Assignment:
Questions
1. Distinguish between vulnerability, threat, and control.
2. Theft usually results in some kind of harm. For example, if someone steals your car, you may suffer financial loss, inconvenience (by losing your mode of transportation), and emotional upset (because of invasion of your personal property and space). List three kinds of harm a company might experience from theft of computer equipment.
3. List at least three kinds of harm a company could experience from electronic espionage or unauthorized viewing of confidential company materials.
4. List at least three kinds of damage a company could suffer when the integrity of a program or company data is compromised.
5. List at least three kinds of harm a company could encounter from loss of service, that is, failure of availability. List the product or capability to which access is lost, and explain how this loss hurts the company.
6. If you forget your password for a website and you click [Forgot my password], sometimes the company sends you a new password by email but sometimes it sends you your old password by email. Compare these two cases in terms of vulnerability of the website owner.
7. Defeating authentication follows the method-opportunity-motive paradigm described. Discuss how these three factors apply to an attack on authentication.
8. List three reasons people might be reluctant to use bio-metrics for authentication. Can you think of ways to counter those objections?
9. Humans are said to be the weakest link in any security system. Give an example for each of the following: (a) A situation in which human failure could lead to a compromise of encrypted data (b) A situation in which human failure could lead to a compromise of identification and authentication (c) A situation in which human failure could lead to a compromise of access control.
10. Why do cryptologists recommend changing the encryption key from time to time? Is it the same reason security experts recommend changing a password from time to time? How can one determine how frequently to change keys or passwords?