Week 8: Hacker culture, Psychological Aspects and Motivation Factors

Individual Assignment #3 Instructions: Hacker Culture and Mitigation Course Objective: Examine hacker culture and related psychological and cultural aspects of cybersecurity from both the malicious actor and user's perspectives. Competencies: Critical thinking, communication skills Each student may choose one of the following organizations (e.g., a private company or a government agency), attack, or perpetrator and should identify a significant past incident in cybercrime or cyberwarfare related to it. The student will fully discuss the specifics of the cyber incident and analyze the motivation of the threat actors/attackers. Analyze the possible motivations of those who worked to defend assets against disruption, and describe motivations of any possible third-parties that may also have been involved. The student will also suggest methods for the organization to discourage hackers or intruders with similar motives and suggest management, policy or technology controls to protect the organization against similar attacks. Organizations, Attacks, and Perpetrators: Home Depot Target Sony Office of Personnel Management Saudi Aramco Turbo Tax NASA Operation Aurora US Bureau of Justice Statistics Stuxnet and Flame (US Government?) Dupont Chemical Boeing Johnson & Johnson Pfizer 4Chan Tricare Medical Opi Israel Sony News of the World Motorola Omega Engineering Syrian Electronic Army Njrat The Jester Blue Army Project Chanology The Estonian Cyberwar Shamoon (Iran?) Your paper should describe the type of incident and the actors: personalities, motivations, and other contributing cultural or psychological characteristics. You will find Module "Psychological Aspects of Cybersecurity" helpful with this assignment. Link your analysis to previous readings, interactive modules, and discussion topics, with appropriate citations. 
 At a minimum, the questions you must address are listed below: a. What descriptive labels might apply to this type of threat/incident? b. Regarding the threat actors: What sort of people would go after this information? Why would they want it? What will/can they do with it? How would they get it? How would potential attackers be identified? c. How would the organization try to discourage, or reduce the incentives that could attract possible threat actors? d. How would the organization protect against, or reduce damaging effects due to attempted attacks? Length 5-7 pages, due at the end of Week 8. Prepare your paper in Word format. It should be double-spaced with one-inch margins all around. The citations and the reference list in the paper should be formatted in accordance with APA 6th edition guidelines. Papers must include: cover page, table of contents, introduction, section headings and subheadings, conclusions, APA compliant in-text citations and list of references, and page numbers. The page count begins with the introduction and ends with the conclusions. The questions asked in the assignment should first be outlined (the outline is not included in the document), then the outline should be used to create the Table of Contents and the document sub-headings. The Introduction should briefly preview each sub-heading in the document. IMPORTANT: Before you submit your paper, you will need to run your assignment through Turnitin.com and receive an originality report. DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO DO THIS. It may take several hours to a day or two for Turnitin.com to do this. After your paper meets all of the stated criteria in the posting, attach the paper AND the originality report in your Assignments Folder by the end of Week 8: Sunday, 11:59 p.m. eastern time.