Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble . . .  

-Macbeth (Act IV, Scene 1)

 

Those three Shakespearean witches chanted a series of familiar things-eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat, tongue of dog-but stirred them into a surprising context: a not-so-appetizing stew. Halloween is all about changing what we know into something it is not, tweaking our expectations with something out of the ordinary. No wonder Halloween is the perfect Internet Era holiday! Halloween is all about secrets, and spiders, and webs-oh my-and collecting goodies (mostly from strangers) with the stated promise to do no harm. Halloween is about benign deception, as is cyber security. Often, however, the benign deception for the latter starts with the tech expert using familiar words in an unfamiliar context. We revel in our not-so-secret desire to be perceived as wizard any time of year. So let's look behind the curtain and decrypt some common cyber words (highlighted in bold) into Halloweenish (Halloweenese?).

 

Challenge/response-"Trick or Treat" is a challenge; dropping candies into an open sack is the expected response that meets Halloween protocol (a guideline for what comes next). Access control is based on challenge/response mechanisms. The latter might be simple (e.g., a password or badge) or it might be multifactor (e.g., a password and badge and/or a thumbprint scan).