Collective responsibility and mutual coercion in IoT botnets: a tragedy of the commons problem: International Workshop on Behavioral Analysis for System Security - BASS 2018

Carolina Adaros Boye, Paul Kearney, Mark Josephs

    Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

    Abstract

    In recent years, several cases of DDoS attacks using IoT botnets have been reported, including the largest DDoS known, caused by the malware Mirai in 2016. The infection of the IoT devices could have been prevented with basic security hygiene, but as the actors responsible to apply these preventative measures are not the main target but just ?enablers? of the attack their incentive is little. In most cases they will even be unaware of the situation. Internet, as a common and shared space allows also some costs to be absorbed by the community rather than being a direct consequence suffered by those that behave insecurely. This paper analyses the long term effects of the prevalence of a system where individual decision-making systematically causes net harm. An analogy with ?the tragedy of the commons? problem is done under the understanding that rational individuals seek the maximization of their own utility, even when this damages shared resources. Four areas of solution are proposed based on the review of this problem in different contexts. It was found necessary to include non-technical solutions and consider human behaviour. This opens a discussion about a multidisciplinary focus in IoT cyber security.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages470-480
    Number of pages11
    Publication statusPublished (VoR) - 31 Dec 2018

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