Paul Thompson, Semantic Attacks and Security

Attacks on computer and other networked systems can be categorized as physical, syntactic and semantic. Physical attacks seek to destroy hardware, while syntactic attacks, such as computer worms and viruses, target the network infrastructure. Semantic attacks are directed at the mind of the user of a computer system, or, more generally, any decision process in an automated system. For example, a false, or misleading, discussion group posting which leads readers of the posting to become victims of a pump-and-dump scheme, whereby the price of a company About the speaker: Paul Thompson received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. He is currently a research professor in Dartmouth College