Fergie's Tech Blog

Schneier: On Criminal Innovation and Copycats

Bruce Schneier:

The internet is filled with copycats. Green-card lawyers invented spam; now everyone does it. Other people invented phishing, pharming, spear phishing. The virus, the worm, the Trojan: It's hard to believe that these ubiquitous internet attack tactics were, until comparatively recently, tactics that no one had thought of.

Most attackers are copycats. They aren't clever enough to invent a new way to rob a convenience store, use the web to steal money, or hijack an airplane. They try the same attacks again and again, or read about a new attack in the newspaper and decide they can try it, too.

In combating threats, it makes sense to focus on copycats when there is a population of people already willing to commit the crime, who will migrate to a new tactic once it has been demonstrated to be successful. In instances where there aren't many attacks or attackers, and they're smarter -- al-Qaida-style terrorism comes to mind -- focusing on copycats is less effective because the bad guys will respond by modifying their attacks accordingly.

posted by Fergie @ 3/08/2007 03:27:00 PM