What's Cypersecurity all about?af Robin Sharp

FILMSTAR BLACKMAILED AFTER CRIMINALS ACCESS PHOTOS ON SMARTPHONE 

ELDERLY WIDOW HAS INTERNET BANK ACCOUNT EMPTIED BY FRAUDSTERS 

All computers at local hospital paralysed by computer virus! 

Government cannot find documents stored on confidential database 

SMART TVs CAN SPY ON YOU AT HOME 

MAN ARRESTED FOR HAVING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY ON HIS LAPTOP ‘DIDN’T KNOW HOW IT GOT THERE’

Headlines like these reflect one of the dangers of modern life, where electronic communication between computers, smartphones and other electronic devices forms the basis for innumerable social, commercial and administrative activities. The aim of cybersecurity is to prevent such undesirable events from happening. 

This book gives a gentle introduction to what this involves, by answering questions such as: What should one look out for? How do failures of cybersecurity arise? And last but not least, why is perfect cybersecurity so hard to achieve? 

Content:

Introduction 

Unwanted events 5 Attacks 

Examples 

Networks 11 Internet Layers 

Security challenges in networks 

A tricky problem: Authentification 

Why is spoofing so easy? 

Internet names and addresses 

Denial of Service 

Software 

Software vulnerabilities 

Finding software flaws 

Malicious software 

Protection against attacks 

Traffic control 

Malware control 

Monitoring behaviour 

Cryptographic techniques 

Contents Tunneling 

Access control 

Protecting large-scale infrastructure 

Human factors 59 Countering faulty thinking 

Exploitable mental properties 

Can psychological attacks be prevented? 

Why is cybersecurity so hard to achieve? 

The attackers’ strengths 

The defenders’ weaknesses

A Some technical details 

Numbers and units 

Checksums 

Establishing personal identities 

Universal Resource Identifiers 

Mail relays 

B Acronyms 

C Figure sources 

References