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Predicting User Behavior to Improve Security
CitizenC writes "New computer-monitoring software designed to second-guess the intentions of individual system users could be close to perfect at preventing security breaches, say researchers. Read more." The paper (pdf) is online as well.
if they had any clue about real-world users, they'd know they're absolutely unpredictable. A user's creativeness to mess things up never ceases to amaze.
This would encourage users not to experiment and find new ways of doing tasks, if everytime you tried something new a sysad came round to ask you what you were doing.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
And how long will it be before users start losing privileges for things that they "potentially might do" (with a 94% accuracy rate). About one in 20 of us is really going to suffer for this one.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Any time someone mentions a "success rate" without also mentioning the false positive rate, they're feeding you garbage
.001% false alarm rate means that an innocent worker is going to be interrupted THREE TIMES A YEAR by burly security people at the cube doorway shouting "Hands off that keyboard RIGHT NOW!"
I'd be much more impressed by a claim of an 0.001% false alarm rate than I am by a 94% success rate.
Yet, on a per-line basis, if you assume that a user averages, say, three typed lines per minute, that's 180 lines per hour = 360000 lines per working year.
A
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!