Man-on-the-Side Attack

Wing Yiu Lo

A man-on-the-side attack is a form of active attack in computer security, where attackers are able to read the traffic, intercept messages and embed malwares. The attacker relies on a timing advantage to make sure that the response he sends to the request of a victim arrives before the legitimate response. In recent decades, advancements of technology have resulted in developments of greater diversity of cyber attacks. When individuals experience cyber attacks, a similar techniques can be applied to anyone, ranging from individuals to the state.Although governments often implement greater cyber security measures, similar attack techniques such as man on the side attack can be applied to them, which poses geopolitical risks within nations. Geopolitical risks can be defined as conflicts and choices that are associated with threats against any aspect of social or economic life within or between nations. In this blog, I’ll be highlighting how man-on-the-side attack stimulates risks within nations and how they can respond.

In the article, “Cyber Attacks and Terrorism: A Twenty-First Century Conundrum”, it looked into reasons behind the increasing popularity of cyber attacks among the terrorist organizations. The article concluded that the DDOS attack, a form of man on the side attack, ended up having the highest risk and vulnerability for computer users because this attack can be carried out easily with limited IT skills but can result in great damage. Terrorism would most likely threaten the nation’s security through malicious intrusions, temporary disruption of services, data breaches and espionage activities. When terrorists can easily get hold of a  country’s information, the country easily becomes more susceptible to  future threats and  damages.

Geopolitics intervene when nations make decisions in resolving conflicts to ensure the best interest for themselves. For example, when a nation hacks into another country’s system and retrieves data, this may negatively impact a nation’s security or even steal technologies to empower their own nation. There are several ways of responding and preventing man-on-the-side attacks, including promoting digital safety and security, enhancing crisis response, or using the Whisper tool and other malware detecting software.

 1.  Promoting digital safety and security through knowledge, skills and innovation

The government should urge technological firms to perform advanced research and development (R&D) to produce safe digital technologies and safe digital infrastructures. For example in Austria, this is one of the main strategies that the government aims to adopt for security technology development. This enhances the safe and secure digital practices at all levels of society. R&D may include developing and strengthening cyber-security programmes and providing training for the emergence of cyber-security experts. 

 2.  Enhancing Crisis Response

As technology advances, there are simultaneously greater varieties of attacks that occur. Governments are encouraged to go beyond their understanding by learning from professional and educational knowledge and to exercise a contingency plan through simulated cyber incidents to gauge a practical level of preparedness. Therefore, this enhances the government’s resilience in mitigating and adapting to risks posed by cyber attacks. The government must be aware of the budget allocatd in anti virus softwares since they have different functionalities. When evaluating each software, the government should draw a balance between the sophistication and type of attacks it covers since no anti softwares can cover for all cyber attacks.

3. Using Whisper tools

In the article, "Attack Directories, Not Caches: Side-Channel Attacks in a Non-Inclusive World.", it advises a detection-based protection strategy is an effective way to detect a wide range of side attacks, such as cache attack, timing attack and power-monitoring attack and is capable of early stage detection through the use of a software tool called Whisper.

References:

  • Haddad, Christian, and Clemens Binder. 2019. "Governing Through Cybersecurity: National Policy Strategies, Globalized (In‑)Security And Sociotechnical Visions Of The Digital Society." Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 44(S1):115-134

  • Douzet, Frederick. 2014. "Understanding Cyberspace with Geopolitics". In Hérodote 152(1): 3-21

  • Albahar, Marwan. 2017. "Cyber Attacks And Terrorism: A Twenty-First Century Conundrum." Science and Engineering Ethics 25(4):993-1008.

  • Yan, Mengjia. Sprabery, Read. Gopireddy, Bhargava. Fletcher, Christopher. Campbell, Roy and Torrelas, Josep. Attack Directories, Not Caches: Side-Channel Attacks in a Non-Inclusive World. . Universiry of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

  • Vasilescu, Cezar. 2012. "Cyber Attacks:Emerging Threats To The 21St Century Critical Information Infrastructures." Obrana a strategie (Defence & Strategy) 12(1):053-072.