm, Creeper, which allowed a program to move across a network, leaving a trail of signs. This
changed the way we communicate with one another.
Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email, created the first computer worm, Reaper, which became the
first antivirus software. As technology developed, cyber-crimes became more powerful, with
vulnerabilities becoming more accessible. In 1986, Russians used cyber power as a weapon, while
German hacker Marcus Hess hacked into military computers. In 1988, American computer scientist
Robert Morris created the Moris worm, the first famous network virus, which could infect multiple
computers and slow them down. Morris was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, leading
to the creation of the Computer Emergency Response Team. Today, viruses are deadlier, more invasive,
and harder to control, proving the necessity of cybersecurity for corporations and small businesses.
The Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) triad is a security model that guides
information security policies within an organization or company. It is also known as the AIC (Availability,
Integrity, and Confidentiality) triad to avoid confusion with the Central Intelligence Agency. The three
most crucial components of security are confidentiality, access control, authentication, authorization,
physical security, integrity, backups, checksums, and data correcting codes.
Confidentiality involves protecting data by providing access for those who are allowed to see it
while disallowing others from learning about its content. Tools for confidentiality include encryption,
which transforms information into unreadable cipher text using a secret key, access control,
authentication, authorization, physical security, backups, checksums, data correcting codes, availability,
and computational redundancies.
Access control defines rules and policies for limiting access to systems, resources, or information,
requiring users to present credentials before accessing them. Authentication ensures and confirms a
user's identity or role, while authorization determines a person or system's access to resources based on
an access control policy. Physical security protects IT assets from damage and threats like theft,
vandalism, fire, and natural disasters. Integrity ensures that data is real, accurate, and safeguarded from
unauthorized modification. Tools for integrity include backups, checksums, data correcting codes,
availability, and physical safeguards.
Lastly, availability guarantees reliable and constant access to sensitive data by authorized people.
Physical safeguards keep information available even in the event of physical challenges, while
computational redundancies protect computers and storage devices as fallbacks in case of failures.
The UK internet industry and government have developed a series of Guiding Principles to improve
online security for ISPs' customers and limit the rise in cyber-attacks. These principles encompass the
protection of essential information, processes, and systems connected or stored online, with a broad
view across people, technical, and physical domains. They recognize that ISPs, internet users, and the UK
Government all have a role in minimizing and mitigating cyber threats inherent in using the internet.
Some essential cybersecurity principles include the Economy of Mechanism, Fail-safe defaults, Least
Privilege, Open Design, Complete Mediation, Separation of Privilege, Least Common Mechanism,
Psychological Acceptability, Work Factor, and Compromise Recording. The Economy of Mechanism
principle simplifies the design and implementation of security mechanisms, reducing errors and
minimizing the need for complex checks and testing.
Fail-safe defaults restrict how privileges are initialized when a subject or object is created, while
least privilege allows users to only have privileges necessary for their tasks. Open Design ensures that
the security of a mechanism does not depend on its design or implementation, suggesting that
complexity does not add security.
Complete Mediation restricts caching of information, ensuring access to every object must be
checked for compliance with a protection scheme. Separation of Privilege grants access permission
based on more than one condition being satisfied, while Least Common Mechanism minimizes
mechanisms allowing resources shared by multiple users.
Psychological acceptability emphasizes that a security mechanism should not make resources more
complicated to access if the security mechanisms were not present. Work Factor compares the cost of
circumventing a security mechanism with the resources of a potential attacker when designing a security
scheme.