  Security ceremonies still fail despite decades of efforts by researchers and
practitioners. Attacks are often a cunning amalgam of exploits for technical
systems and of forms of human behaviour. For example, this is the case with the
recent news headline of a large-scale attack against Electrum Bitcoin wallets,
which manages to spread a malicious update of the wallet app. I therefore set
out to look at things through a different lens. I make the (metaphorical)
hypothesis that human ancestors arrived on Earth along with security ceremonies
from a very far planet, the Cybersecurity planet. My hypothesis continues, in
that studying (by huge telescopes) the surface of Cybersecurity in combination
with the logical projection on that surface of what happens on Earth is
beneficial for us earthlings. I have spotted four cities so far on the remote
planet. Democratic City features security ceremonies that allow inhabitants to
follow personal paths of practice and, for example, make errors or be driven by
emotions. By contrast, security ceremonies in Dictatorial City compel
inhabitants to comply, thus behaving like programmed automata. Security
ceremonies in Beautiful City are so beautiful that inhabitants just love to
follow them precisely. Invisible City has security ceremonies that are not
perceivable, hence inhabitants feel like they never encounter any.
Incidentally, we use the words "democratic" and "dictatorial" without any
political connotation. A key argument I shall develop is that all cities but
Democratic City address the human factor, albeit in different ways. In the
light of these findings, I will also discuss security ceremonies of our planet,
such as WhatsApp web login and flight boarding, and explore room for improving
them based upon the current understanding of Cybersecurity.
