Joe Slowik

Joe Slowik has over 15 years of experience across multiple information security and cyber domains, splitting his time between public and private sector work. Currently Joe serves as Director of Cybersecurity Alerting Strategy at Dataminr. Previously, Joe has worked in various roles at organizations such as the MITRE Corporation, the US Navy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Huntress, and DomainTools.

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Talk: The Erosion of the Neutral Web and Private Responsibilities In Maintaining It

Since the dawn of the public internet, entities have co-opted a so-called "neutral" space, those machines neither attacker nor victim controlled, for various reasons: to proxy traffic, create DDoS networks, or similar. Yet we have seen an incredible uptick in the weaponization of this space by state-directed entities, leveraging vulnerable devices (especially residential equipment) and enhanced control mechanisms to produce complex proxy networks for offensive cyber use.

Solving this problem is vexing as the "real" solution relies in securing the "neutral" web through which these operations take place. But likely operations taken by governments are moving in concerning directions, from more intrusive state interaction with infrastructure to nationalist device bans to riskier types of counter-offensive cyber. Within this context, possibility of a balkanized internet emerges, where various entities divide the globe between "us" and "them" with the neutral space disappearing. In this discussion we will analyze the technical problems in play and what solutions may be available to address the weaponization of neutral space, including increased responsibilities for those operating in a connected world.