Approaches to Understanding the Motivations Behind Cyber Attacks

By Kumar Sumeet, Kathleen Carley
2016 IEEE Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) | September 2016

Citation

Sumeet, Kumar., Carley, Kathleen. Approaches to Understanding the Motivations Behind Cyber Attacks 2016 IEEE Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) .

2016 IEEE Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI), 2016

Abstract

Cyber-attacks appear to have grown in the past few years. Many policy changes have been made to control them, however, a clear path to a safe and secure cyber world is not visible. A mere technical view to confront the cyber-attacks could be futile if motivations behind attacks are not understood. To understand the motives behind cyber-attacks, we look at cyber-attacks as societal events associated with social, economic, cultural and political factors. To find factors that encourage unsafe cyber activities, we build a network of aggregate country-to-country cyber-attacks, and compare the network with other country-to-country networks. In particular, we use variable correlation and network correlation (QAP) to examine the relevance of factors like income difference, alliance-hostility, internet penetration, and corruption. We observe that higher corruption and a large internet bandwidth favors attacks origination. We also find that countries with higher Per-capita-GDP and better Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructure are targeted more often.

Sumeet Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He studies problems at the intersection of technology and society. He is interested in analysing user behaviour, quantifying polarisation on online forums , and finding advertisements disguised as regular content on online platforms. His current focus is on identifying implicit or hidden advertisements in videos posted on children’s platforms such as YouTube Kids.

Additionally, Professor Kumar has conducted research in software design and development, with particular emphasis on user experience. He has investigated the use of mobile phone sensors during emergencies to improve situational awareness. His study on the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) service in the United States addressed several issues of critical importance to emergency alerts effectiveness and adoption. Notably, some of his research recommendations was included in the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed changes to WEA.

He completed his undergraduate education at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur. He holds two Master’s degrees—in Software Engineering and in Machine Learning--both from Carnegie Mellon University, where he also earned his doctorate degree.

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