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Studying Neutrality in Cyber-Space: a Comparative Geographical Analysis of Honeypot Responses

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Critical Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 13139))

Abstract

Neutrality has long played a central role in the political and strategic stances of many small states. The impact of neutrality on matters of national security and sovereignty have thus been subject to significant academic interest. With the recent emergence of cyber as a fifth dimension of interstate competition, the impact of permanent state neutrality in this domain has not yet been well characterized.

We examine the reality of this concept using countries with a long-standing history and tradition of neutrality in matters of warfare and foreign policy. A theoretical analysis of the complexities of neutrality and cyber-crime is used to motivate a novel data-driven experimental assessment of real-world outcomes for neutral states.

This experimental study leverages low-interaction honeypots distributed across 13 countries. Delving into more than 1.5 billion network sessions made from these honeypots over an 80-day period reveals more than one million malicious attacks originating from information systems in 177 different countries. Through statistical analysis of these attacks, we find little evidence that low-sophistication adversaries target their attacks with consideration of victim location or state neutrality. Beyond the immediate implications of these findings, we believe the method presented in this paper represents a unique data-driven approach to comparative international study of cyber-neutrality and the global dynamics of cyber-security more broadly.

M. Strohmeier and J. Pavur—Both authors contributed equally to this work.

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Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Dr. Luca Gambazzi for his invaluable support.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any agency of the Swiss government.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Armasuisse Science + Technology, Thun, Switzerland

    Martin Strohmeier & Vincent Lenders

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    James Pavur & Ivan Martinovic

Authors
  1. Martin Strohmeier
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  2. James Pavur
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  3. Ivan Martinovic
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  4. Vincent Lenders
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Martin Strohmeier or James Pavur .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Dimitri Percia David

  2. armasuisse Science and Technology S+T, Thun, Switzerland

    Alain Mermoud

  3. University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Thomas Maillart

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Strohmeier, M., Pavur, J., Martinovic, I., Lenders, V. (2021). Studying Neutrality in Cyber-Space: a Comparative Geographical Analysis of Honeypot Responses. In: Percia David, D., Mermoud, A., Maillart, T. (eds) Critical Information Infrastructures Security. CRITIS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13139. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93200-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93200-8_11

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