Updated PhD Thesis Title

Yesterday I posted Latest PhD Thesis Title and Abstract. One of my colleagues Ben Buchanan subsequently contacted me via Twitter and we exchanged a few messages. He prompted me to think about the title.

Later I ruminated on the title of a recent book by my advisor, Dr. Thomas Rid. He wrote Cyber War Will Not Take Place. One of the best parts of the book is the title. In six words you get his argument as succinctly as possible. (It could be five words if you pushed "cyber" and "war" together, but the thought alone makes me cringe, in the age of cyber-everything.)

I wondered if I could transform my latest attempt at a thesis title into something that captured my argument in a succinct form.

I thought about the obsession of the majority of the information security community on the tool and tactics level of war. Too many technicians think about security as a single-exchange contest between an attacker and a defender, like a duel.

That reminded me of a problem I have with Carl von Clausewitz's definition of war.

We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.

- On War, Chapter 1

Clausewitz continues by mentioning "the countless number of duels which make up a war," and then makes his famous statement that "War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfill our will." However, I've never liked the tactically-minded idea that war is a "duel."

This concept, plus the goal to deliver a compact argument, inspired me to revise my thesis title and subtitle to the following:

Campaigns, Not Duels: The Operational Art of Cyber Intrusions

In the first three words I deliver my argument, and in the subtitle I provide context by including my key perspective ("operational art"), environment ("cyber," yes, a little part of me is dying, but it's a keyword), and "intrusions."

When I publish the thesis as a book in 2018, I hope to use the same words in the book title.

Comments

Allen Baranov said…
I'm not sure if I am missing your point entirely but you may want to check this out:

http://risky.biz/clarke-interview

If it is totally not what you are busy with, at least it is very interesting.

Allen
9:10 PM
Larm Stockholm said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
8:20 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technical or pol
Read more