wildercb/PrivacyTextBooks1.2 · Datasets at Hugging Face

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have created a tool to exploit the vulnerability, which was exposed in a leak
online and used by hackers to carry out the WannaCry attack.55
Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, took the unusual step of castigating
government officials for exploiting the vulnerability rather than reporting it:
Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by
governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen
vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from
the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of
governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage.56
Miseducators
Miseducators undermine security when their actions teach people the wrong
things. Miseducators help hackers by training people to engage in the
behaviors that hackers can readily exploit.
TRAINING PEOPLE TO FALL FOR HACKER TRICKS
Whenever there’s a big data breach caused by a person who clicked on a
suspicious link in an email, security experts roll their eyes. “People are just
fools,” they might mutter to themselves. It’s so easy to blame people for
doing foolish things, but security would be improved if we started blaming
others, such as the organizations that teach people to do foolish things. In
security, fools aren’t born—they are made.
A key security tip is never to click on links in emails asking users to
login. Many companies, however, send emails asking people to click on a
link to log in. When companies send emails that are identical to the kind of
phishing emails that hackers send, people are taught that legitimate
companies send emails like this. In effect, people are being trained to fall
for hacker tricks.
After suffering from a data breach, the firm Evernote alerted its 50
million users with an email notifying users that it had reset their passwords.
The email from Evernote told users some good security wisdom: “Never
click on ‘reset password’ requests in emails—instead go directly to the
service.” Ironically, in the very same email, Evernote included a password-
reset link. The link didn’t even go to Evernote’s website. Instead, it went to
“links.evernote.mkt5371.com.” The sender’s email address was:
[email protected]
This email was indistinguishable from a phishing scam. Indeed, it
practically screamed I am a phishing email!57
UNILATERAL AUTHENTICATION
It is commonplace for authentication to be unilateral. We must authenticate
ourselves to organizations, but it’s a one-way street. They don’t authenticate
themselves to us. Their failure to authenticate themselves to us contributes
to so much fraud. We have been accustomed to readily trust company
websites, phone calls, emails, texts, and other communications. They have
trained us to trust them because it is cheaper and more convenient for them
this way than if they had to authenticate themselves to us. But we really
shouldn’t trust them without authentication.
For example, credit card companies often call or email people to inform
them about potential fraud on their cards. At first blush, this seems good—
people are being informed about fraud. The problem is that a fraudster
could readily be making the call or sending the email. The fraudster could
ask for people’s personal information, passwords, PINs, and other sensitive
information by pretending to be the card company.
Organizations often expect us to just trust them whenever they call us or
email us. People shouldn’t be asked to give their trust so readily without a
way to verify that the calls or emails are indeed coming from the
companies. Companies will take steps to ensure that when consumers
contact them, that consumers are who they say they are. But companies take
no steps to verify that they themselves are who they say they are.
When we interact with organizations, authentication should be bilateral
—companies should be developing means to authenticate themselves to us.
Then, we would know to expect that a company is properly authenticated,
and this would teach us how to distinguish between the imposters and
actual representatives from the organizations.
Instead, organizations constantly call and email people and expect
people to trust them. Fraudsters exploit this trust. This is how organizations
train and prime people so that they will be easily subjected to fraudsters.
Organizations shouldn’t be contacting people and asking for any
personal information unless they can convincingly verify their identity so
that people can distinguish them from imposters. The credit card companies
that call or email should ask people to reach back out to them on the
number on their cards or go directly to their websites without clicking on
links in the email. So should any company that emails people—no company
should be encouraging people to click on email links.
The barrage of emails and calls that people receive from organizations
asking them to click this or that or to provide personal data are teaching
people how to be sitting ducks for fraudsters. The cumulative effect creates
a huge public harm—it weakens security for everyone, it undermines efforts
to teach people good security practices, and it all but ensures that the
fraudsters will find plenty of people who will fall for their schemes.
AGAINST DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY EXCEPTIONALISM
A common theme throughout our discussion of the actors who contribute to
data breaches is “digital technology exceptionalism”—treating digital
technology as different from other things.
The law is so enamored or flummoxed by the Internet, algorithms, and
artificial intelligence that it often treats them as completely exceptional. The
world has never seen anything that reduces the barrier to surveillance and
communication like the Internet.58 People are spied on, lied to, defrauded,
manipulated, harassed, blackmailed, humiliated, and locked out. Yet the law
is reluctant to hold organizations responsible.
Why are platforms not held more responsible for the products and
services sold on them? Why is software treated so differently from other
products? One reason is that digital things seem less tangible than physical
ones. If a company makes a defective ladder that breaks, there’s a
physicality to the product, the defect, and the injury. The digital world feels
intangible, less real than the world of flesh and blood and bricks and steel.
But code can kill. It can harm people in similar ways to physical items.59
These days, more things are dependent upon software. At Black Hat and
Def Con, two popular tech security events, researchers demonstrated how
they could hack into pacemakers and insulin pumps. The researchers stated
that they could reprogram a pacemaker to issue a shock or deny a shock.60
Andrea Matwyshyn has written about the inherent vulnerabilities to our

have created a tool to exploit the vulnerability, which was exposed in a leak

online and used by hackers to carry out the WannaCry attack.55

Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, took the unusual step of castigating

government officials for exploiting the vulnerability rather than reporting it:

Finally, this attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by

governments is such a problem. This is an emerging pattern in 2017. We have seen

vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from

the NSA has affected customers around the world. Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of

governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage.56

Miseducators

Miseducators undermine security when their actions teach people the wrong

things. Miseducators help hackers by training people to engage in the

behaviors that hackers can readily exploit.

TRAINING PEOPLE TO FALL FOR HACKER TRICKS

Whenever there’s a big data breach caused by a person who clicked on a

suspicious link in an email, security experts roll their eyes. “People are just

fools,” they might mutter to themselves. It’s so easy to blame people for

doing foolish things, but security would be improved if we started blaming

others, such as the organizations that teach people to do foolish things. In

security, fools aren’t born—they are made.

A key security tip is never to click on links in emails asking users to

login. Many companies, however, send emails asking people to click on a

link to log in. When companies send emails that are identical to the kind of

phishing emails that hackers send, people are taught that legitimate

companies send emails like this. In effect, people are being trained to fall

for hacker tricks.

After suffering from a data breach, the firm Evernote alerted its 50

million users with an email notifying users that it had reset their passwords.

The email from Evernote told users some good security wisdom: “Never

click on ‘reset password’ requests in emails—instead go directly to the

service.” Ironically, in the very same email, Evernote included a password-

reset link. The link didn’t even go to Evernote’s website. Instead, it went to

“links.evernote.mkt5371.com.” The sender’s email address was:

[email protected]

This email was indistinguishable from a phishing scam. Indeed, it

practically screamed I am a phishing email!57

UNILATERAL AUTHENTICATION

It is commonplace for authentication to be unilateral. We must authenticate

ourselves to organizations, but it’s a one-way street. They don’t authenticate

themselves to us. Their failure to authenticate themselves to us contributes

to so much fraud. We have been accustomed to readily trust company

websites, phone calls, emails, texts, and other communications. They have

trained us to trust them because it is cheaper and more convenient for them

this way than if they had to authenticate themselves to us. But we really

shouldn’t trust them without authentication.

For example, credit card companies often call or email people to inform

them about potential fraud on their cards. At first blush, this seems good—

people are being informed about fraud. The problem is that a fraudster

could readily be making the call or sending the email. The fraudster could

ask for people’s personal information, passwords, PINs, and other sensitive

information by pretending to be the card company.

Organizations often expect us to just trust them whenever they call us or

email us. People shouldn’t be asked to give their trust so readily without a

way to verify that the calls or emails are indeed coming from the

companies. Companies will take steps to ensure that when consumers

contact them, that consumers are who they say they are. But companies take

no steps to verify that they themselves are who they say they are.

When we interact with organizations, authentication should be bilateral

—companies should be developing means to authenticate themselves to us.

Then, we would know to expect that a company is properly authenticated,

and this would teach us how to distinguish between the imposters and

actual representatives from the organizations.

Instead, organizations constantly call and email people and expect

people to trust them. Fraudsters exploit this trust. This is how organizations

train and prime people so that they will be easily subjected to fraudsters.

Organizations shouldn’t be contacting people and asking for any

personal information unless they can convincingly verify their identity so

that people can distinguish them from imposters. The credit card companies

that call or email should ask people to reach back out to them on the

number on their cards or go directly to their websites without clicking on

links in the email. So should any company that emails people—no company

should be encouraging people to click on email links.

The barrage of emails and calls that people receive from organizations

asking them to click this or that or to provide personal data are teaching

people how to be sitting ducks for fraudsters. The cumulative effect creates

a huge public harm—it weakens security for everyone, it undermines efforts

to teach people good security practices, and it all but ensures that the

fraudsters will find plenty of people who will fall for their schemes.

AGAINST DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY EXCEPTIONALISM

A common theme throughout our discussion of the actors who contribute to

data breaches is “digital technology exceptionalism”—treating digital

technology as different from other things.

The law is so enamored or flummoxed by the Internet, algorithms, and

artificial intelligence that it often treats them as completely exceptional. The

world has never seen anything that reduces the barrier to surveillance and

communication like the Internet.58 People are spied on, lied to, defrauded,

manipulated, harassed, blackmailed, humiliated, and locked out. Yet the law

is reluctant to hold organizations responsible.

Why are platforms not held more responsible for the products and

services sold on them? Why is software treated so differently from other

products? One reason is that digital things seem less tangible than physical

ones. If a company makes a defective ladder that breaks, there’s a

physicality to the product, the defect, and the injury. The digital world feels

intangible, less real than the world of flesh and blood and bricks and steel.

But code can kill. It can harm people in similar ways to physical items.59

These days, more things are dependent upon software. At Black Hat and

Def Con, two popular tech security events, researchers demonstrated how

they could hack into pacemakers and insulin pumps. The researchers stated

that they could reprogram a pacemaker to issue a shock or deny a shock.60

Andrea Matwyshyn has written about the inherent vulnerabilities to our