American Scientist

May-June 2016

Volume: 104 Number: 3

At any given moment, millions of computing systems connected to the Internet are fending off attacks. Security software company Kaspersky Labs has created a real-time global map of cyberthreats that its security network is subjected to (see https://cybermap.kaspersky.com). This image, showing recent attacks over the span of seconds, centers on Europe and Asia, which contain countries often on the top-10 attacked list. (The order changes, but Russia is often first, followed by the United States. Germany is sixth and France is seventh.) Colors in the attacks indicate how the threat was discovered—through a user’s regular screening (red), or in a sweep brought on by a suspicious email attachment (blue), for example. Lines follow the threat from its point of discovery to other places on the globe that are being attacked by the same threat. In “Cybersecurity Is Harder than Building Bridges,” Peter J. Denning and Dorothy E. Denning examine why the protection of cyber systems is such a complicated, messy problem, compared with other large-scale engineering endeavors. (Image courtesy of Kaspersky Lab.)