Home| Contact Us| New Journals| Browse Journals| Journal Prices| For Authors|

Print ISSN: 2349-8161
Online ISSN: 2349-817X


  About ISEJ
  Home
Aims & Scope
Editorial Board
Current Issue
Next Issue
Previous Issue
Self-archiving policy
Alert Services
Be a Reviewer
Publisher
Paper Submission
Contact us
 
  For Authors
  Guidelines for Contributors
Online Submission
Statement of Ethics and Responsibilities
Review Policies
Transfer of Copyright
Archiving Policy
Call for Papers
 
 
RELATED JOURNALS
Journal of Digital Information Management (JDIM)
Journal of Multimedia Processing and Technologies (JMPT)
International Journal of Web Application (IJWA)

 

 
Information Security Education Journal (ISEJ)
 

Mind, Unity and Software Security - Analysis of Functional Unity in Cases of Data-only Attack
Ziyuan Meng
Drew University 36 Madison Ave, Madison, NJ
Abstract: The computer security research community today still lacks a theoretical understanding of the essence of security vulnerabilities. The article argues that the prevailing reductionism in computer science theory leads to insecure coding practice, and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of mind sheds light on what makes software secure. In particular, Kant’s constructivist conceptualization of the mind and his theory on the unity of the mental faculties inspire us to develop a new, non-reductionist approach to software vulnerability problems. We argue that a computer program can possess some structural similarities to the human mind. Similar to the unity of human mind, there is also a functional unity or ‘integration’ in any given program. In the light of this similarity, a cyber-attack can be viewed as operations to compromise a computer program’s original function by violating its internal integration. To illustrate the point, we provide a detailed analysis of two examples of data-only attacks, a new emerging threat to software security. In each case study, we examine the internal, functional integration of the case program and how data-only attacks affect the integration. The result shows a direct correlation between functional integration and the security of software. In the end, we propose a new technical normativity of cultivating to supplement that of coding.
Keywords: Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Technology, Software Security, Kant, Integration, Reductionism Mind, Unity and Software Security - Analysis of Functional Unity in Cases of Data-only Attack
DOI:https://doi.org/10.6025/isej/2021/8/2/65-74
Full_Text   PDF 5.11 MB   Download:   226  times
References:

[1] Kushner, D. (2013). The real story of stuxnet, IEEE Spectrum, 50 (3) 48–53.
[2] Burmeister, J., Ziyuan Meng. (2021). Kant, Cybernetics, and Cybersecurity: Integration and Secure Computation.” SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 19 - NUMBER 4.
[3] Smith, R. (2019). Aristotle’s Logic”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/aristotle-logic.
[4] Wirth, N. (2008). Algorithms + data structures = programs. New Delhi, India: Prentice-Hall of India.
[5] Craig Kernighan, B. W. (2021). Wrapup on Software. In Understanding the digital world: What you need to know about computers, the internet, privacy, and security (pp. 117–118). essay, Princeton University Press.
[6] Tip, F. (1995). A survey of program slicing techniques. J. Program. Lang., 3.
[7] Ferrante, J., Ottenstein, K. J., Warren, J. D. (1987). The program dependence graph and its use in optimization. ACM Tra nsactions on Programming Languages and Systems, 9(3), 319–349. https://doi.org/10.1145/24039.24041
[8] Kant, I. (1965). Critique of Pure Reason (unabridged edition). St. Martin’s Press.
[9] Kant, I. (1987). Critique of Judgment (1st ed.). Hackett Publishing.
[10] Hu, H., Shinde, S., Adrian, S., Chua, Z. L., Saxena, P., Liang, Z. (2016). Data-oriented programming: On the expressiveness of non-control data attacks. 2016 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). https://doi.org/10.1109/sp.2016.62
[11] Seacord, R. C. (2005). Secure Coding in C And C++ (1st ed.). Addison-Wesley Professional.
[12] Simondon, G. (2017). On the mode of existence of technical objects (C. Malaspina & J. Rogove, Trans.). Minneapolis, MN, United States: Univocal Publishing.
[13] Hunsaker, E., Hunsaker, Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A., Kimmons, R., & Enoch HunsakerEnoch Hunsaker is a Master’s student at Brigham Young University. (1970, January 1). Computational thinking. The K-12 Educational Technology Handbook. Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://edtechbooks.org/k12handbook/computational_thinking
[14] Seacord, R. C., Pethia, R. D. (2015). String. In Secure coding in C and C++ (pp. 29–110). essay, Addison-Wesley.
[15] Sullivan, B. (2008, September). Security briefs: SDL embraces the web. Developer tools, technical documentation and coding examples. Retrieved April 23, 2022, from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2008/september/security-briefssdl- embraces-the-web


Copyright 2013 socio.org.uk