Understanding of Serendipity, Errors, and Exaptation

 Serendipity, errors, and exaptation have been the most common catalysts for innovation in reorganizing our existing thought patterns and capabilities. Serendipity is an instance where something valuable is found while searching for something entirely different. An error is a mistake or omission that happened to bring about a finding or innovation. Exaptation involves taking an idea or existing technology and using it for a function for which it was not originally intended. 

Serendipity in cybersecurity may have been the discovery of Heartbleed, although that incidentally occurred in 2014. In reviewing OpenSSL vulnerabilities, Google security team researchers found a critical vulnerability allowing hackers to pull sensitive information directly from servers' active memory. They found this, though not explicitly looking for it, resulting in the worldwide patching of systems and increased security protocols (Durumeric et al., 2014). 

As mistakes are the mother of invention, the failure of Amazon Web Services in 2017 serves as a great example. The simple mistaken typing of an engineer caused an enormous service disruption to hundreds of websites and services (Levy, 2017). Though disastrous, the incident caused Amazon to retrospect and revise its operation procedures to include extensive, full-structured, highly available cloud services. The error highlighted vulnerabilities and prompted innovations in system checks and balances to prevent similar issues in the future. 

A good example of exaptation is using GPUs for purposes other than image rendering. GPUs were initially used to accelerate graphics, but these days, they are utilized for parallel processing in many areas, including cryptography and AI. In cybersecurity, GPUs are now applied to speed up password cracking and execute heavy computations for encryption algorithms (Bertoni et al., 2018). As such, this repurposing has considerably furthered computational powers for security applications. 

Serendipity, the notion that the unstructured nature of innovation underlines these, the process of openness- speeds up such novel ideas. Serendipity reminds me that such valuable discoveries can emerge at times not expected, thus creating a mindset that may be more open to new possibilities, even if those run against the initial plan. While culturally viewed as unfavorable, Mistakes bring forth weaknesses and spur improvements that might have yet to be made. Exaptation is an obvious example of the utility of innovation, which is not restricted to the purpose for which it was created. Still, a bit of imagination is enough to make existing technologies respond to new challenges. 

For instance, during a cybersecurity internship, my team worked on a tool to detect network intrusion. Due to a misconfiguration problem, the system began logging benign traffic patterns as potential threats. Although this was incorrect, investigating such false positives indicated subtle indications of previously unknown phishing attempts. This mistake eventually allowed us to improve the tool's sensitivity and expanded our knowledge regarding detecting threats. 

In conclusion, serendipity, learning from errors, and research of exaptation offer considerable opportunities to strike gold in technology and cybersecurity. These aspects encourage us to consider unexpected events not as a defeat but as an opportunity for growth and laying the foundation for something new. 

References

Bertoni, G., Daemen, J., Hoffert, S., Peeters, M., Van Assche, G., & Van Keer, R. (2018). Keccak in VHDL: Example Implementations and their Characteristics. Cryptology ePrint Archive. https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/807

Durumeric, Z., Kasten, J., Adrian, D., Halderman, J. A., Bailey, M., Li, F., ... & Springall, D. (2014). The matter of Heartbleed. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Internet Measurement Conference (pp. 475-488).

Levy, S. (2017). Inside the AWS outage that took down the internet. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2017/03/inside-aws-s3-outage-took-internet/