Tribute to Professor Philip M Taylor

As this issue goes to print we have just learned of the death of
Philip Taylor. We received the news with shock and sadness as Philip was
not only a great intellectual gift to the area of Information
Operations but an interesting person to know – the world will be a
smaller place without him. He was at the inception of the Journal and
gave great encouragement in its initial development. His edited issue on
Perception Management was the most sought after in all the issues
published.

His death has taken us by surprise and because this is the day of
publication, we will leave a fuller tribute to him for a later issue.
This is a sad loss.

Bill Hutchinson, Dec 2010

Editorial

Welcome to the third issue of JIW for 2010 and the 27^th issue overall.  The Journal of Information Warfare continues to engage in the ever widening discipline of information warfare / operations. In particular, this issue puts forward a range of papers that push the information warfare envelope in several new directions. The impact of influence can now be seen through a variety of lenses, and although we contest these differences as we search to define and distinguish our efforts, we must continue to acknowledge the wide-ranging scope of information warfare.

The issue has 5 papers. The paper by van Vuuren, Phahlamohlaka and Brazzoli examines a range of impending security threats from increased internet usage and broadband development. The paper considers broadband access augmentation for average citizens in the South African context and suggests multiple long-term mitigation strategies.

The paper by Hutchinson reflects on the question of whether new technologies initiate or just communicate radical ideas and behaviors. It focuses on the burning question of just how influential new media is in its own right. Hutchinson speculates on whether the factors that lead to behavioral extremes still retain a dependency on other additional factors, or whether they can produce militant actions on their own.

The third paper by Brown, Yuan, Johnson and Lutz looks at covert channels on the Internet. The paper uses a set of common characteristics as a starting point, and then categorizes and evaluates known and new covert channels. The authors point to a range of beneficial applications for covert channels including the detection and mitigation of Man in the Middle attacks.

The fourth paper by Allen and Gilbert puts up the notion of a new domain for the purposes of defense and security. In putting forward their suggestion of an “Information Sphere”, the authors Allen and Gilbert consider the functions and criteria by which  the need for a new domain is worthy of consideration.

The final paper by Zhanshan Ma draws a novel comparison between Zahavi’s 1975 Handicap Principle and the notion of asymmetry in information warfare. The notion that animal communication networks can be considered as nature’s version of information warfare rounds out an eclectic issue of the Journal of Information Warfare, and one that pushes the “boundaries of influence” in several different directions.

David Cook (Coordinating Editor)

December, 2010

d.cook@ecu.edu.au

Table of Contents

 About the Authors

Bo Yuan works at the School of Informatics at Rochester Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Science from Binghamton University.  Before joined Rochester Institute of Technology in 2003, he did research in the areas of computational intelligence and their applications in natural language processing and information retrieval.  Dr. Yuan is the inventor of Trainable Semantic Vectors where he holds four US patents. Recently, Dr. Yuan’s main research interests are in the areas of cyber security, and covert communication channels in particular.  Dr. Yuan has co authored three books and published over 40 research papers in many areas.

Daryl G Johnson works in the Department of Networking, Security and Systems Administration at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Professor Johnson received his MS in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1987. He has designed over six and co-developed over a dozen new courses in the networking, security and systems administration areas as well as redesigning many other courses. He has been involved in the creation of two departments and five degree courses. Most of his attention over the last decade has been in the area of Computing and network Security with a focus on Covert Channels and vulnerabilities in P2P networking. He has authored several papers in the security area.

Dennis P. Gilbert, Jr. (Lt Col, USAF, Ret.) is a Cyberspace Strategist and an Information Operations (IO) Practitioner with Booz Allen Hamilton.  He has held key leadership positions in numerous national priority programs involving satellite communications, space control, IO, and electronic warfare.  He serves as a trusted advisor to organizations within the DoD and IC, providing innovative thinking, policy analysis, and creative solutions.

Erik Brown received a Bachelors of Science Degree in Information Security and Forensics from Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY in 2009.  Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a Lieutenant and currently serves in the United States Air Force as a Cyber Operations officer.  He is currently working towards a MS in Cybersecurity. His research interests include covert channels, steganography and various network security topics.

Peter Lutz received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979, while working as a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories. Shortly thereafter, he joined the faculty of the School of Computer Science at Rochester Institute of Technology. In his 30 years of service to RIT, Professor Lutz has moved from Computer Science to the Department of Information Technology and then to the Department of Networking, Security and Systems Administration. He served as chair of the Department of Information Technology for four years and was the moving force behind five degree proposals. Lately, Professor Lutz has begun research in the area of covert communication channels. His interests include covert channels, low level network programming, and the pedagogy used to teach scripting.

William (Bill) Hutchinson is an Honorary Professor at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. He was formally the Foundation IBM Chair in Information Security, Director of SECAU (Security Research Centre) and was coordinator of the Information Operations and Security programmes at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. Bill was the co-founder of the Journal of Information Warfare. He has over 30 years experience in information systems, management and security in government, the oil and finance industries, and academia in Australia and the UK. Bill has published numerous papers on Information Warfare, deception, system theory and environmental security. He is the co-author of Information Warfare: Corporate Attack and Defence in a Digital World and is also an honorary professor at Deakin University in Australia.

Zhanshan Ma is associated with the Departments of Computer Science & Biological Sciences, & the Institute of Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies at the University of Idaho. He also works in the Laboratory of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Kunming, China.