Week 14 Exercises: Cybersecurity is Bullshit

This is the final week of the semester. Come prepared to class by choosing a case study for your final paper and reading about it. You don’t need to have your final paper written yet, but come prepared to talk about it. I will ask each student to briefly summarize what the incident is, and why you think the incident is an interesting incident to analyze.

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The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined the word “bullshit” to refer to a form of falsehood similar to but distinct from a lie. The lier knows and cares about the trust, but deliberately sets out to mislead their listener. The bullshitter, on the other hand, does not care about the truth and whether what they say is true or false. Bullshit, then, is a form of falsehood that manipulates people by not caring whether it is true or not.

Dr. Odlyzko originally titled his paper “Cybersecurity is Bullshit”. He ended up changing his title because he was wanted to make a different point. But talking with him, he also wants to write a paper arguing that cybersecurity is bullshit.

But what do you think? Using Frankfurt’s idea of bullshit, do you think cybersecurity is bullshit? That is, do you think the advice you hear from “cybersecurity experts” is bullshit – not a lie, but also not something that the experts care if it is true or false?