Adversarial security: Getting to the root of the problem

Abstract

This paper revisits the conventional notion of security, and champions a paradigm shift in the way that security should be viewed: we argue that the fundamental notion of security should naturally be one that actively aims for the root of the security problem: the malicious (human-terminated) adversary. To that end, we propose the notion of adversarial security where non-malicious parties and the security mechanism are allowed more activeness; we discuss framework ideas based on factors affecting the (human) adversary, and motivate approaches to designing adversarial security systems. Indeed, while security research has in recent years begun to focus on human elements of the legitimate user as part of the security system's design e.g. the notion of ceremonies; our adversarial security notion approaches general security design by considering the human elements of the malicious adversary. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.