the almost total absence of realistic long-term thinking and oversight contributed to worldwide economic problems. Optimizing for short-term gains often tends to run counter to long-term success (except for the insider investors, who having taken their profits have little interest in the more distant future). Although this may not seem like a typical Inside Risks case, it is certainly illustrative of the main theme here.

the Future

The ACM Risks Forum has helped dramatize past experiences with the effects of design faults, system security vulnerabilities, system failures and errors, and the pervasive roles of people throughout. Previous columns have highlighted the importance of understanding these experiences and applying them diligently in the future.

Social engineering (exploiting human weaknesses) is a significant factor in system penetrations, inadvertent insider misuse, and above all the spread of malicious malware and other forms of malicious misuse combined with the existence of vulnerable systems whose exploitation permits email and Web-based scams to facilitate online identity fraud and other forms of malfeasance. For example, innocently clicking on a seemingly legitimate link is a common failing. Ultimately, no matter how trustworthy individual hosts, servers, and networks might become, users will need much greater help in detecting and avoiding scams and deception. For example, human frailties such as greed, gullibility, and obliviousness to the risks will clearly persist. Thus, widespread computer literacy is an urgent goal, involving both short-term and long-term aspects. Nevertheless, designing systems, networks, and applications that wherever possible effectively mask the overall complexity and concerns for trustworthiness must also be a long-term goal.

Conclusion

Although this column has barely scratched the surface of an iceberg-like collection of problems, it addresses the need for urgently developing compelling logical and realistic justifications for embedding long-term thinking into our planning. Commodity hardware/software aims at the

new computing
technologies
tend to introduce
new security
vulnerabilities,
as well as
reintroduce
earlier ones.

mass market; on the other hand, what is needed for certain critical applications such as national infrastructures, secure and resilient cloud servers, and so on is the existence of meaningfully trustworthy networked systems. Thus, there is a major disconnect that requires some long-term thinking to overcome. Unfortunately, the real-world arguments for short-term optimization are likely to continue to prevail unless significant external and internal efforts are made to address some of the long-term needs.

 

References

1. dave, n. a unified Model for hardware/software Codesign. Ph.d. thesis, MIt, Cambridge, Ma, 2011.

2. kahnemann, d. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, strauss and giroux, 2011.

3. neumann, P.g. holistic systems. ACM ACM SIGSOF T Software Engineering Notes 31, 6 (nov. 2006), 4–5; http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/holistic.pdf.

4. neumann, P.g. Psychosocial implications of computer software development and use: Zen and the art of computing. In Theory and Practice of Software Technology, d. Ferrari, M. bolognani, and J. goguen, eds., north-holland, 1983, 221–232.

5. neumann, P.g. the foresight saga. Commun. ACM 50, 9 (sept. 2006); http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/ insiderisks06.html#195.

6. neumann, P.g. and Watson, r.n. M. Capabilities revisited: a holistic approach to bottom-to-top assurance of trustworthy systems. Fourth layered assurance Workshop, u.s. air Force Cryptographic Modernization office and aFrl (austin, tX, dec. 2010); http://www.csl.sri.com/neumann/law10.pdf.

7. Watson, r.n.M. et al. CherI: a research platform deconflating hardware virtualization and protection, runtime environments/systems, layering, and virtualized environments. resolVe workshop (london, u.k., Mar. 3, 2012); http://www.csl.sri.com/ neumann/2012resolve-cheri.pdf.

 

Peter G. neumann ( [e-mail]) chairs the aCM Committee on Computers and Public Policy and moderates the aCM risks Forum ( http://www.risks.org). he is very grateful to his committee members for their long-standing incisive feedback on Inside risks columns— including this one!

Copyright held by author.

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