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Shifts in the Cybersecurity Paradigm: Zero-Day Exploits, Discourse, and Emerging Institutions

Published: 15 September 2014 Publication History

Abstract

This ongoing dissertation research examines the institutionalization of new cybersecurity norms and practices that are emerging from current controversies around markets for software vulnerabilities and exploits. A market has developed for the production and distribution of software exploits, with buyers sometimes paying over USD 100,000 for exploits and software vendors offering bounties for the disclosure of underlying vulnerabilities. Labeled a 'digital arms race' by some, it is generating a transnational debate about control and regulation of cyber capabilities, the role of secrecy and disclosure in cybersecurity, and the ethics of exploit production and use. The research takes a qualitative approach to theorize the emerging cybersecurity institutions. It shall provide insights into the technical, economic and institutional shifts in cybersecurity norms and practices. Analyzing the bug bounty programs run by Microsoft and Facebook as examples, the paper briefly discusses the role of institutions in facilitating software vulnerability markets. The paper summarizes the work presented at NSPW 2014, its findings are preliminary.

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Cited By

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  • (2022)The Historical Relationship between the Software Vulnerability Lifecycle and Vulnerability Markets: Security and Economic RisksComputers10.3390/computers1109013711:9(137)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Ethical AI for Automated Bus Lane EnforcementSustainability10.3390/su13211157913:21(11579)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2021
  • (2021)A Recommender System for Tracking VulnerabilitiesProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3465481.3470039(1-7)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2021
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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
NSPW '14: Proceedings of the 2014 New Security Paradigms Workshop
September 2014
148 pages
ISBN:9781450330626
DOI:10.1145/2683467
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

Sponsors

  • ACSA: Applied Computing Security Assoc

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 September 2014

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Author Tags

  1. cybersecurity
  2. discourse
  3. institutions
  4. internet governance
  5. software exploit
  6. software vulnerability

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  • Research-article

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NSPW '14
Sponsor:
  • ACSA
NSPW '14: New Security Paradigms Workshop
September 15 - 18, 2014
British Columbia, Victoria, Canada

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NSPW '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 32 submissions, 34%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 98 of 265 submissions, 37%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)The Historical Relationship between the Software Vulnerability Lifecycle and Vulnerability Markets: Security and Economic RisksComputers10.3390/computers1109013711:9(137)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Ethical AI for Automated Bus Lane EnforcementSustainability10.3390/su13211157913:21(11579)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2021
  • (2021)A Recommender System for Tracking VulnerabilitiesProceedings of the 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security10.1145/3465481.3470039(1-7)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2021
  • (2021)Synthetic Biology Brings New Challenges to Managing Biosecurity and BiosafetyEmerging Threats of Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology10.1007/978-94-024-2086-9_8(117-129)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2021
  • (2021)What We Know About Bug Bounty Programs - An Exploratory Systematic Mapping StudySocio-Technical Aspects in Security and Trust10.1007/978-3-030-55958-8_5(89-106)Online publication date: 10-May-2021
  • (2020)The Use of Runtime Verification for Identifying and Responding to Cybersecurity Threats Posed to State Actors During Cyberwarfare2020 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI)10.1109/CSCI51800.2020.00021(83-87)Online publication date: Dec-2020
  • (2017)Web Science Challenges in Researching Bug BountiesProceedings of the 2017 ACM on Web Science Conference10.1145/3091478.3091517(273-277)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2017

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