Great news! The Cyber Meta-reality: Beyond the Metaverse, is now available for pre-order on the Rowman and Littlefield Website! Here’s the link:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666909265/The-Cyber-Meta-Reality-Beyond-the-Metaverse
Now that my book is set to be published next year, I thought it might be a good idea to give a little more explanation of what it is about:
Welcome to The Cyber Meta-reality, a non-fiction exploration of the cyber realm and its component parts. The book is written in three sections: 1. The Cyber Meta-reality (CMR), 2. The Cyber Biome, and 3. The Cyber Microbiome. I based the book on two papers I wrote that were published this year at the IEEE Cyber Science 2020 Conference in Dublin City, Ireland and the IARIA Cyber 2020 conference in Nice, France, where the paper was selected for the “Best Paper Award”. Both papers were well-received and have generated interest in the wider cyber community. The Cyber Meta-reality is multi-disciplinary, including topics related to metaphysics, quantum computing, social media, and information warfare, but is still accessible to non-technical readers. With endnotes, the entire work is approximately 91,000 words and spans 16 chapters. Ultimately, The Cyber Meta-reality, is about what cyberspace is; something that has not been completely defined as a domain such as air, land, sea, and space have been. Before you can have a firm grasp on how to live and operate in a domain, you need to know what it is. This book seeks to bridge this gap.
I am now under contract for my book The Cyber Meta-Reality, Biome, and Microbiome: The Complex New World, with Rowman and Littlefield (Lexington Imprint)!
Select this link to read my article concerning Hypergaming for Cyber: Strategy for Gaming a Wicked Problem…here is the abstract:
Cyber as a domain and battlespace coincides with the defined attributes of a “wicked problem” with complexity and inter-domain interactions to spare. Since its elevation to domain status, cyber has continued to defy many attempts to explain its reach, importance, and fundamental definition. Corresponding to these intricacies, cyber also presents many interlaced attributes with other information related capabilities (IRCs), namely electromagnetic warfare (EW), information operations (IO), and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), within an information warfare (IW) construct that serves to add to its multifaceted nature. In this cyber analysis, the concept of hypergaming will be defined and discussed in reference to its potential as a way to examine cyber as a discipline and domain, and to explore how hypergaming can address cyber’s “wicked” nature from the perspectives of decision making, modeling, operational research (OR), IO, and finally IW. Finally, a cyber-centric hypergame model (CHM) will be presented.
Select this link to read my article on Cyber and Emergent Technologies…here is the abstract:
We as a cyber community are now living in a cyber meta-reality (a reality about realities) where scientific and technological advances such as microscopic machines, subatomic energy manipulation, and autonomous technologies, heretofore only imagined in science fiction tales are on the verge of practical use. As the need for new, better, and more secure methods of implementing cyber increases, the unfettered desire for greater bandwidth, stronger encryption, and more rapid processing naturally follows. If the cyber community is to capitalize on new technologies, however, we need to stay acquainted with these emergent technologies and understand their ramifications. Otherwise, we stand the chance of either missing opportunities to advance or being trampled by those who do. Today scientists and technologists are buzzing about quantum entanglement, non-linear wave propagation, and Metal Organic Frameworks (MOF). The United States is in a race to the finish to make the potentialities of these amazing ideas, realities. This paper examines four very specialized technological areas and draws on these technologies to construct a cohesive narrative regarding their interoperability in order to highlight the necessity and ramifications of each area’s contribution to a holistic technological scaffold. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are of course, an increasingly conjoined capability with great promise, yet not fully realized. Emergent technologies related to security such as quantum encryption and multi-factor authentication are rapidly finding their place in the cyber meta-reality. Quantum computing, related to the theory of quantum entanglement and quantum encryption, will likely deliver processing and bandwidth options far beyond current possibilities. Finally, nanotechnologies such as graphene and membrane technology are already in production in some applications and will no doubt become a critical enabler of the entirety of the aforementioned technologies. Additionally, the concept of the cyber microbiome is introduced for consideration.
Select this link for my article on The Cyber Microbiome and the Cyber Meta-reality…here is the abstract:
The cyber realm as an entity continues to evolve and grow. As the Earth and indeed human beings share their chemical/biological physicality with a host of enabling flora and fauna (Earth) and bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and even viruses (humans), the cyber meta-reality (a reality of realities) is growing into a type of non-physical, yet tangible sphere where stripping away or adding to it could have far-reaching ramifications not yet understood. The human microbiome has most recently been estimated to outnumber human cells by several orders of magnitude [1]. A cyber microbiome has already begun to take shape, characterized by viruses, archived data, Dark Web outgrowths, and other symbiotic code and applications that will ostensibly grow rapidly as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) begin to create additional code and data in the future. While the cyber microbiome may not be, in some cases, considered a direct part of the created domain we experience, it certainly must not be stripped away, eradicating the good along with the bad. The cyber microbiome is similar to its planetary and human corollaries in that it contains various undetectable components that serve to support its function in difficult to discern ways. For instance, the Dark Web is much like the unseen portion of the iceberg under the surface. This indicates another way in which the cyber microbiome is so similar to its antecedents; the cyber microbiome is larger than visible cyberspace by many orders of magnitude. This paper examines the concept of the cyber meta-reality with an in-depth analysis of the cyber microbiome and attempts to correlate the symbiotic relationships of these two entities through an examination of the cyberspace most people encounter and the vast underlying cyberspace of which most are oblivious.
Follow this link to my article in the Journal of Information Warfare…here is the abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to offer a methodology using the already mature signature production capabilities offered within the intelligence and electromagnetic warfare fields to develop a similar capability for cyber operators. Not only will the tools and TTPs assist in target and signature production, but they will also make attribution much easier by capturing the common location, profile, and parametric data necessary to identify and to verify adversary identities. In the information related capability (IRC) disciplines of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and electromagnetic warfare (EW), signature production based on parametric data, adversary tactics, techniques, procedures (TTPs), and methodologies have long been the operational answer to the attribution and targeting malaise. Cyber has historically been considered an information related capability to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and electromagnetic warfare and the recent strategic shift to combine these information-related capabilities (along with information operations) into a super-strategic construct offers further connectivity between all of these information related capabilities through TTPs, philosophies, and analytical prowess. Here, the author will further develop how to potentially construct cyber signatures for adversary attribution, tracking, and targeting using intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance analysis and techniques, electromagnetic warfare methods and technology, and will explore how these can be integrated with current cyber methods and analytical scaffolds. Additionally, a conceptual cyber signature capability model will be presented.
Cyber Threat Intelligence and the Cyber Meta-Reality and Cyber Microbiome
Cyber Security 2020 – Threat Intelligence
Hi all! I just wanted to share a link to my presentation on YouTube. Enjoy! Here is the abstract from the paper:
In a cyber meta-reality filled with zero day exploits, autonomous code, Worms modeled from Stuxnet, and the coming onslaught of AI enabled malware, the need for actionable, virtually prescient threat intelligence is paramount. It is almost uniformly recognized that the current reactionary paradigm concerning cyber threats is severely lacking. Cyber threat analysts desperately need a systematic approach to cyber threat characterization and how cyber threats evolve within a greater construct defined here as the cyber microbiome. This paper will first define the concept of the cyber microbiome and its place in what has become the cyber meta-reality. Cyber threats will then be examined in relation to this paradigm and recommendations will be made regarding how threat characterization and genetic mutation can be examined in light of this new, techno-biological understanding.
Here is a link to my most recent article published in Wild Blue Yonder, the US Air Force online professional journal.
“Cyber Underground: Overcoming Obstacles to Cyber in Subterranean Warfare” written by Dr. Josh Sipper, Professor of Cyber Warfare Studies at the Air Force Cyber College, deals with the challenges inherent in the subterranean domain and how to overcome these difficulties using the electromagnetic spectrum and magnetic induction technologies. The article was published in Wild Blue Yonder 11 May 2020.
I haven’t posted anything on here for quite some time. A large part of that is due to the fact that I began a new position as a Professor of Cyber Warfare Studies at the Air Force Cyber College in August of 2019. It’s not that I haven’t been writing all this time. I’ve just been writing academic papers for Cyber conferences, journals, etc.
I have several papers accepted for publication at journals and conferences, so I’m really excited! As the papers become available, I intend to post them or at least links to them on this site. In the meantime, check out the Air Force Cyber College!
Thanks!
Josh
Sipper Books 