Something You Have and Someone You Know—Designing for Interpersonal Security

While a variety of strategies for threat modeling exist, they largely share two assumptions: that the attacker is remote and sophisticated. Given the military origins of the security community, it is not surprising that by default, we tend to focus on the types of threats that face an organization, instead of the types of threats that face individuals. As a result of my own work with survivors of domestic violence, as well as others' findings about individuals' security and privacy concerns, I suggest a new threat framework–The Interpersonal Threat Model–that provides a completely different set of assumptions about an attacker’s capabilities and motivations than a more traditional Organizational Threat Model. This is a call for the security and privacy communities to consider interpersonal threats–those that stem from people with whom we cohabitate or share devices–when designing consumer-facing technology. In doing so, perhaps we can begin to better address the concerns of everyday people and offer solutions for at-risk populations.