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            L  E  G  A  L  *  I  M  P  L  I  C  A  T  I  O  N  S  *

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                              What is Cyberspace?

                 David G.W. Birch & S. Peter Buck, Hyperion 1


    WHAT IS CYBERSPACE?

    Introduction

In a recent issue of  the  Computer  Law  &  Security Report [1], Bernard Zajac
suggested that readers might want to  peruse  some of the "cyberpunk" novels-in
particular the works of William  Gibson-in  order  to  gain an insight into the
organisation and behaviour of hackers.   While wholly commending the incitement
to read Gibson's work, we feel that this view understates the breadth of vision
of the cyberpunk  genre  and  could  mislead,  because  the  "console  men" and
"keyboard cowboys" of Gibson's works  are  not  really  the  same people as the
hackers of today.  We  thought  it  might  therefore  be  both entertaining and
stimulating to provide readers with an overview  of the world of cyberspace and
to draw attention to some elements of  the  works  where we feel that there are
indeed some points worth further analysis and discussion.  Is it possible that,
like Arthur C. Clarke's much vaunted  prediction of the communication satellite
[2], Gibson has  produced  works  which  are  not  so  much  science fiction as
informed prediction? Gibson is not the only cyberpunk author, but he has become
probably the most well-known.  Essential reading  includes his books Count Zero
[3], Neuromancer [4], Burning  Chrome  [5]  and  Mona  Lisa Overdrive [6].  For
readers new to the  subject,  Mirroshades   [7]  is  an  excellent anthology of
cyberpunk short stories which gives  an  overview  of the spectrum of cyberpunk
writing.


    Cyberspace

    Description

Cyberspace is an extension of the  idea  of virtual reality.  Instead of seeing
computer data converted into pictures that come  from human experience (as in a
flight simulator), or extensions from  human  experience (such as the "desktop"
metaphor  used  with  personal   computers),  cyberspace  comprises  computers,
telecommunications, software and data in a more  abstract form.  At the core of
cyberspace is the matrix or the Net: "The Net... joins all of the computers and
telephones on Earth.  It is formed  by  radio,  telepho and cellular links with
microwave transmitters beaming information into orbit  and beyond.  In the 20th
century, the Net was only accessible  via  a  computer terminal, using a device
called a modem to send and receive  information.   But  in 2013, the Net can be
entered directly using  your  own  brain,  neural  plugs  and complex interface
programs that turn computer data  into  perceptual  events" View From the Edge,
[8]. In several  places,  reference  is  made  to  the  military  origin of the
cyberspace interfaces:
    "You're a console cowboy.  The prototypes of  the programs you use to crack
industrial banks were developed for [a military operation].  For the assault on
the Kirensk computer nexus.  Basic module  was a Nightwing microlight, a pilot,
a matrix deck, a jockey.  We were running a virus called Mole.  The Mole series
was the first generation of  real  intrusion  programs." Neuromancer, [4]. "The
matrix has its roots in primitive  arcade  games... early graphics programs and
military experimentation  with  cranial  jack"  Neuromancer,  [4].  Gibson also
assumes that in addition to being able to  "jack  in" to the matrix, you can go
through the matrix to jack in to  another person using a "simstim" deck.  Using
the simstim deck, you experience everything  that  the person you are connected
to experiences: "Case hit the simstim switch.  And flipped in to the agony of a
broken bone.  Molly was braced against the  blank grey wall of a long corridor,
her breath coming ragged and uneven.  Case  was back in the matrix instantly, a
white-hot line of pain fading in his  left thigh." Neuromancer, [4]. The matrix
can be a very dangerous  place.   As  your  brain  is connected in, should your
interface program be altered, you will suffer.  If your program is deleted, you
would die.  One of the characters in  Neuromancer is called the Dixie Flatline,
so named because he has survived deletion  in  the  matrix.  He is revered as a
hero of the cyber jockeys: "'Well, if we can get the Flatline, we're home free.
He was the best.   You  know  he  died  braindeath  three  times.'  She nodded.
'Flatlined on his EEG.  Showed me the tapes.'"  Neuromancer, [4]. Incidentally,
the Flatline doesn't exist as a person any more:  his mind has been stored in a
RAM chip which can be connected to the matrix.


Operation

So how does cyberspace work?
   As noted previously, you connect to the matrix through a deck which runs
an interface program: "A silver tide  of  phosphenes  boiled across my field of
vision as the matrix began to unfold in my head, a 3-D chessboard, infinite and
perfectly transparent.  The Russian program seemed  to  lurch as we entered the
grid. If anyone else had been jacked  in  to  that part of the matrix, he might
have seen a surf of flickering  shadow  ride  out  of the little yellow pyramid
that represented our computer." Burning Chrome, [5]. "Tick executed the transit
in real  time,  rather  than  the  bodyless,  instantaneous  shifts  ordinarily
employed in the matrix.   The  yellow  plain,  he  explained, roofed the London
Stock Exchange and related City  entities...  'Th's  White's,' Tick was saying,
directing her attention to a  modest  grey  pyramid,  'the  club in St. James'.
Membership directory, waiting list..." Mona  Lisa  Overdrive, [6]. Is this view
of operating  computers  and  communications  networks  by  moving  around  inn
ethereal machine-generated  world  really  that  far-fetched?   When  the first
virtual reality (VR) units for personal computers will probably be in the shops
by next Christmas?  If you still  think  that  VR is science fiction, note that
British television viewers will shortly be tuning in to a new game show (called
"CyberZone") where the digital  images  of  teams  of  players equipped with VR
helmets, power gloves and  pressure  pads  will  fight  it  out  in a computer-
generated world (built using 16 IBM PCs fronting an ICL master computer).


    Cyber World

    Organisation

The world of cyberpunk is near future (say, 50 years at the maximum) Earth.
    Nation states and their governments are unimportant and largely irrelevant.
The  world   is   run   by   giant   Japanese-American-European   multinational
conglomerates,  the  zaibatsu.   Gibson  frequently  uses  Japanese  words  and
Japanese slang to reinforce the expanding  role  of  Japan  in the world and in
society.  In the same way that business has agglomerated on a global scale, the
mafia have merged with the  Japanese  gangs,  the  yakuza.  The zaibatsu are in
constant conflict and the yakuza are  their  agents:  "Business has no stake in
any political system per  se.   Business  co-operates  to  the  extent that co-
operation furthers its own interests. And  the  primary interest of business is
growth and dominance.  Once the  establishment  of  Free Enterprise Zones freed
corporations from all constraints, they  reverted  to  a primal struggle, which
continues to this day."  Stone  Lives,  [9].  Far  fetched?  Again, not really.
Even as we sat down to  write  this  article, the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of
Nomura (the world's largest  financial  institution)  were resigning because of
their  links  with  organised  crime:  "Sceptics   say  that  four  decades  of
accommodation between police, politicians  and  yakuza  will  not be overturned
simply by new legislation. There  are  believed  to be almost 100,000 full-time
gangsters in Japan, a quarter of  whom  belong to the Yamaguchi-Gumi, a mammoth
organisation with 900 affiliates  and  a  portfolio  of operations ranging from
prostitution,  drugs  and  share  speculation  to  run-of-the  mill  protection
rackets" [10]. Herein  lies  a  major  feature  of  Gibson's  books.  The cyber
jockeys are not student pranksters or  teenage hackers messing about with other
peoples' computers for fun or mischief (The  Lord  of the Files, [11]):  by and
large they are either working for  the  zaibatsu  or  the yakuza and their (for
profit)  activities  revolve   around   industrial   espionage   and  sabotage.
Information A fundamental theme  running  through  most cyberpunk literature is
that (in the near future  Earth)  commodities  are unimportant.  Since anything
can be manufactured, very cheaply, manufactured goods (and the commodities that
are needed to create them) are  no  longer  central to economic life.  The only
real commodity is information.  In fact,  in  many  ways, the zaibatsu are th e
information that they own: "But  weren't  the  zaibatsu  more like that, or the
yakuza, hives with cybernetic memories,  vast  single  organisms with their DNA
coded in silicon?" Neuromancer, [4]. Naturally,  with information so vital, the
zaibatsu go to great lengths to protect their data.  In Johnny Mnemonic, one of
Gibson's short stories, the eponymous "hero" has  data hidden in his own memory
to keep it safe from the yakuza: "The  stored  data are fed in through a series
of microsurgical contraautism prostheses.'  I reeled  off  a numb version of my
standard sales pitch. 'Client's code is stored  in a special chip... Can't drug
it out, cut it  out,  rture  it  out.   I  don't  know  it,  never did." Johnny
Mnemonic, [12]. With information  so  fundamental  to  the  business world, the
mechanics of business are vastly different  from  those we know at present.  In
our current product- and service-based business  world,  we are used to dealing
with items that can be stamped, traced,  taxed, counted and measured.  When the
primary commodity is information,  these  attributes  no  longer  apply and the
structure of the business world is different.  This has already been recognised
by many people, including  the  well-known  management consultant Peter Drucker
[13]: "So far most computer  users  still  use  the  new  technology only to do
faster what they have done before, crunch conventional numbers.  But as soon as
a company takes  the  first  tentative  steps  from  data  to  information, its
decision processes, management structure and even the way it gets its work done
begin to be transformed."


    Net Running

Hacking is too trivial and undescriptive a term to use for the unauthorised and
illegal activities of the cyber jockeys in  cyberspace.  A much better terms is
"Net running". "They found their 'paradise'...  on  the jumbled border of a low
security academic grid.  At  first  glance  it  resembled  the kind of graffiti
student operators somimes left at the  junction  of grid lines, faint glyphs of
coloured light that shimmered against  the  confused  outlines  of a dozen arts
faculties.  'There,' said the Flatline.  'the blue one.  Make it out? That's an
entry code for Bell Europa.  Fresh,  too."  Neuromancer, [4]. Everywhere in the
Net, there is  "ice".   Ice  is  security  countermeasures  software.   The Net
runners spend most of their  time  in  the  matrix encountering, evaluating and
evading  these  countermeasures.   The  encounters  with  ice  are  brilliantly
described in many of Gibson's books:  "We've  crashed her gates disguised as an
audit and three subpoenas, but  her  [the organisation being attacked] defences
are specifically  geared  to  deal  with  that  kind  of  intrusion.   Her most
sophisticated ice is structured to  fend  off writs, warrants, subpoenas.  When
we breached the first gate, the bulk  of  her data vanished behind core command
ice... Five separate landlines spurted May  Day  signals  to law firms, but the
virus had already taken over the  parameter  e...   The Russian program lifts a
Tokyo number from unscreened data, choosing  it for frequency of calls, average
length of calls, the speed with  which [the organisation] returned those calls.
'Okay,' says Bobby, 'we're an  incoming  scrambler  call  from  a  l of hers in
Tokyo.  That should help.'  Ride  'em  cowboy."  Burning Chrome, [14]. The best
ice contains elements of artificial  intelligence  (AI):  "'That's it huh?  Big
green rectangle off left?'   'You  got  it.   Corporate  core data for [another
organisation] and that ice is generated by their two friendly AIs.  On par with
anything in the military sector, looks to me. That's king hell ice, Case, black
as the grave and slick as  glass.   Fry  your  brains  as soon as look at you."
Neuromancer, [4]. These descriptions cannot  be  seen as predictions:  they are
just straightforward extrapolations based on current technology and trends.


    Predictions

So what are the core "predictions" of  cyberpunk  and do they have relevance to
security strategies today? Computer and communications technology is already at
a point where the Net is only a  few  years away.  Charles L. Brown, the CEO of
AT&T, put  it  like  this:  "The  phone  system,  when  coupled  with  computer
technology, permits a person almost anywhere to  plug  in to a world library of
information... Just around  the  bend  is  an  information  network  that would
increase the range of perception of a  single  individual to include all of the
information  available  anywhere  in   the   network's   universe."  [15].  The
development of the  corrate  world  so  that  information  becomes  the primary
commodity is already  underway.   This  does  have  implications  for planning,
because too many existing risk management  policies  are asset-based.  As it is
easier to value a computer than value the information it holds, too much effort
has gone into valuing and  protecting  physical  assets rather than information
assets.  Already, there is  a  good  argument  for  saying that the information
assets are the key [16]: "A new concept of business is taking shape in response
to the info-wars now raging  across  the  world  economy.  As knowledge becomes
more central to the creation of wealth, we begin to think of the corporation as
an enhancer of knowledge."

How will the information assets be valued?   How  will the world of mergers and
acquisitions deal with the problem  of  rate  of return on "intangible" assets.
An interesting parallel can be  drawn  with  the  relatively recent attempts to
value brand names and include the brand  names as assets on balance sheets. The
legal sector is probably even further behind than the security sector. With the
legal system already struggling to catch  up  with the developments in computer
and communications technology, it is hard to imagine how it could come to terms
with cyberspace: "As communications and data processing technology continues to
advance at a pace many times faster  than society can assimilate it, additional
conflicts have begun to occur on the border between cyberspace and the physical
world." [17]. In fact, these  conflicts  are  already  causing many problems as
evidenced by recent events and  court  cases  in  the U.S. [18]: "Do electronic
bulletin boards that may list  stolen  access  codes enjoy protection under the
First Amendment?" "How can privacy be ensured when computers record every phone
call, cash withdrawal and credit-card  transaction.  What "property rights" can
be protected in digital  electronic  systems  that  can  create copies that are
indistinguishable from the real thing." "  Ten  months after the Secret Service
shut down the  [electronics  bulletin  boards],  the  Government  still has not
produced any indictments.  And several similar  cases that have come before the
courts have been badly flawed.  One  Austin-based game publisher whose bulletin
board system was seized last March is  expected  soon to sue the Government for
violating his civil liberties."


Summary

We hope that this brief overview of the
world of cyberpunk has done justice to  the  excellent books from which we have
quoted and encouraged some readers to  dip  into the collection. So is Gibson's
work an example of  a  science  fiction  prediction  that  will  prove to be as
accurate as Clarke's prediction of  the  communications satellite?  Not really:
the world that Gibson writes about is more  a well thought out extension of the
situation at present than a  radical  prediction.   After  all, as Gordon Gekko
(the character played by Michael Douglas)  says  in  the film Wall Street, "The
most valuable commodity I know of is information.  Wouldn't you agree?"

References
1.  Zajac, B., Ethics & Computing (Part  II). Computer Law and Security Report,
    1991. 7(2).
2.  Clarke, A.C., Extraterrestrial Relays, in Wireless World. 1945, p. 305-308.
3.  Gibson, W., Count Zero. 1987, London: Grafton.
4.  Gibson, W., Neuromancer. 1984, New York: Ace.
5.  Gibson, W., Burning Chrome. 1987, New York: Ace.
6.  Gibson, W., Mona Lisa Overdrive. 1989, London: Grafton.
7.  Sterling, B., ed. Mirrorshades. 1988, Paladin: London.
8.  View from the Edge-The Cyberpunk Handbook. 1988, R. Talsorian Games Inc.
9.  Fillipo, P.D., Stone Lives,  in  Mirrorshades,  B.  Sterling, Editor. 1988,
    Paladin: London.
10. Japan's Mafia Takes on a 6bn Business, in The Guardian. 1991, London.
11. Girvan and Jones,  The  Lord  of  the  Files,  in  Digital Dreams, Barrett,
    Editor. 1990, New English Library: London.
12. Gibson, W., Johnny Mnemonic, in Burning Chrome. 1987, Ace: New York.
13. Cane, A., Differences of Culture  and  Technology,  in The Financial Times.
    1991, London. p. European IT Supplement.
14. Gibson, W., Burning Chrome, in Burning Chrome. 1987, Ace: New York.
15. Wurman, R.S., Information Anxiety. 1991, London: Pan.
16. Toffler, A., Total Information  War,  in  Power  Shift. 1991, Bantam Books:
    London.
17. Barlow, Coming in to the Country. Communications of the ACM, 1991. 34(3).
18. Elmer-Dewitt, P., Cyberpunks and the Constitution, in Time. 1991, p. 81.


    Authors

David Birch graduated  from  the  University  of  Southampton  and  then joined
Logica, where he spent several  years  working  as a consultant specialising in
communications.  In 1986 he was one of the founders of Hyperion.  He has worked
on a wide range of information technology projects in the U.K., Europe, the Far
East and North  America  for  clients  as  diverse  as  the International Stock
Exchange, IBM and the Indonesian PTT.  David was appointed Visiting Lecturer in
Information Technology Management at  the  City  Univeristy  Business School in
1990 and was one of the founder members of the Highfield EDI and legal security
business research group.  His Cyberspace  address is 100014,3342 on Compuserve.
Peter Buck graduated from the  Imperial  College  and  spent  10 years with the
International Stock Exchange, where he  was  co-architect of SEAQ, the computer
system that was at the heart of the City's "big bang"  He then joined Hyperion,
where  he  is  a  Senior   Consultant   working   in   the  field  of  advanced
communications.   His  work  on  the   application   of  satellite  and  mobile
communications-for clients including Mercury, Dow  Jones and SWIFT-for business
has put him at the leading-edge of work in these fields.


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