The Resaerch Value of Publishing Attacks

Information Security is booming. Companies are making money selling fear and countermeasures. The research community is also extremely active, churn-ing out papers featuring attacks on systems and their components. This includes attacks on traditional IT systems as well as on IT-enhanced systems, such as cars, implantable medical devices, voting systems, and smart meters, which are not primarily IT systems but have increasing amounts of IT inside. Moreover, any new paper on analysis methods for critical systems is now considered incom-plete without a collection of security-relevant scalps on its belt. Pretty much every system imaginable, critical or not, is now a target of attacks. There are good reasons for this trend. Fear sells! Headlines are good for con-ference attendance, readership, and tenure cases. Moreover, negative messages about successful attacks are simple and understandable by the general public, much more so than other research results. And security and insecurity are, after all, two sides of the same coin. Seek and ye shall fin