Читать книгу The Digital Big Bang - Phil Quade - Страница 15

With this assumption of trust, things went off-kilter. That assumption thwarted the parallel development of security, particularly trustworthy authentication, that could have supported the speed and connectivity that would make the Internet transformational.

With the passage in 1992 of the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, research and academic institutions started using this early Internet. Security shortfalls were generally understood, but the circle of institutions that had access remained small and tight-knit. It wasn't until 1993, and the release of the first web browser that Internet access became mainstream. At that point, both the Internet and its security, or lack of security, achieved greater significance.

The assumption of trust that was still deep within the DNA of the Internet became a huge problem the moment the public could go online. On an increasingly vast and anonymous network, that trust soon transformed from guiding philosophy to greatest weakness. As more people arrived, the Internet quickly became a newly discovered continent of naïve users, systems, and networks to be exploited and hacked for digital fraud, grift, or simply to prove it could be done.

Since those first hacks, the field of cybersecurity has struggled to catch up and compensate. Mitigating the weakness—the wrongful assumption of trust and the lack of strong authentication—while still balancing the essential benefits and fundamentals of speed and connectivity, remains an enduring challenge of cybersecurity today.