On April 15, 2020, Jeremy Grant co-authored “The Weaponization of Dogs on the Internet” in Lawfare. The following is an excerpt:
In 1993, Pete Steiner published the New Yorker’s most reproduced cartoon of all time: A mutt on a computer commenting to a fellow hound, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
At the time, Steiner’s cartoon captured an amusing point about the early days of going online, and how hard it was to figure out who was really who. Twenty-seven years later, those dogs are long-dead (because dog years), yet the cartoon is truer than ever.
If anything, the problem has gotten worse. In 2020, “dogs on the internet” are being actively weaponized. Identity is the most commonly exploited attack vector used to breach systems and commit cybercrimes.