Identifying Cyber Warriors - Part1 - Prof. Tom Holt / Professor Farnsworth

Part 1: There has been a substantial increase in reports of civilian attacks against all manner of government and private industry targets on and off-line. The globalization of the Internet and increasing civil unrest across the world indicates that individuals are beginning to recognize the value of cyberattacks as a response to governmental practices and regulations. In fact, the availability of malware and mass movements like Anonymous enable unskilled actors to engage in attacks against various targets, including critical infrastructure, to force social change. As a consequence, the rise of the "civilian cyberwarrior" as adopted by Dorothy Denning and Max Kilger may cause shifts in the power relationship between individuals and nation states. This presentation will utilize samples of college students from the US and Taiwan to examine the predictors of individual willingness to engage in attacks against their own nation and other countries on and off-line. The findings will examine prospective behavioral and attitudinal factors that affect the likelihood that individuals will engage in attacks, and consider regional differences that may affect action. This talk will benefit the intelligence community and security researchers by predicting and modeling the dynamics of threats to national security and private data and respond when they occur. Thomas J. Holt is an Associate Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He received his Ph. D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis in 2005. His research focuses on computer hacking, malware, and the role that technology and computer mediated communications play in facilitating all manner of crime and deviance. Dr. Holt has been published in numerous academic journals, including Crime and Delinquency, Deviant Behavior, and the Journal of Criminal Justice, is a co-author of the book Digital Crime and Digital Terror, editor of the text Cybercrime: Causes, Correlates, and Context, and co-editor of the forthcoming book Corporate Hacking and Technology-Driven Crime. He is also a regular presenter at Defcon, the Department of Defense Cybercrime Conference, and various regional hacker conferences. Dr. Holt is also the recipient of two grants from the U.S. National Institute of Justice to examine the market for malicious software and the social dynamics of carders and data thieves in on-line markets. Additionally, Dr. Holt is the project lead for the Spartan Devils Chapter of the Honeynet Project, and directs the MSU Open Source Research Laboratory dedicated to exploring the landscape of cyberthreats around the globe through on-line research.