Distinguished Speaker Series: Stefan Savage (UC San Diego)- Looking at Cybercrime from an Economic Perspective

Abstract: Computer security is a field that is fundamentally co-dependent –driven to respond by the actions of adversaries. This dance fuels both the research community and a multi-billion-dollar computer security industry. However, to date most efforts have focused on the technical components of this battle: identifying new vulnerabilities, exploits, and attacks, building and deploying new defenses, and so on. However, this focus on the “medium” of the conflict has not been matched by a similar effort to understand the underlying drivers, dependencies and motivations. In this talk, I will argue for a complementary research agenda based on understanding the social and economic forces that drive today’s Internet attacks, deconstructing the underlying value chain for attackers and ultimately using this information to better focus on security interventions. Using several case studies, I’ll show that empirical analyses of these factors are both achievable and essential for security interventions to have meaningful impact. Finally, I’ll discuss the real and significant challenges in conducting this sort of research and in bringing it to appropriate stakeholders to affect action.