Why Cyberspace Is Vulnerable?

Cyberspace, a term created by William Gibson, that describes “the ‘world’ of computers, and the society that gathers around them,” in 1982 (Hassan). The idea of cyberspace had been around since 60 years ago that at first started as a university experiment in military communication. In the mid-1900s, the United States was inventing a system that would not get damaged in the event of a nuclear attack during Cold War. The system was invented to serve the purpose of sending and receiving intelligence. In that system, a lot of computers were linked in a network but not physically linked by cable to the adjacent one in a straight line just like the telephone system. After the Cold War, many people regarded the benefits of computers and wondered if

The first reason is the online anonymity cyberspace provides. Anyone and everyone on cyberspace is allowed to fake their identities and create an entirely different cyber persona with different names and appearances if they do not want to expose their true self on that platform. To be anonymous on cyberspace, ones can have multiple email addresses or use anonymized email address so that no one will know their actual email address. Besides, ones can also obscure their Internet Protocol (IP) address with many different methods, such as using a proxy server, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and The Onion Router (TOR), in order to hide their actual locations by pretending to be someone else at another location. Of course, this function of cyberspace has greatly gained the approvals and supports of the cyber-users as it ensures and guarantees the privacy of every individual on cyberspace, yet, anonymity has led and threatened the cyber-users with two cyber operations, cyber-crimes and

This phenomenon occurs when the United States government announced that there was a steady increase of vulnerabilities resided in applications software that could be exploited in cyber-attacks based on the national database from 1997 to 2006 (Denning and Denning 154). However, as cyber users, we should have concerned and acknowledged the potential threats introduced by cyberspace since we first utilize it. A lot of us who use cyberspace including policymakers and legislators are unfamiliar with cyber security. We do not know why and how to ensure our personal information; we just give out our information whenever we are asked to such as providing credit card security number and filling out true personal information on social media. Moreover, the government and public do not realize the importance of cybersecurity as “the Internet was designed to be open, transparent, and interoperable,” says William Lynn, a former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense. Therefore, this “lower emphasis on security in the Internet’s initial design,” has given the “cyber-attackers a built-in advantage” to hack the network easily