Community and Privacy in a Hyper-Connected World

Christopher Alexander and Serge Chermayeff co-authored Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanism in 1963. This seminal contribution has largely been forgotten. Today, a human-centred framework is rarely discussed by researchers and practitioners, neither from a theoretical nor a pragmatic perspective. Nonetheless, some fundamental principles defined in that book 60 years ago are pertinent today in our hyper-connected world, and they have been illustrated by the need for human-centred housing during the recent Covid-19 pandemic. This commentary explains the spatial organization of domestic architecture that can support and sustain choices about private and public life in a world of global networks, intrusions of social media, and increasing video surveillance that challenge our autonomy and privacy

Journeys in travel: a recombinant, computer-controlled cinematic essay

The video installation Journeys in Travel tells a story of travel and investigates relationships between travelogue, cinematic essay, and digital database narrative. The open source software “PD,” which is mainly used to create live-algorithmic musical improvisation and (interactive) music composition, controls here an infinite audiovisual narrative. It is a temporary, open-ended arrangement, which sets in motion a seemingly endless chain of references to related topics: Being elsewhere in foreign places, tourism, ethnography, globalization, a hyper-connected world, reality and simulation, movement, pace, rhythm and the relationship of film (structure), narrative and travel

“Private” Cybersecurity Standards? Cyberspace Governance, Multistakeholderism, and the (Ir)relevance of the TBT Regime

We are now living in a hyper-connected world, with a myriad of devices continuously linked to the Internet. Our growing dependence on such devices exposes us to a variety of cybersecurity threats. This ever-increasing connectivity means that vulnerabilities can be introduced at any phase of the software development cycle. Cybersecurity risk management, therefore, is more important than ever to governments at all developmental stages as well as to companies of all sizes and across all sectors. The awareness of cybersecurity threats affects the importance placed on the use of standards and certification as an approach

“Private” Cybersecurity Standards? Cyberspace Governance, Multistakeholderism, and the (Ir)relevance of the TBT Regime

We are now living in a hyper-connected world, with a myriad of devices continuously linked to the Internet. Our growing dependence on such devices exposes us to a variety of cybersecurity threats. This ever-increasing connectivity means that vulnerabilities can be introduced at any phase of the software development cycle. Cybersecurity risk management, therefore, is more important than ever to governments at all developmental stages as well as to companies of all sizes and across all sectors. The awareness of cybersecurity threats affects the importance placed on the use of standards and certification as an approach

Towards a Reliable Comparison and Evaluation of Network Intrusion Detection Systems Based on Machine Learning Approaches

Presently, we are living in a hyper-connected world where millions of heterogeneous devices are continuously sharing information in different application contexts for wellness, improving communications, digital businesses, etc. However, the bigger the number of devices and connections are, the higher the risk of security threats in this scenario. To counteract against malicious behaviours and preserve essential security services, Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) are the most widely used defence line in communications networks. Nevertheless, there is no standard methodology to evaluate and fairly compare NIDSs. Most of the proposals elude mentioning crucial steps regarding NIDSs validation that make their comparison hard or even impossible. This work firstly includes a comprehensive study of recent NIDSs based on machine learning approaches, concluding that almost all of them do not accomplish with what authors of this paper consider mandatory steps for a reliable comparison and evaluation of NIDSs. Secondly, a structured methodology is proposed and assessed on the UGR'16 dataset to test its suitability for addressing network attack detection problems. The guideline and steps recommended will definitively help the research community to fairly assess NIDSs, although the definitive framework is not a trivial task and, therefore, some extra effort should still be made to improve its understandability and usability further

Misinformation in the loop: the emergence of narratives in Online Social Networks

The interlink between information and belief formation and revision is a fundamental aspect of social dynamics. The growth of knowledge fostered by a hyper-connected world together with the unprecedented acceleration of scientific progress has exposed individuals, governments and countries to an increasing level of complexity to explain reality and its phenomena. Despite the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called collective intelligence, conspiracy theories and other unsubstantiated claims find on the Web a natural medium for their diffusion. Cases in which these kinds of false information are used in political debates are far from unimaginable. In this work, we study the behavior of users supporting different (and opposite) worldviews – i.e. scientific and conspiracist thinking – that commented the posts of the Facebook page of a large italian political party that advocates direct democracy and e-Participation. We find that users supporting different narratives consume political information in a similar way. Moreover, by analyzing the composition of users active on the page in terms of commenting activity, we notice that almost one fifth of them is represented by polarized consumers of conspiracy stories, and those are able to generate almost one third of total comments to the posts of the pag

Contextualising the National Cyber Security Capacity in an Unstable Environment: A Spring Land Case Study.

Threats to global cyber security, including physical, personnel, and information, continue to evolve and spread across a hyper-connected world, irrespective of international borders, in both their elaboration and the scale of their impact. This cyber domain represents a constant challenge to national security, as its socio-technical components are both real and cognisant. The exacerbation of cyber-attacks undermines countries’ stability, its escalation produces a landscape of genuine global threat, and the magnitude of its expanding attack mechanisms creates a ‘tsunami effect’ on national cyber defenses. This paper reviews the current politically unstable state of Spring Land’s cyber security capacity, utilising Interactive Management (IM) approach. It reports the findings of an IM session conducted during a workshop involving a total of 26 participants from the Spring Land National Cyber Security Authority (NCSA), other government agencies. The workshop utilised different IM techniques, such as Idea Writing (IW), Nominal Group Technique (NGT), and Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM). Using trigger questions, based on the dimensions of the Cybersecurity Capacity Maturity Model for Nations (CCMM), a set of objectives was derived to contextualise and support identified the key initiatives for the development of national cyber security capacity in the country

Multi-Factor Authentication: A Survey

Today, digitalization decisively penetrates all the sides of the modern society. One of the key enablers to maintain this process secure is authentication. It covers many different areas of a hyper-connected world, including online payments, communications, access right management, etc. This work sheds light on the evolution of authentication systems towards Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) starting from Single-Factor Authentication (SFA) and through Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). Particularly, MFA is expected to be utilized for human-to-everything interactions by enabling fast, user-friendly, and reliable authentication when accessing a service. This paper surveys the already available and emerging sensors (factor providers) that allow for authenticating a user with the system directly or by involving the cloud. The corresponding challenges from the user as well as the service provider perspective are also reviewed. The MFA system based on reversed Lagrange polynomial within Shamir’s Secret Sharing (SSS) scheme is further proposed to enable more flexible authentication. This solution covers the cases of authenticating the user even if some of the factors are mismatched or absent. Our framework allows for qualifying the missing factors by authenticating the user without disclosing sensitive biometric data to the verification entity. Finally, a vision of the future trends in MFA is discussed.Peer reviewe

Transizione ecologica e universo fisico-cibernetico

There is a growing awareness that humanity and the Planet Earth are near to a tipping point, since we are experiencing a critical transition phase, resulting from a hyper-connected world, where global interactive structures and cumulative feedback evolve. It follows an increasing systemic complexity at all levels, hence uncertainty and instability all decision makers have to deal with. New strategic and operational frameworks are therefore needed. The book aims to provide a theoretical-strategic frame and to suggest he book aims to provide a strategic-operational frame and to suggest both an operational architecture and mechanisms suitable for assessing the effectiveness of strategic choices