Saturday, November 06, 2004
On the Nature of science and
cultural Polemics à
On the discussion of data
regularity à
On the Stephenson Cyber Attack
Taxonomy à
Theory of Cyber
Attack Mechanics
Informal observations
Fundamental Observation
Any sufficiently large, complicated unbounded network such as the public Internet may be described as fractal in nature. Cyber attacks, however, introduce ambiguities. The imposition of a cyber attack upon a large, complicated network disturbs the fractal nature of that network. The interaction between cyber attack space and fractal network space, therefore, results in attack markers that anticipate the existence of a cyber attack. Because attack markers are complex, they may result in halting conditions within the network. These halting conditions can be represented formally and the source of the cyber attack may be deduced.
Observational Corollary.
A bounded network may be represented as a finite state machine. In a bounded network an attack may be characterized as being an event contrary to the desired operating state space of the network.
Attack markers within bounded networks are the result of a change in state of one or more nodes of the finite state machine and may lead to a halting condition of those nodes. These halting conditions can be represented formally and the source of the cyber attack may be deduced.
Questions
Q1: Why does a large, complicated unbounded network lean itself to description as a fractal?
Q2: What is the definition of “unbounded”, and “complicated”?
Q3: What is the definition of “fractal”?
Q4: What is the definition of the “desired operating state space”?
Motivations
The informal observation lays out an ontological claim about the nature of the Internet. The claim applies to any complicated or complex system of interactions. The consequences of our work to other systems will be addressed only in a peripheral fashion.
The ontological claim exposes the nature of an attack as a disturbance of what is otherwise predictable in the large, i.e. the prediction that propagation mechanisms create self similarity within the complicated or complex system of interactions.
The purpose of this book is that create absolutely as much precise formalism as is possible based on the study of the informal observation.