Friday, October 22, 2004
[1] ß Discussion between Peter Stephenson and Paul Prueitt
White Paper on Incident Information Orb Architecture (IIOA) à
BCNGroup Colleagues,
Re: The two sides to the Anticipatory Web, and the Stephenson Attack Taxonomy
Prueitt has suggested that two sides will develop in the Anticipatory Web. One is the human/social side and the other is the computer computation side. Each side has an endophysics and an exophysics.
He has said that any complete model of the cyber attack world one will have a “simple, but very complicated, computer side endophysics and a complex social exophysics.
I agree that each side has an endophysics and an exophysics. I suggest that it also has an endo-taxonomy and an exo-taxonomy.
Without going into the theory as I am developing a more complete exposition later today, I suggest that the exo-taxonomy describes the "view" from outside the organism (i.e., a target computing system) and the endo-taxonomy describes the view from inside.
When I used the SLIP browser to examine vulnerabilities I looked from 2 perspectives. My first conjecture placed the vulnerability as the relation between various ports. My second conjecture placed the port as the relation. We agreed that the second was more correct.
However, I was a bit troubled by the fact that, depending upon your perspective, both conjectures seemed defensible. Now I think that I understand why.
The conjecture that places the vulnerability as the relation will result in an exo-taxonomy - i.e., is represents an exophysics. The second conjecture, the one that places the port as the relation, will result in an endo-taxonomy - i.e., it represents an endophysics.
I also theorize that, in the case of Cyber Attack Mechanics, the exophysics demonstrates chaotic behavior while the endophysics can be expressed easily as an simple structural ontology, such as the one Adi discovered over the Arabic language.
Peter (Stephenson)