Watching the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of the Doctor, got me thinking a lot about time. Time is a difficult thing to define and describe. Think about it for a second, which is, of course, just a bit of time. How would you define "time?" We know that different people, and indeed whole peoples, perceive time differently. Here is what Dictionary.com says about time:
1. the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
In the U.S. we see time as a commodity. Time is money. This is particularly true in certain places in the U.S., mostly urban areas in the Northeastern part of the country. Researchers were able to determine that the 3 fastest cities in the U.S. are Boston, Buffalo, and New York City. They did this through observations of pedestrians, bank tellers, and postal clerks. Coincidentally, the three slowest-paced cities are Shreveport, Sacramento, and L.A. While the three slowest cities are highly urbanized areas, especially L.A., the pace of life in the South and West are probably influenced by factors that include urban sprawl, less people per square mile, and a higher percentage of non-European ethnic groups.
Psychologists have also noted that people who act as though they have more time to accomplish particular task do actually have more time. How is this possible? Are ordinary people influencing the bending and twisting of time? Of course not. Instead, they are dealing with the stresses of time differently than those who feel the mental pressures that come with being hurried.
So, time is perception. Or, rather, time is relative. This is easily explained in the old adage, "Time flies when you're having fun."* It is common for people to think time passes quickly when they are enjoying themselves and that time drags when they're watching the clock. Indeed, watching a clock tick can actually cause the brain to perceive time moving backward. The eyes move back and forth rapidly and send electric messages to the back of the brain for interpretation. Because the eyes are constantly moving, the part of the brain that interprets sight is far away from the organ that sees, and the brain must flip and process the information it gets (all while performing other functions), the brain has to fill in the gaps in data. For this reason, the second hand appears to move more slowly, or even move backwards when being ogled.
Time is an abstract concept and we tend to think of it in abstract ways. For example, many of us, Young Earth Creationists excluded, have a vague idea of when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And when we think of dinosaurs, we often think of them existing together. But the actuality is that the Mesozoic Era was about 186 millions years long and while dinosaurs existed for roughly that period of time, no one individual species did. Rather, there were huge gaps in time between various species. In fact, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, "The distance in time between Tyrannosaurus and Apatosaurus (formerly called Brontosaurus) is more than the time between Tyrannosaurus and your parents, about 65 million years." Imagine that: we live in time closer to the T. Rex than the T. Rex lived to some other dinosaurs!
Even scaling back to the last few thousand years, similar time perceptions abound. The last Pharaoh of Egypt was Cleopatra, who lived from 69 BCE to 30 BCE. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built during Pharaoh Khufu's reign between 2589–2566 BCE. Thus, Cleopatra lived closer to the Industrial Revolution, the first airplane, the moon landing, the invention of the Internet, and everything else that happens for the next 475+ years than she lived to the building of that pyramid. To confuse things a little more, the boy king, Tutankhamun, reigned over Egypt about halfway between the two.
Speaking of the Industrial Revolution and the moon landing, it is no surprise that technological advances result in the quicker passage of time before the next technological advancement. Homo habilis, also known as the Handy Man, was the first species in the genus Homo and lived approximately 2 million years ago. Handy Man is the earliest known tool-maker. While Homo habilis is much more ape-like than modern human-like, we can say that human, or Homo, technology began with him and his Olduwan stone tools. It took about 900 thousand years to get from simple bangers and scrapers to a stone axe and another 100 thousand to control fire.
Around 200 thousand years ago, Homo sapiens burst onto the scene and technology begins to pick up the pace. About 100 thousand years ago, a wide array of stone stools are used by ancient humans. By 15,000 BCE, humans have domesticated animals, made clothing from a wide range of materials, been storing food and other items in ceramic pots, and crafted all sorts of ideological art, mostly out of clay, wood, and stone. Between 8000 BCE and 0 BCE, copper, bronze, and iron tools and weapons are smelted, the wheel and writing systems are invented, vast cities with enormous buildings rise up, and geographically dispersed bartering systems are adopted. In the next 1900 years, the world goes from isolated pockets of people to a true global society with major advances in science and the invention of large ships, the steam engine, railway systems, the printing press, and the telephone.
Over the last 113 years, technology has increased exponentially, from the first automobiles and airplanes to space flight, nuclear weapons, the internet and mobile technology, and large hadron colliders that allow us to smash subatomic particles together to study particle physics and quantum mechanics. All of this has happened since the first ancient humans walked the Earth, between 2.4 and 1.4 million years ago. And the Earth is 4.54 billion years old! To put it into perspective, if all of Earth's history were compressed into a 24 hour period, modern humans wouldn't show up until about 40 seconds before midnight.
I could keep waxing philosophical about time, and I likely will in future posts, but for now I will share some interesting time-related facts that I found while Google surfing the last few days. But before I do, I would like to pose the question, does time have a direction?
Fun facts about time:
Will Smith is now older than Uncle Phil was when Fresh Prince of Bel Air started.
All of the blinking in one day equates to having your eyes closed for 30 minutes.
The average person will spend 25 years asleep.
Rock beneath Niagara Falls is worn away at a rate of about a metre a year by the flow of water from Lake Erie 165ft above.
Bristlecone pines are the oldest single organisms on Earth, some having lived more than 5,000 years.
The average U.S. city commuter loses 38 hours a year to traffic delays.
Time changes over time. Because the Earth’s rotation isn’t perfectly reliable for how we define a second and tidal friction from the sun and moon slows our planet's rotation, the length of a day actually grows by 3 milliseconds per century. This means that in the Mesozoic Era, each day only lasted 23 hours.
Because time slows with Earth’s slowing rotation, a “leap second” must be added every few years, most recently this past New Year’s Eve.
The world’s most accurate clock, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, measures vibrations of a single atom of mercury. In a billion years it will not lose one second.
Einstein was able to show that gravity affects time. Gravity actually slows time. As a side effect, airplane passengers, age a few extra nanoseconds each flight because they are further away from the gravitational pull of the Earth's core.
According to quantum theory, the shortest moment of time that can exist is known as Planck time, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second.
Time has not always existed. Many scientists believe it was created at the same time (pun intended) as the rest of the universe during the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.
As there is a beginning, there shall also be an end. But don't worry, most scientists believe it is about 4 billion years away, judging by the currently observable expansion of the universe. Many guess that humans will be long gone by the time time stops.
And this is one for the faithful: According to 17th Century Archbishop of Armagh James Usher, the Earth was created on the evening of Saturday, October 22, 4004BC. He determined this by adding up the family histories mentioned in the Bible going all the way back to the creation of Adam and Eve. (I know, I know - it's not a fact!)
------------------
* It is important to note that one study shows that time seems to go more slowly for study participants when they listened to music they enjoyed.
29 November 2013
07 November 2013
Evolutionary Bias in Social Engineering
Last year I was invited to talk at the Brain Tank Minicon in Providence, Rhode Island. Having recently spoken at numerous other conferences on a rather narrow set of IT security-related topics, I decided to take my talk in a different direction. Now, I present a blogged version of that talk: Evolutionary Bias in Social Engineering.
While I have spent the bulk of professional career in cybersecurity, my academic background is in anthropology, the study of man. So, in a sense, my experience is a mix of Indiana Jones and Kevin Mitnick. Then again, anthropology has four main subfields – archaeology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and biological or forensic anthropology – the latter three being where I tended to focus. And, while I was once more active on the technical side, I now mostly supervise staff or run vulnerability management, so, I suppose I’m more of a Temperance Brennan meets Michael Scott. While this isn’t the best combination for being popular in social settings, it does provide me with a unique perspective on social engineering.
Social engineering, or SE, simply put, is con-artistry. It is trickery and deception. It is the act of manipulating the human. And anthropology can provide insight into both sides of the issue: the attacker and the victim.
As stated above, anthropology is the study of man – or more accurately, the study of humans. Anthropological studies come in many forms, from researching old tomes to digging up old house wares to observing peoples in various environments to conducting surveys to affecting policy to studying non-human animals. Whatever broad subject matter the anthropologist is researching, it generally falls under one of the following umbrella items: artifacts, culture, language, or evolution.
The phrase “human nature” is often used in casual conversation. Human nature means something very different to an anthropologist than it does to the average person. When an anthropologist says it, they are talking about something that exists across cultures – all cultures – not present in one. Human nature, therefore, is best described as innate human behavior, exhibited by persons in all human societies. For example, language and language abstraction are part of human nature. Every society has at least one language and every language offers some form of conveying the abstract. While it is certainly arguable that other animals possess language, none have the observable ability to express abstract thoughts through that language. A shortlist of human universals includes: kin relationships, status determinations, materialism, fear of strangers/outsiders, facial expressions of emotion, facial recognition, sexual jealousy, use of weapons and tools, use of humor, and on the more negative side of the scale social manipulation, selfishness, greediness, impatience, ambition, and vanity, to name a few.
Social engineers rely on these human universals. They operate on the assumption that their tactics will work across people of varying backgrounds, social classes, ages, sexes, religions, and a wide variety of other differences. Why do they take advantage of these things?
It all comes down to one thing: sex.
Sexual reproduction leads to evolutionary changes in species over time. Evolution is a succinct way of saying “genetic changes, or changes in traits, in a species over successive generations.” In order for evolution to occur, the traits that must be heritable and they must be variable. Heritability refers to the passing of traits from one generation to the next through DNA. Variability is a product of a gene and the environment. In scientific terms, a genotype is the actually makeup of genes, while the phenotype is the physical representation of those genes. For example, a person with brown eyes may actually have genes for both brown and blue eyes. If so, that person’s phenotype is brown-eyed, while his genotype is Brown-blue.
We evolve traits that lead to higher reproductive success because reproductively successful parents pass down reproductively successful traits. We are all the products of reproductively successful parents. Keep in mind sexual reproduction isn’t perfect, and sometimes anomalies such as gene mutations, extra chromosomes, missing chromosomes, etc., occur that do not result in higher reproductive success.
Contrary to the popular beliefs of the 19th Century (and of some religious groups today), genes do not blend, they shuffle. This keeps variability, and thus, sexual competition, high. Think about it like this: two parents, one with blue-eyes and blond hair and the other with brown eyes and black hair, have 3 children. If genes blended, all three children would look the same with light brown eyes and brown hair. Instead, because genes shuffle, while all three children look like siblings, they are all unique.
Woman have far fewer reproductive cells (or gametes) than males. At birth, a woman has the highest number of the eggs she will ever have. In contrast, a man’s testes produce sperm throughout his entire life. Thinking about these gametes as commodities, the reproductive value for women is high, while it is quite low for males.
According to evolutionary psychologists, women exhibit a genetic preference for mates who can provide resources (food, shelter, resistance to parasites, etc.) to themselves and their children. Ideal mates for women include those with high social status, good health, and access to valuable material possessions such as money, a home, and food. Men exhibiting these characteristics tend to have more children.
What does this have to do with SE? The sexual selection pressures place on males pushes them to compete for access to resources and more power to increase the likelihood that they will be able to reproduce. SE, like many other competitive (often criminal) activities, allows men to eliminate potential rivals by taking away from the rivals and gaining for themselves. In other words, sexual reproduction leads to male competition. Men compete for access to women and to resources. As a result, a significantly disproportionate number of males are criminals, especially violent offenders.
Genetic traits associated with aggressive behavior, SE, violence, and other criminal behavior likely evolved before the ape-hominid split approximately 5 to 8 million years ago and possibly even before the ape-monkey split 15 to 20 million years ago. While aggressive behavior is observed in males of many animal species, apes have been observed engaging in decidedly tricky behavior. Regardless of when these traits initially evolved, the human brain has changed little in the last 10,000 years. We exhibit the same basic traits our distant ancestors exhibited. We essentially have “caveman brains.”
This may leave you wondering why, if males are genetically “programmed” to be competitive, are men susceptible to SE? The answer lies in another aspect of anthropological study: culture.
Our culture makes us vulnerable to aggressive actions through a number of factors including our reliance on social bonds, our tendency to trust, aversion to loss, fear of or respect for authority, and a seemingly natural desire to be helpful, among others. Looking at that shortlist, it may be easy to dismiss some of those items as cultural. Keep in mind that culture remains one of the hardest things to define and describe accurately in the English language. From the anthropological perspective alone it can mean many things. For the purposes of this article, culture is probably best described as generically as “a way of life.” Culture can also be thought of as a method of human progression.
Humans lack the protective mechanisms that other creatures have. Humans don’t have claws, thick fur, sharp teeth, or camouflage. Our culture is our defense mechanism. While we may not run all that fast and may not be very good at climbing trees, we have the ability to create weapons. We may not have thick fur or layers of blubber to protect us from the cold weather, but we have tools that can make fire and we can fashion clothing out of animal skins. Our sense of smell is not as heightened as it is in many animals, but we can warn others through the use of spoken and written languages where our enemies are located, which berries are safe to eat, and which part of the forest has the easiest prey. For those things we cannot fashion, grow, or hunt ourselves, we have developed bartering systems. The development of advanced technology has allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain and spread our kind over the entire globe. This is all because of our culture. We have survived where other creatures cannot because of our culture.
Culture creates mechanisms for the development of trust, learning, sharing, likability, and, thus, survival. As a result, culture has guided us to create trade, economics, business, government, religion, art, and music among many other things. It should be no surprise that anyone can take advantage of the cultural mechanisms for greater influence. For example, people tend to do favors for those who are generous to them. This is the basic rule of reciprocity. Giving gifts, material or otherwise, to people without reason will most likely result in a feeling that they owe you. The gift receiver will feel external and internal pressure to reciprocate with a “gift” of equal value, such as a favor or an item of monetary or other value. Similarly, we tend to assign value to items that are of limited supply. Businesses take advantage of this all the time, socially engineering their customers to the bank. Apple, Microsoft, and other technology manufacturers limit their early supply of technology to keep demand high and maximize early profits. Retailers like Target, Amazon, and QVC are always quick to point out when they have a “Limited Supply! Act Now!” EBay has made an entire enterprise from the idea that people will pay more when they know others want the same item. As one person bids, countless others stand by trying to decide if they should bid now or hold out to the final seconds.
And back to sex. We developed culture because we had no other defense mechanism. As we gained other evolutionary advantages – walking upright, bigger brains, language, etc. – we lost our tree swinging abilities, our huge fangs, and all of our fur. And while humans are the sexiest apes, and I mean that literally – we have the some of the largest penises and breasts relative to our bodies – we are just that: sexy apes. We maintain our aggressive sex-fueled competitiveness. And while men tend to be the more cutthroat sex, we are also more easily fooled by sex. Women could be particularly good social engineers by simply being sexy. Just visit your local gentlemen’s club for evidence.
If you are interested in reading more on the subject, I highly suggest the following resources:
• http://www.aaanet.org/resources/
• http://www.anthropologie.net/
• The Evolution of Desire, David M. Buss
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
• Evolution and Human Behavior (journal)
While I have spent the bulk of professional career in cybersecurity, my academic background is in anthropology, the study of man. So, in a sense, my experience is a mix of Indiana Jones and Kevin Mitnick. Then again, anthropology has four main subfields – archaeology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and biological or forensic anthropology – the latter three being where I tended to focus. And, while I was once more active on the technical side, I now mostly supervise staff or run vulnerability management, so, I suppose I’m more of a Temperance Brennan meets Michael Scott. While this isn’t the best combination for being popular in social settings, it does provide me with a unique perspective on social engineering.
Social engineering, or SE, simply put, is con-artistry. It is trickery and deception. It is the act of manipulating the human. And anthropology can provide insight into both sides of the issue: the attacker and the victim.
As stated above, anthropology is the study of man – or more accurately, the study of humans. Anthropological studies come in many forms, from researching old tomes to digging up old house wares to observing peoples in various environments to conducting surveys to affecting policy to studying non-human animals. Whatever broad subject matter the anthropologist is researching, it generally falls under one of the following umbrella items: artifacts, culture, language, or evolution.
The phrase “human nature” is often used in casual conversation. Human nature means something very different to an anthropologist than it does to the average person. When an anthropologist says it, they are talking about something that exists across cultures – all cultures – not present in one. Human nature, therefore, is best described as innate human behavior, exhibited by persons in all human societies. For example, language and language abstraction are part of human nature. Every society has at least one language and every language offers some form of conveying the abstract. While it is certainly arguable that other animals possess language, none have the observable ability to express abstract thoughts through that language. A shortlist of human universals includes: kin relationships, status determinations, materialism, fear of strangers/outsiders, facial expressions of emotion, facial recognition, sexual jealousy, use of weapons and tools, use of humor, and on the more negative side of the scale social manipulation, selfishness, greediness, impatience, ambition, and vanity, to name a few.
Social engineers rely on these human universals. They operate on the assumption that their tactics will work across people of varying backgrounds, social classes, ages, sexes, religions, and a wide variety of other differences. Why do they take advantage of these things?
It all comes down to one thing: sex.
Sexual reproduction leads to evolutionary changes in species over time. Evolution is a succinct way of saying “genetic changes, or changes in traits, in a species over successive generations.” In order for evolution to occur, the traits that must be heritable and they must be variable. Heritability refers to the passing of traits from one generation to the next through DNA. Variability is a product of a gene and the environment. In scientific terms, a genotype is the actually makeup of genes, while the phenotype is the physical representation of those genes. For example, a person with brown eyes may actually have genes for both brown and blue eyes. If so, that person’s phenotype is brown-eyed, while his genotype is Brown-blue.
We evolve traits that lead to higher reproductive success because reproductively successful parents pass down reproductively successful traits. We are all the products of reproductively successful parents. Keep in mind sexual reproduction isn’t perfect, and sometimes anomalies such as gene mutations, extra chromosomes, missing chromosomes, etc., occur that do not result in higher reproductive success.
Contrary to the popular beliefs of the 19th Century (and of some religious groups today), genes do not blend, they shuffle. This keeps variability, and thus, sexual competition, high. Think about it like this: two parents, one with blue-eyes and blond hair and the other with brown eyes and black hair, have 3 children. If genes blended, all three children would look the same with light brown eyes and brown hair. Instead, because genes shuffle, while all three children look like siblings, they are all unique.
Woman have far fewer reproductive cells (or gametes) than males. At birth, a woman has the highest number of the eggs she will ever have. In contrast, a man’s testes produce sperm throughout his entire life. Thinking about these gametes as commodities, the reproductive value for women is high, while it is quite low for males.
According to evolutionary psychologists, women exhibit a genetic preference for mates who can provide resources (food, shelter, resistance to parasites, etc.) to themselves and their children. Ideal mates for women include those with high social status, good health, and access to valuable material possessions such as money, a home, and food. Men exhibiting these characteristics tend to have more children.
What does this have to do with SE? The sexual selection pressures place on males pushes them to compete for access to resources and more power to increase the likelihood that they will be able to reproduce. SE, like many other competitive (often criminal) activities, allows men to eliminate potential rivals by taking away from the rivals and gaining for themselves. In other words, sexual reproduction leads to male competition. Men compete for access to women and to resources. As a result, a significantly disproportionate number of males are criminals, especially violent offenders.
Genetic traits associated with aggressive behavior, SE, violence, and other criminal behavior likely evolved before the ape-hominid split approximately 5 to 8 million years ago and possibly even before the ape-monkey split 15 to 20 million years ago. While aggressive behavior is observed in males of many animal species, apes have been observed engaging in decidedly tricky behavior. Regardless of when these traits initially evolved, the human brain has changed little in the last 10,000 years. We exhibit the same basic traits our distant ancestors exhibited. We essentially have “caveman brains.”
This may leave you wondering why, if males are genetically “programmed” to be competitive, are men susceptible to SE? The answer lies in another aspect of anthropological study: culture.
Our culture makes us vulnerable to aggressive actions through a number of factors including our reliance on social bonds, our tendency to trust, aversion to loss, fear of or respect for authority, and a seemingly natural desire to be helpful, among others. Looking at that shortlist, it may be easy to dismiss some of those items as cultural. Keep in mind that culture remains one of the hardest things to define and describe accurately in the English language. From the anthropological perspective alone it can mean many things. For the purposes of this article, culture is probably best described as generically as “a way of life.” Culture can also be thought of as a method of human progression.
Humans lack the protective mechanisms that other creatures have. Humans don’t have claws, thick fur, sharp teeth, or camouflage. Our culture is our defense mechanism. While we may not run all that fast and may not be very good at climbing trees, we have the ability to create weapons. We may not have thick fur or layers of blubber to protect us from the cold weather, but we have tools that can make fire and we can fashion clothing out of animal skins. Our sense of smell is not as heightened as it is in many animals, but we can warn others through the use of spoken and written languages where our enemies are located, which berries are safe to eat, and which part of the forest has the easiest prey. For those things we cannot fashion, grow, or hunt ourselves, we have developed bartering systems. The development of advanced technology has allowed us to rise to the top of the food chain and spread our kind over the entire globe. This is all because of our culture. We have survived where other creatures cannot because of our culture.
Culture creates mechanisms for the development of trust, learning, sharing, likability, and, thus, survival. As a result, culture has guided us to create trade, economics, business, government, religion, art, and music among many other things. It should be no surprise that anyone can take advantage of the cultural mechanisms for greater influence. For example, people tend to do favors for those who are generous to them. This is the basic rule of reciprocity. Giving gifts, material or otherwise, to people without reason will most likely result in a feeling that they owe you. The gift receiver will feel external and internal pressure to reciprocate with a “gift” of equal value, such as a favor or an item of monetary or other value. Similarly, we tend to assign value to items that are of limited supply. Businesses take advantage of this all the time, socially engineering their customers to the bank. Apple, Microsoft, and other technology manufacturers limit their early supply of technology to keep demand high and maximize early profits. Retailers like Target, Amazon, and QVC are always quick to point out when they have a “Limited Supply! Act Now!” EBay has made an entire enterprise from the idea that people will pay more when they know others want the same item. As one person bids, countless others stand by trying to decide if they should bid now or hold out to the final seconds.
And back to sex. We developed culture because we had no other defense mechanism. As we gained other evolutionary advantages – walking upright, bigger brains, language, etc. – we lost our tree swinging abilities, our huge fangs, and all of our fur. And while humans are the sexiest apes, and I mean that literally – we have the some of the largest penises and breasts relative to our bodies – we are just that: sexy apes. We maintain our aggressive sex-fueled competitiveness. And while men tend to be the more cutthroat sex, we are also more easily fooled by sex. Women could be particularly good social engineers by simply being sexy. Just visit your local gentlemen’s club for evidence.
If you are interested in reading more on the subject, I highly suggest the following resources:
• http://www.aaanet.org/resources/
• http://www.anthropologie.net/
• The Evolution of Desire, David M. Buss
• The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
• Evolution and Human Behavior (journal)
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