Cybersecurity Magic: Parallel Structures of Design by Hackers and Magicians
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Almost half of the American public has been a victim of a major cyber-hacking incident and cyber-crime now tops the Gallup Poll’s list as the crime Americans worry about the most. (Pagliery 2014; Riffkin 2017) Yet for many Americans, their vulnerability to hacking seems mysterious. How can so much cyber-crime occur when so many technical efforts are devoted to preventing it? One possible answer to this question might be that cyber-hackers take advantage of common human psychological traits that make us all vulnerable to deception and misdirection. The ability to take advantage of such human vulnerabilities is part of the art of deception in many realms, such as espionage, warfare, politics, theatre, and especially in performance magic. What are the similarities and differences between the process used by cyber-criminals to design their hacking attacks and the process used by magicians to design their magic tricks? I investigated these connections by collecting primary sources and interviewing a small number of magicians, “white hat hackers,” and individuals from the national security intelligence community to discover how they design their activities to take advantage of individuals’ common human vulnerabilities and new technology vulnerabilities. I present multiple case studies and then compare specific magic tricks with specific cybersecurity exploits, demonstrating how the design processes used by hackers have inherent structural similarities to those used by magicians. Furthermore, this research demonstrates the value in demystifying the design processes of hackers and magicians to produce better cybersecurity.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 31, 2018 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Sagan, Samuel Kasem |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | magic |
|---|---|
| Subject | cybersecurity |
| Subject | hacking |
| Subject | white hat hackers |
| Subject | magician |
| Subject | technology |
| Subject | deception |
| Subject | sleight of hand |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
| Related item | |
|---|---|
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/jw049zf5818 |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Sagan, Samuel Kasem. (2018). Cybersecurity Magic: Parallel Structures of Design by Hackers and Magicians. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/jw049zf5818.
Collection
Stanford University, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Honors Theses
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- Contact
- sksagan@stanford.edu
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