Welcome to this module which talks about the trends that are reshaping the world of computer systems
security in this module will try to provide answers to two questions.
How we changed and why are we more susceptible to different types of attacks and how have attackers
changed and what's motivating them now.
The first catalyst for change is the birth of the new technological society.
The Internet or to be more precise.
Social networking services have significantly changed the lifestyles of many people this shift can easily
be observed humans as social beings have throughout history visited and interacted with their neighbors
friends colleagues and so on.
Information was exchanged within small groups
these communities were made up of members that knew each other fairly well.
Knew about each other's lives and had a relationship of conditioned trust this trust is similar to a
situation where you're likely to trust a person that's lived next to you for 15 years enough to ask
them to care for your house while you are away social networking services brought about a change in
the way humans behave.
Why do some people talk of the Facebook era if Facebook were a country with over a billion users.
It would be the third most populated in the world.
Just behind China and India.
Also the number of Facebook users has risen very rapidly.
The popularity of the service makes it unlike anything else.
Speaking historically and globally radio which was also a revolutionary invention needed half a century
to get to 50 million users
do of course the world's population was much smaller than television which was also revolutionary needed
13 years to reach 50 million users.
It took Facebook just a year to get to 200 million users.
This suggests a major change in our lifestyle.
Why is this topic relevant to computer systems security.
One of the features Facebook offers is collecting friends.
The average number of friends on Facebook has 150 especially in the younger demographic where there's
a large group of people who have over 500 friends.
I can't even imagine how you could socially interact like you interact with your neighbors or friends
from work.
With this many people either I'm the only person who can't do it or it's simply impossible.
It could also be that the definition of friend has changed.
A friend is no longer someone you can trust.
It's someone you want to attach your profile with to make you look good.
This is how we create our Internet brand.
Whether it's moral to do so is beyond the scope of this discussion.
It's relevant however that all friends we pick up on the Internet have access to a lot of our personal
information.
This is the information we publish ourselves on social media profiles.