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Nicolas Cage is the Center of the Cybersecurity Universe

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 (INTERACT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12932))

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Abstract

Nicolas Cage, prolific actor, Oscar winner but also master of ham acting, star of many excellent films and of at least as many really bad ones. A conspicuous number of these films directly revolve around cybersecurity or can be used to explain cybersecurity notions in such a way that they can be understood by non-experts. This paper is part of a research program that I have been carrying out on how to use films and other artworks to explain cybersecurity notions, and thus provide a form of “cybesecurity show and tell” (in which telling, i.e., explaining notions in a formal, technical way, can be paired with showing through visual storytelling or other forms of storytelling). Here, I focus on 15 of Cage’s films in which he has played a wide variety of roles: a stunt motorcyclist, a paroled ex-con and former U.S. Ranger, a U.S. Marine in World War II, an agent of an authoritarian agency, a retired master car thief, a criminal mastermind, an illegal arms dealer, a master sorcerer, a treasure hunter historian, a Batman-like superhero, Spider-Man Noir, Superman, an NSA employee, and a hacker star-nosed mole.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Interestingly, Kevin Bacon was initially horrified by the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game because he believed it was ridiculing him, but he then quickly embraced it, so much so that he wrote the introduction of the book [21] and then, inspired by the game and in the spirit of the “small-world” idea, he created a nonprofit charity called sixdegrees.org “aimed at using everyday activities to connect people and causes” since “at the end of the day, we’re all just six degrees from someone who really needs our help, and when we work together, we really can do a great deal of good”.

  2. 2.

    Similarly, younger readers might not be familiar with the Usenet and its newsgroups, and MTV is likely not so popular anymore, but I am confident that they do know who Kevin Bacon is given that he is still very active as a film and TV actor, and as a musician in the “The Bacon Brothers” together with his brother Michael.

  3. 3.

    There are also a few other similar numbers, such as the “Morphy number”, which measures how closely a chess player is connected to the great Paul Morphy (1837–1884) by way of playing chess games, or the “Shusaku number”, which similarly measures the distance of Go players to the invincible Honinbo Shusaku (1829–1862).

  4. 4.

    A similar “fake room” attack takes place against phobic con artist Roy Waller (Cage) in “Matchstick Men” [60], which I did not add to the table only for the sake of space.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, King’s College London, London, UK

    Luca Viganò

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  1. Luca Viganò
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Correspondence to Luca Viganò .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Ardito

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Rosa Lanzilotti

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Malizia

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  5. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Giuseppe Desolda

  7. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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Viganò, L. (2021). Nicolas Cage is the Center of the Cybersecurity Universe. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021. INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12932. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85623-6_3

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