The Black Unicorn Report for 2021

may be true that there is a human at the start of this chain, it also is true that at some point the human
contribution is minimized to the point of obscurity. That is, potentially, a dangerous time for cyber security.
Imagine, for example, a hivenet created by an especially talented hacker with malicious intent. The hive
wanders through the Internet achieving its mission as assigned by its hacker hive master. But all the time
it's doing the human's bidding, it is learning and training the swarm bots' ML. At what point - if any - do the
swarm bots and the hive thumb their virtual noses at the human and go their own way? Does this mean
that the future of cyber security is an endless battle of the bots with the bots becoming ever-more sentient?
That is a debate for cyber philosophers, not security professionals. But - and this is a big but - what would
we do if that became the case?
About the Author
Dr. Peter Stephenson has reactivated himself to exclusively
focus on deep next generation Infosecurity product analysis
for Cyber Defense Magazine after more than
50 years of active consulting and teaching. His
research is in cyber-legal practice and cyber
threat/intelligence analysis on large-scale
computer networks such as the Internet. Dr.
Stephenson was technology editor for several
years for SC Magazine, for which he wrote for
over 25 years. He is enabled in his research by
an extensive personal research laboratory as
well as a multi-alias presence in the Dark Web.
He has lectured extensively on digital
investigation and security, and has written,
edited or contributed to over 20 books as well
as several hundred articles and peerreviewed
papers in major national and
international trade, technical and scientific
publications. He spent ten years as a
professor at Norwich University teaching
digital forensics, cyber law and information
security. He retired from the university as an
Associate Professor in 2015. Dr. Stephenson
obtained his PhD at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford,
England where his research was in the structured
investigation of digital incidents in complex computing
environments. He holds a Master of Arts degree in
diplomacy with a concentration in terrorism from Norwich
University in Vermont. Dr. Stephenson is a full member, ex
officio board member and CISO of the Vidocq Society
(http://www.vidocq.org). He is a member of the Albany, NY
chapter of InfraGard. He held – but has retired from – the
CCFP, CISM, FICAF and FAAFS designations as well as
currently holding the CISSP (ret) designation.
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