• Breathe deeply. Taking long quiet breaths helps to ground you in moments of crisis.
• Connect with loved ones you trust to process, cry, or just be together. There is no “right” way to process the ongoing trauma we are experiencing. 
• Monitor your news and social media intake. To the degree that you are able, avoid (re)watching videos of death, or getting stuck in the traumatic news cycle.
• Remember that we are in this together. As a function of White Supremacy, communities of Color can find themselves pitted against one another, getting caught in horizontal aggression and/or the Oppression Olympics. Instead of getting caught in that cycle, or “keeping score,” consider ways to coalition build and show up for one another across identities.

• Connect with your friends, family, peers, and colleagues by helping them to understand why ongoing racial violence is traumatic and overwhelming for communities of color.
• Take the time to explore local organizations who are rooted in ending racial violence in MD, and more broadly across the United States.
• Take the time to learn more about the impacts of racial trauma and the history of racial violence in this country. What we are experiencing today, is not new and has not necessarily ever stopped. Take the time to explore more deeply the historical context of white supremacy, racism and xenophobia in this country and the ways it continues to show up today.
• Instead of getting caught up in hashtag wars, explore the lived realities of the victims of violence - learn their names and about their communities - remind yourself that they were living human beings, not just social media trends.

• Instead of thinking solely about what you might see as a singular current issue at hand, consider the number of BIPOC community members who have been accosted, murdered, etc. as connected to racism and xenophobia in the past two months alone. From spas in Atlanta to Fedex in Indianapolis to Minneapolis and California - there are far too many to name, but the patterns are present and clear.
• Consider that we are not only talking about systemic issues, we are also talking about real people whose lives were taken - real living, breathing human beings whose lives were taken at the hands of someone else. Lean as much as you can into compassion, empathy, perspective taking, and radical love for humanity. As mentioned above, explore the lived realities of the victims of violence - learn their names and about their communities remind yourself that they were living human beings, not just social media trends.
• Explore concepts like Racial Battle Fatigue and Race Based Traumatic Stress to support a more deep exploration of the impacts of racial trauma and the history of racial violence in this country. 
• Take the time to explore more deeply the history of white supremacy, racism, and xenophobia in this country. As you explore this history be careful not to give in to defensiveness, shame, or guilt, instead sit with any discomfort you may be experiencing and explore why those feelings may be present for you. 

• While our i3b staff team will not be hosting a healing or processing space this week, we are still offering times to connect with us personally. We offer this space for you to join us individually, or in small groups. You can join our office hours at the times listed below by joining using our individual Webex Personal Room links provided. Our staff will be holding office hours this week during the following times: 
• Tuesday, April 20 from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. with Jasmine Lee | https://umbc.webex.com/meet/jaslee | 640903142
• Wednesday, April 21 from 1 p.m. – 3 p.m. with Erin Waddles | https://umbc.webex.com/meet/waddles | 641819311
• Thursday, April 22 from 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. with Lucy Delgado https://umbc.webex.com/meet/ldelgado | 1208674009
• Friday, April 23 from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. with Carlos Turcios | https://umbc.webex.com/meet/carlos6 | 640105492
• You can also join our Webex Chat space that serves as our virtual "lounge space" by going to our main myUMBC group page.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Thinking Like an Attacker:
Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking

Prof. Peter A. H. Peterson
Department of Computer Science
University of Minnesota Duluth

12:00–1:00 pm ET,  Friday, 30 April 2021
via WebEx

“Adversarial thinking” (AT), sometimes called the “security mindset” or described as the ability to “think like an attacker,” is widely accepted in the computer security community as an essential ability for successful cybersecurity practice. Supported by intuition and anecdotes, many in the community stress the importance of AT, and multiple projects have produced interventions explicitly intended to strengthen individual AT skills to improve security in general. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of “adversarial thinking” or its components, and accordingly, no test for it. Because of this absence, it is impossible to meaningfully quantify AT in subjects, AT’s importance for cybersecurity practitioners, or the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve AT. Working towards the goal of a characterization of AT in cybersecurity and a non-technical test for AT that anyone can take, I will discuss existing conceptions of AT from the security community, as well as ideas about AT in other fields with adversarial aspects including war, politics, law, critical thinking, and games. I will also describe some of the unique difficulties of creating a non-technical test for AT, compare and contrast this effort to our work on the CATS and Security Misconceptions projects, and describe some potential solutions. I will explore potential uses for such an instrument, including measuring a student’s change in AT over time, measuring the effectiveness of interventions meant to improve AT, comparing AT in different populations (e.g., security professionals vs. software engineers), and identifying individuals from all walks of life with strong AT skills—people who might help meet our world’s pressing need for skilled and insightful security professionals and researchers. Along the way, I will give some sample non-technical adversarial thinking challenges and describe how they might be graded and validated.

 Peter A. H. Peterson is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches and directs the Laboratory for Advanced Research in Systems (LARS), a group dedicated to research in operating systems and security, with a special focus on research and development to make security education more effective and accessible. He is an active member of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) project working to create and validate two concept inventories for cybersecurity, is working on an NSF-funded grant to identify and remediate commonsense misconceptions about cybersecurity, and is also the author of several hands-on security exercises for Deterlab that have been used at many institutions around the world. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles for work on “adaptive compression”—systems that make compression decisions dynamically to improve efficiency. He can be reached at *protected email*.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email* Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays.  All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings: May 7, Farid Javani (UMBC), Anonymization by oblivious transfer

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Thinking Like an Attacker:
Towards a Definition and Non-Technical Assessment of Adversarial Thinking

Prof. Peter A. H. Peterson
Department of Computer Science
University of Minnesota Duluth

12:00–1:00 pm ET,  Friday, 30 April 2021
via WebEx

“Adversarial thinking” (AT), sometimes called the “security mindset” or described as the ability to “think like an attacker,” is widely accepted in the computer security community as an essential ability for successful cybersecurity practice. Supported by intuition and anecdotes, many in the community stress the importance of AT, and multiple projects have produced interventions explicitly intended to strengthen individual AT skills to improve security in general. However, there is no agreed-upon definition of “adversarial thinking” or its components, and accordingly, no test for it. Because of this absence, it is impossible to meaningfully quantify AT in subjects, AT’s importance for cybersecurity practitioners, or the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve AT. Working towards the goal of a characterization of AT in cybersecurity and a non-technical test for AT that anyone can take, I will discuss existing conceptions of AT from the security community, as well as ideas about AT in other fields with adversarial aspects including war, politics, law, critical thinking, and games. I will also describe some of the unique difficulties of creating a non-technical test for AT, compare and contrast this effort to our work on the CATS and Security Misconceptions projects, and describe some potential solutions. I will explore potential uses for such an instrument, including measuring a student’s change in AT over time, measuring the effectiveness of interventions meant to improve AT, comparing AT in different populations (e.g., security professionals vs. software engineers), and identifying individuals from all walks of life with strong AT skills—people who might help meet our world’s pressing need for skilled and insightful security professionals and researchers. Along the way, I will give some sample non-technical adversarial thinking challenges and describe how they might be graded and validated.

 Peter A. H. Peterson is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches and directs the Laboratory for Advanced Research in Systems (LARS), a group dedicated to research in operating systems and security, with a special focus on research and development to make security education more effective and accessible. He is an active member of the Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) project working to create and validate two concept inventories for cybersecurity, is working on an NSF-funded grant to identify and remediate commonsense misconceptions about cybersecurity, and is also the author of several hands-on security exercises for Deterlab that have been used at many institutions around the world. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles for work on “adaptive compression”—systems that make compression decisions dynamically to improve efficiency. He can be reached at pahp@d.umn.edu.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, sherman@umbc.edu. Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays.  All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings: May 7, Farid Javani (UMBC), Anonymization by oblivious transfer