There is an ongoing struggle in the digital public sphere over the signification of “Anonymous.” Anonymous exists at the intersection of multiple discursive networks battling for control of the internet including governments, private corporations, non-governmental organizations, individual citizens and multi-lateral institutions. In this dissertation, I propose to document and analyze the battle for signification and re-signification of “Anonymous” between the American network state and hacktivist networks that deploy the moniker Anonymous. Internally, I argue that Anonymous is a meme complex used by counterpublic networks of satire and/or dissent. Anonymous originated in a digital civic space: the image board 4chan. The tactics of Anonymous reflect the creative culture of 4chan. On 4chan, participants share, alter, create and exchange memes. Anonymous networks practice “image politics” and operate on a logic of mass inclusion that treats the cyberspace as a location of direct action as well as organization. Externally, Anonymous highlights the contradictory nature of American responses to hacktivism. While there is universal rejection of Anonymous within the American network state, the State Department rhetorically supports hacktivism in places such as Egypt while the FBI, US Cyber Command, and NSA label domestic hacktivists as terrorists. The outcome of the rhetorical battle over Anonymous has implications for the future of free speech and protest in cyberspace. Domestic penalties for cyberactivists are severe, and the preservation of the rhetorical space for digital protest is under threat.

Information Warfare involves the attack and defense of information and information systems, both in time of armed conflict and in operations short of war. While information technology provides the promise of a new class of less lethal military instruments, it also presents vulnerabilities occasioned by widespread dependence on an increasingly complex and interconnected global information infrastructure. These vulnerabilities, when exploited by those who would target civilians in order to inspire widespread fear in hopes of accomplishing a political agenda, can be understood as cyber-terrorism. / As information warfare techniques evolve, those employing them should look to several relevant sources for normative guidance. Relevant, internationally shared values can be found in international custom, the U.N. Charter, treaties dealing with the subject of "cybercrime," those governing the communication media likely to be utilized by information warriors, UNGA Resolutions and those treaties and customary norms that make up the Law of Armed Conflict.

Thesis (M.S. in Computer Science)--Naval Postgraduate School, Sept. 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Cynthia E. Irvine, Karen Burke. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-162). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 30).

Thesis (M.S)--Ohio University, March, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82)

Thesis (M.S)--Ohio University, March, 2005. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-82)

The quickest change detection (QCD) problem is to detect abrupt changes in a sensing environment as quickly as possible in real time while limiting the risk of false alarm. Statistical inference about the monitored stochastic process is performed through observations acquired sequentially over time. After each observation, QCD algorithm either stops and declares a change or continues to have a further observation in the next time interval. There is an inherent tradeoff between speed and accuracy in the decision making process. The design goal is to optimally balance the average detection delay and the false alarm rate to have a timely and accurate response to abrupt changes. The objective of this thesis is to investigate effective and scalable QCD approaches for real-world data streams. The classical QCD framework is model-based, that is, statistical data model is assumed to be known for both the pre- and post-change cases. However, real-world data often exhibit significant challenges for data modeling such as high dimensionality, complex multivariate nature, lack of parametric models, unknown post-change (e.g., attack or anomaly) patterns, and complex temporal correlation. Further, in some cases, data is privacy-sensitive and distributed over a system, and it is not fully available to QCD algorithm. This thesis addresses these challenges and proposes novel data-driven QCD approaches that are robust to data model mismatch and hence widely applicable to a variety of practical settings. In Chapter 2, online cyber-attack detection in the smart power grid is formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) problem based on the QCD framework. A universal robust online cyber-attack detection algorithm is proposed using the model-free reinforcement learning (RL) for POMDPs. In Chapter 3, online anomaly detection for big data streams is studied where the nominal (i.e., pre-change) and anomalous (i.e., post-change) high-dimensional statistical data models are unknown. A data-driven solution approach is proposed, where firstly a set of useful univariate summary statistics is computed from a nominal dataset in an offline phase and next, online summary statistics are evaluated for a persistent deviation from the nominal statistics. In Chapter 4, a generic data-driven QCD procedure is proposed, called DeepQCD, that learns the change detection rule directly from the observed raw data via deep recurrent neural networks. With sufficient amount of training data including both pre- and post-change samples, DeepQCD can effectively learn the change detection rule for all complex, high-dimensional, and temporally correlated data streams. Finally, in Chapter 5, online privacy-preserving anomaly detection is studied in a setting where the data is distributed over a network and locally sensitive to each node, and its statistical model is unknown. A data-driven differentially private distributed detection scheme is proposed, which infers network-wide anomalies based on the perturbed and encrypted statistics received from nodes. Furthermore, analytical privacy-security tradeoff in the network-wide anomaly detection problem is investigated.

Although it seems to be a global phenomenon, the internet is a part of human society for relatively short time. Existing in different forms there are phenomena that are present in human society for decades, and that we might not expect in cyberspace. In addition to a mutation of social pathologies such as bullying, child pornography and stalking, internet is used by extremist movements and terrorist groups for their activities such as propaganda, mutual communication, but also for invasive activities. This thesis is focused among other things on terrorism in cyberspace. The introduction places the issue in the current state of society, connecting it with technological and social changes. The second section presents a brief overview of the relevant literature, which is focused on the issue of conventional terrorism and terrorism in cyberspace. The following chapters attempt to define its form, find its essence, and describe the similarities and differences especially in relation to conventional terrorism. These findings are achieved by confrontating both forms of terrorism, its fundamental aspects and classification criteria. This work provides an unusual insight into the relationship of technology and society, which despite its relative youth requires more and more attention. It shows that...

<p>Cyberterrorism kan ses som ett relativt nytt, komplicerat och diffust hot som uppenbarat sig till följd av en snabb IT-utveckling. För Försvarsmakten kan detta hot innebära en ny utmaning eftersom doktrinen som skall fungera som vägledning i verksamheten börjar bli inaktuell. De grundläggande förmågorna, som är en viktig del av doktrinen, ses som tankemässiga hjälpmedel för att Försvarsmakten skall kunna analysera, samordna och beskriva verksamheten. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utreda hur pass användbara de grundläggande förmågorna är som tankemässiga hjälpmedel när Försvarsmakten ställs mot ett hot som cyberterrorism. Detta görs genom en analys utifrån ett scenario där Försvarsmaktens ledningssystem utsätts för en cyberattack med ett efterföljande resonemang om tillämpningen av förmågorna. Resultatet utvisar att förmågorna är ett stort stöd i kontexten men att resonemanget kring tillämpningen kompliceras av att hotet äger rum i det virtuella rummet.</p> / <p>Cyber Terrorism can be seen as a relatively new, complex and diffuse threat that appeared due to rapid IT development. For the Armed Forces this threat can be a new challenge because the doctrine to serve as guidance in the work is becoming obsolete. The fundamental abilities, which are an important part of the doctrine, should be seen as thinking tools for the Armed Forces to analyze, coordinate and describe the business. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how useful the fundamental abilities are thinking as tools in the Armed Forces, against a threat like cyberterrorism. This is done through an analysis based on a scenario in which the Armed Forces command and control system is exposed to a cyber attack followed by a discussion on the application of the fundamental abilities. The result shows that the fundamental abilities are a great support in the context but that the reasoning regarding the application is complicated because the threat takes place in the virtual space.</p>

Cyberterrorism kan ses som ett relativt nytt, komplicerat och diffust hot som uppenbarat sig till följd av en snabb IT-utveckling. För Försvarsmakten kan detta hot innebära en ny utmaning eftersom doktrinen som skall fungera som vägledning i verksamheten börjar bli inaktuell. De grundläggande förmågorna, som är en viktig del av doktrinen, ses som tankemässiga hjälpmedel för att Försvarsmakten skall kunna analysera, samordna och beskriva verksamheten. Syftet med denna uppsats är att utreda hur pass användbara de grundläggande förmågorna är som tankemässiga hjälpmedel när Försvarsmakten ställs mot ett hot som cyberterrorism. Detta görs genom en analys utifrån ett scenario där Försvarsmaktens ledningssystem utsätts för en cyberattack med ett efterföljande resonemang om tillämpningen av förmågorna. Resultatet utvisar att förmågorna är ett stort stöd i kontexten men att resonemanget kring tillämpningen kompliceras av att hotet äger rum i det virtuella rummet. / Cyber Terrorism can be seen as a relatively new, complex and diffuse threat that appeared due to rapid IT development. For the Armed Forces this threat can be a new challenge because the doctrine to serve as guidance in the work is becoming obsolete. The fundamental abilities, which are an important part of the doctrine, should be seen as thinking tools for the Armed Forces to analyze, coordinate and describe the business. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how useful the fundamental abilities are thinking as tools in the Armed Forces, against a threat like cyberterrorism. This is done through an analysis based on a scenario in which the Armed Forces command and control system is exposed to a cyber attack followed by a discussion on the application of the fundamental abilities. The result shows that the fundamental abilities are a great support in the context but that the reasoning regarding the application is complicated because the threat takes place in the virtual space.