Offensive AI: The Sine Qua Non of Cybersecurity
Jul 26, 2024
Digital Warfare / Cybersecurity Training
"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime. Yet it is often in the furnace of war that the sharpest tools of peace are forged." - Victor Hugo. In 1971, an unsettling message started appearing on several computers that comprised ARPANET, the precursor to what we now know as the Internet. The message, which read "I'm the Creeper: catch me if you can." was the output of a program named Creeper, which was developed by the famous programmer Bob Thomas while he worked at BBN Technologies. While Thomas's intentions were not malicious, the Creeper program represents the advent of what we now call a computer virus. The appearance of Creeper on ARPANET set the stage for the emergence of the first Antivirus software. While unconfirmed, it is believed that Ray Thomlinson, famously known for inventing email, developed Reaper, a program designed to remove Creeper from Infected Machines. The development of this tool used to defensively chase down and remove