Book Review: "Halting State" by Charles Stross posted by Rick Howard

Filed in: Halting State

I just finished reading Charles Stross' book entitled "Halting State." I heard about it on Roderick Jones' blog, MetaSecurity, and put it on my list. I am certainly glad that I did. Those of you who have been around for a while know that I am very interested in how virtual worlds might be used in intelligence collection and police work in the future. This book is right down my alley. It has orcs robbing banks in a World of Warcraft type game and hauling real money out to the physical world. It has shadowy spy agencies running live action role playing games (LARPs) and using the players to collect real intelligence to get points in the game. The players themselves think it is all make-believe, but in reality, the situation is all dangerously authentic. The author writes in a staccato style, peppering the page with clauses and phrases of rich insights into what the world might be in the near future. Stross throws hundreds of ideas at you throughout the story: eyeglasses that everybody wears because they are the man-to-machine interface to the metaverse, cops on a crime scene recording everything they are doing as evidence with both video and audio (through their glasses), the deployment of certain high-pitched sounds that cause extreme vertigo and nausea into houses and businesses as defensive measures against criminals, and terrorists running training camps in "Second Life" like environments.

I am starting to see a pattern in near future sci-fi literature where the bad guys figure out how to lasso the gaming communities to execute game missions to further some nefarious purpose. The other two books I am familiar with are "Daemon" and its sequel "Freedom," both by Daniel Suarez. "Daemon" is the first in a reported trilogy where an evil genius creates a World of Warcraft type game and recruits players for his nefarious missions out of the game. He crafts quests in the game designed to identify certain player-character traits. As these players are successful and move up in the game and others fall to the wayside, the evil genius continues to send the successful gamers highly specialized quests. At some point, he starts sending key players out of the game and into the real world to perform missions for in-game rewards. Hollywood is making a movie out of "Daemon," and "Freedom" just hit the bookstore shelves this month.

At iDefense, we have identified virtual worlds as one of our cyber security disruptors, that is, technologies or ideas that are not mature at present but in a few short years will fundamentally change how we all protect the enterprise. There are key factors supporting this idea. The establishment of virtual currencies, the exponential growth in the number of players, and the slow convergence of the thousands of gaming environments into one metaverse as outlined by Neil Stephenson in his book "Snow Crash," just to name three.

If you are a newbie to this, my advice is to read "Snow Crash" first, then "Daemon," "Halting State" and "Freedom" in that order. I recommend all of them. Besides, you should have read "Snow Crash" by now. It is required reading for anybody in the cyber security field.

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Cyber Arms Control, Gloating and Botnet Terminators posted by Rick Howard

Filed in: Cyber Arms Control

Before the holidays, I stumbled into a blog over at defensetech.org regarding the subject of Cyber Arms Control. The word "stumbled" is one of those euphemisms I use when I am surfing the net instead of doing real work.

From Bruce Schneier's blog, the Russians and the Americans have started discussions about how a treaty might be arranged that might "strengthen Internet security and limit military use of cyberspace". From what I have read, the Americans are not that interested in a formalized treaty, but in a break from the previous administration, the Obama administration is at least willing to listen.

It is not quite time to gloat yet because there are many years of negotiations ahead of us before this gets any closer to reality. But, this falls right into line with something I suggested in an SC Magazine essay back in August. This is the idea that nations could agree to take on individual security issues together. The particular issue I suggested in the SC Magazine essay was the Botnet issue. I suggested that nations might authorize an international team of Botnet Terminators to pursue and destroy Botnets wherever they may lead. If we could just get the Chinese, the Russians and the Americans to sign up for that program, other nations would surely follow. The result would be a game changer. Pernicious Cyber Security Cartels from around the world would have to refit and reconfigure their entire operations in order to avoid the Terminators.

As I said, it is not time to gloat yet. There are many reasons why nations will not want to participate in my Botnet Terminator program or other similar Cyber Arms Control Treaties. I am encouraged though that at least some leaders are talking about it. That puts us a lot closer to the possibility then we were back in August and way closer than I ever thought possible when I wrote the original essay.

I guess I need to stumble around more often. If I could just convince my boss then I would really have a reason to gloat.

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