Cybersecurity and hacking

Image: Wes Cockx & Google DeepMind / Better Images of AI / AI large language models / CC-BY 4.0

Computer vulnerabilities are central to cybersecurity and hacking. From a social science viewpoint, they consist of multifaceted social processes involving several stages. Analyzing computer vulnerabilities in this way helps us understand the social and technical aspects of computer security risks. These vulnerabilities often lead to crises and controversies beyond the computer security arena, where developments can be traced by analyzing how vulnerabilities are “translated” into different forums, notably: when they are handled by computer experts involved in operational security; and when they are embedded in advocacy initiatives by concerned groups or organizations. 

• Projects
  • Windows of exposure: Toward an anthropology of computer (in)security and its controversies (2018-2020), David Bozzini.
  • Participative Security. The impacts of bug bounty on digital vulnerability management at Swiss Post and beyond (2024-2024), David Bozzini and Luca Perrig.
• Publications
  • Bozzini, David. 2023. “How Vulnerabilities Became Commodities. The Political Economy of Ethical Hacking (1990-2020).”
  • Besençon, Sylvain, and David Bozzini. 2020. “The Ethnography of a Digital Object: An Example From Computer Security.” Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology 25:153–60. doi: 10.36950/tsantsa.2020.025.15.