​​JOUR 404/604: Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Surveillance Society--U. OF NEVADA, RENO, FALL 2023

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UNR

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James L’Angelle 

University of Nevada, Reno, 

Fall 2023 Dr. Paromita Pain, 

Professor 29 August 2023 

 Cybersecurity and the Human Factor 

      At the beginning of Warriors of the Net, the narrator states; 

      “For the first time in history, people and machinery are working together.” The short documentary then forgets people altogether and presents a detailed 13 minute journey through cyberspace; how information is packaged and transmitted, transferred, from its origin to its recipient. Most of the video is straightforward, with some impressive graphics denoting the various packets, materials, pathways, firewalls, and final destinations through the network, at one time referred to as “the world wide web.” What complicates it is when people become part of the ideal universe beyond the real world of trees, oceans, fire and earth.       

      Communications have come a long way since the aborigines used smoke signals to send packets of information to their kin on the other side of the mountain; but the desire to intercept those signals, or otherwise degrade the message to deceive, subvert or benefit from that was always there, and still is. Using code only confused the intruder, but didn’t stop the system from being somehow manipulated or, in a word, “jammed,” to prevent its receiver from getting the message, or getting a false one in place of the intended one. By the time the internet came along, in all of its advanced stages stemming from the crudest limited early forms, information age jargon replaced “anti-jamming” with “cybersecurity,” but the principle and purpose were still the same. 

      But what about those early forms? Where and when were the first serious attempts made, some very successful, to bring the network down and why do they reflect on today’s more advanced secure systems that seem to be just as vulnerable as the simple cyberspace smoke signals the aborigines used? Enter the “Human Factor.” 

      Ironically enough, Warriors of the Net opens with a “Click Here” button featured on the page with a heading “Untitled Document” which is apparently on a Netscape browser window. To get a better understanding of why websites and systems are prime targets of intrusion and disruption, it is related not just to the skill of the intruder but the vulnerability of the system. As browser windows go, Netscape was paleolithic, the film itself was released in 1999. Of course, although it may not be important to point out that the internet has made quantum leaps since then, so has the ability of the intruder to gain unauthorized access to it, due primarily to no one-to-one correspondence between introduction of new systems and associated foolproof cybersecurity. 

      Internet developers, website designers, server administrators placed security way behind profit. One window became obsolete nearly as fast as it was released, corporate greed invited the enterprising cybercriminal to break into bank accounts, private emails and sensitive government systems. Along came social media. The petty illegal cyberintruder sitting around in his underwear on a sofa in middle America was replaced by sophisticated quasi-legal metropolitan high-rise white-collar advertising vultures out to scrape every piece of information from user accounts, to create a targeted sales environment out to bombard the customer with everything unnecessary but vital for keeping up with the Kardashians. Nowhere in this environment was security given a primary role. Along came the politicians. Campaign organizers borrowed the advertisers’ technique to generate voter profiles, even as social media sites run by overnight teenage drop-out billionaires sold information up front to the candidates’ committees. 

      Ironic again was the sudden concern for “privacy” on the internet. Facing new hard-won legislation and stiff fines, reluctant corporations that monopolized the internet and its means of transmission came up with half-apologies like “cookies” notifications to enable advertisers and politicians to legally scrape personal data. Curiously enough, the petty cybercriminal who broke into a network for amusement or perhaps for ransom became a living non-sequitur to the corporate advertiser-political cabal. 

      The Times-Herald of Port Huron, Michigan published on 18 February 1995 an Associated Press story titled: “Judge keeps hacker in jail.” The cyberintruder was Kevin D. Mitnick, perhaps the forerunner of all the wannabes who followed since Netscape premiered in the mid 1990s. The article noted: 

      “The man described as the nation’s most wanted computer infiltrator used commandeered cellular phone circuits to raid corporate computer systems and steal information worth more than $1 million, including at least 20,000 credit card numbers.” Mitnick served several years for his crimes. 

He died in July.

References: 

Warriors of the Net, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307651/ 

Williams, Nate, The 5 Reasons Netscape Failed, 06 August 2023, 

 Kevin Mitnick, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick

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UNR

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PITHECANTHROPUS -- Missing Link Expeditions to Java -- MME. M. LENORA SELENKA 1906-17

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'APE MAN'S' BONES HUNTED IN JAVA BY RICH WIDOW 

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On The Track of Primitive Man And His Ancestor

     According to a dispatch received from Holland, the Dutch Government has granted special facilities for an expedition to Java under the leadership of Mme. Selenka, widow of the famous scientist, Dr. Emil Selenka, who will continue the researches of Dr. Dubois for the elusive Pithecanthropos Erectus. The Berlin Academy of Science has voted the money necessary for the hunt, and there seems to be good reason to expect that Mme. Selenka, who has already completed some effective work of an experimental character among the anthropoid apes of Borneo, will bring the scientific world a long step nearer to the discovery that Huxley so confidently predicted. 

     The Island of Java is the scene selected for the projected excavations, not alone n account of the important discovery made twelve years ago, but because Java is believed to be at the centre of a submerged continent on which the first act of the human drama was supposed to have been opened.

(The New York Times, 23 December 1906, Page 2.)

(Mme. Selenka profile sketch: The Kansas City Star, 06 October 1904, Page 7.)

HUNT FOR MISSING LINK 

Woman To Head Expedition To Java Next Year. 

      London, Dec. 9.—The Dutch Government has granted special facilities for an expedition to Java with the object of continuing the researches of Dr. Dubois for the Missing Link. The expedition will be under the leadership of Mme. Selenka, widow of the great scholar, Dr. Emil Selenka. 

      Dr. Dubois discovered on the banks of the Solo river in Java the remains of a creature, which he named Pithecanthropus Erectus, and which he maintained was the true missing link between man and the ape. The discovery excited much controversy, Professor Virchow especially opposing the theory of Dr. Dubois. 

     The Berlin Academy of Science has, however, voted a special subsidy to Mme. Selenka, who will leave Europe next year and will conduct extensive excavations on the spot where the remains were found. Mme. Selenka has had much previous experience of this kind. Some years ago she accompanied her husband to the interior of Borneo and did conspicuous experimental work with anthropoid apes. (The Baltimore Sun, 10 Dec 1906, Mon · Page 10)

'APE MAN'S' BONES HUNTED IN JAVA BY RICH WIDOW 

     New York, Jan. 6. — Mme. Lenore Selenka, widow of Prof. Emil Selenka of Munich, Germany, who has spent the greater part of her life in gathering the bones of the pithecanthropus, or ape man, more popularly known as the "missing link," is one of the many scientists now gathered in this city for the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

     Mme. Selenka arrived here yesterday, interrupting a trip she is making to Trinit, Java after more of the bones of the pithecanthropus, and to the village of Orotava, Teneriffe, where she has established a large station for the study of the psychology of the ape. 

     Mme. Selenka has financed innumerable expeditions which have gone digging for the bones of the "missing link" and has headed more than one of these herself. She is firmly convinced that additional bones will be found in time and that science will some day have the opportunity of studying the pithecanthropus in its entirety instead of in sections.

     Mme. Selenka spoke in high terms yesterday of the aid the Dutch government had given her in her work in Java. She said that prisoners had been turned over to her for the work of excavation, adding. --

    "I studied my workers, too, and I will tell you something that may interest you. Murderers make the best diggers among criminals and thieves come next." (The Pittsburgh Press, 07 January 1917, Page 2.)

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 30 December 1916, Page 3.

     In 1907 Mme. Selenka went to Java and spent two years excavating for bones of the strange being whom every good Darwinian was half-way house between him and ape. The most authentic fragments of the "missing link" were found in Java by scientists 20 years ago.

     "Pithecanthropus" - she would call him nothing less polysyllable - "walked upright, like any man, except that he sagged a little at the knees. We know this from the shape of the big thigh bone that was found. And because he walked upright he undoubtedly learned the use of his hands. We have found no bones of the hand, and so we cannot tell if it was the typical monkey member, with two bones in the little finger instead of three, and an inordinately long distance from the wrist to the fingers. But pithecanthropus could use it."

     "Pithecanthropus probably was not white. We do not know, but the natives of Java are not now white skinned, and in prehistoric ages the island was still hot. I, myself, during my excavations, found oranges that had been turned to stone, although none grow there now."

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Univ. of Nevada, Reno, Fall 2023

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