Information Security Commons^™

Using Software-Based Decision Procedures To Control Instruction-Level Execution, William B. Kimball

AFIT Patents

An apparatus, method and program product are provided for securing a computer system. A digital signature of an application is checked, which is loaded into a memory of the computer system configured to contain memory pages. In response to finding a valid digital signature, memory pages containing instructions of the application are set as executable and memory pages other than those containing instructions of the application are set as non-executable. Instructions in executable memory pages are executed. Instructions in non-executable memory pages are prevented from being executed. A page fault is generated in response to an attempt to execute an …

Efficient Routing For Wireless Mesh Networks Using A Backup Path, Amir Esmailpour, Nidal Nasser, Jehad Al Dallal

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) has a proven record in providing viable solutions for some of the fundamental issues in wireless networks such as capacity and range limitations. WMN infrastructure includes clusters of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) connected through a fixed backbone of mesh routers. The mesh network can be constrained severely due to various reasons, which could result in performance degradation such as a drop in throughput or long delays. Solutions to this problem often focus on multipath or multichannel extensions to the existing ad- hoc routing protocols. In this paper, we propose a novel solution by introducing an alternative …

A Novel Defense Mechanism Against Web Crawler Intrusion, Alireza Aghamohammadi

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Web robots also known as crawlers or spiders are used by search engines, hackers and spammers to gather information about web pages. Timely detection and prevention of unwanted crawlers increases privacy and security of websites. In this research, a novel method to identify web crawlers is proposed to prevent unwanted crawler to access websites. The proposed method suggests a five-factor identification process to detect unwanted crawlers. This study provides the pretest and posttest results along with a systematic evaluation of web pages with the proposed identification technique versus web pages without the proposed identification process. An experiment was performed with …

Trajectory Privacy Preservation In Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks, Xinyu Jin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, there has been an enormous growth of location-aware devices, such as GPS embedded cell phones, mobile sensors and radio-frequency identification tags. The age of combining sensing, processing and communication in one device, gives rise to a vast number of applications leading to endless possibilities and a realization of mobile Wireless Sensor Network (mWSN) applications. As computing, sensing and communication become more ubiquitous, trajectory privacy becomes a critical piece of information and an important factor for commercial success. While on the move, sensor nodes continuously transmit data streams of sensed values and spatiotemporal information, known as ``trajectory information". …

Money Laundering Detection Framework To Link The Disparate And Evolving Schemes, Murad Mehmet, Duminda Wijesekera, Miguel F. Buchholtz

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Money launderers hide traces of their transactions with the involvement of entities that participate in sophisticated schemes. Money laundering detection requires unraveling concealed connections among multiple but seemingly unrelated human money laundering networks, ties among actors of those schemes, and amounts of funds transferred among those entities. The link among small networks, either financial or social, is the primary factor that facilitates money laundering. Hence, the analysis of relations among money laundering networks is required to present the full structure of complex schemes. We propose a framework that uses sequence matching, case-based analysis, social network analysis, and complex event processing …

A Forward-Secure Certificate-Based Signature Scheme, Jiguo Li, Huiyun Teng, Xinyu Huang, Yichen Zhang, Jianying Zhou

Faculty Publications

Cryptographic computations are often carried out on insecure devices for which the threat of key exposure raises a serious concern. In an effort to address the key exposure problem, the notion of forward security was first presented by Günther in 1990. In a forward-secure scheme, secret keys are updated at regular periods of time; exposure of the secret key corresponding to a given time period does not enable an adversary to ‘break’ the scheme for any prior time period. In this paper, we first introduce forward security into certificate-based cryptography and define the security model of forward-secure certificate-based signatures (CBSs). …

Segmentation And Model Generation For Large-Scale Cyber Attacks, Steven E. Strapp

Theses

Raw Cyber attack traffic can present more questions than answers to security analysts. Especially with large-scale observables it is difficult to identify which packets are relevant and what attack behaviors are present. Many existing works in Host or Flow Clustering attempt to group similar behaviors to expedite analysis; these works often phrase the problem directly as offline unsupervised machine learning. This work proposes online processing to simultaneously model coordinating actors and segment traffic that is relevant to a target of interest, all while it is being received. The goal is not just to aggregate similar attack behaviors, but to provide …

Getting Ahead Of The Threat: Aviation And Cyber Security, Emilio Iasiello

Emilio Iasiello

No abstract provided.

Applied Hypergame Theory For Network Defense, Alan S. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

Cyber operations are the most important aspect of military conflicts in the 21st century, but unfortunately they are also among the least understood. The continual battle for network dominance between attackers and defenders is considered to be a complex game. Hypergame theory is an extension of game theory that addresses the kind of games where misperception exists, as is often the case in military engagements. Hypergame theory, like game theory, uses a game model to determine strategy selection, but goes beyond game theory by examining subgames that exist within the full game. The inclusion of misperception and misinformation in the …

A Forensic Study Of The Effectiveness Of Selected Anti-Virus Products Against Ssdt Hooking Rootkits, Sami Al-Shaheri, Dale Lindskog, Pavol Zavarsky, Ron Ruhl

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

For Microsoft Windows Operating Systems, both anti-virus products and kernel rootkits often hook the System Service Dispatch Table (SSDT). This research paper investigates the interaction between these two in terms of the SSDT. To investigate these matters, we extracted digital evidence from volatile memory, and studied that evidence using the Volatility framework. Due to the diversity in detection techniques used by the anti-virus products, and the diversity of infection techniques used by rootkits, our investigation produced diverse results, results that helped us to understand several SSDT hooking strategies, and the interaction between the selected anti-virus products and the rootkit samples. …

An Ontology-Based Forensic Analysis Tool, Mohammed Alzaabi, Andy Jones, Thomas A. Martin

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The analysis of forensic investigation results has generally been identified as the most complex phase of a digital forensic investigation. This phase becomes more complicated and time consuming as the storage capacity of digital devices is increasing, while at the same time the prices of those devices are decreasing. Although there are some tools and techniques that assist the investigator in the analysis of digital evidence, they do not adequately address some of the serious challenges, particularly with the time and effort required to conduct such tasks. In this paper, we consider the use of semantic web technologies and in …

First Glance: An Introductory Analysis Of Network Forensics Of Tor, Raymond Hansen

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Tor network is a low-latency overlay network for TCP flows that is designed to provide privacy and anonymity to its users. It is currently in use by many as a means to avoid censorship of both information to be shared and information to be retrieved. This paper details the architecture of the Tor network as a platform for evaluating the current state of forensic analysis of the Tor network. Specific attempts to block access to the Tor network are examined to identify (a) the processes utilized to identify Tor nodes, and (b) the resulting exposure of potentially inculpatory evidence. …

A Thematic Review Of User Compliance With Information Security Policies Literature, David Sikolia

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The adoption of computer and internet technology has greatly improved the way businesses operate. However the risk to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of organizational data and systems has greatly increased too. Information security is an ever present concern for all organizations. Financial estimates of the impact of security breaches to information and technology resources range from hundreds of billions to over one trillion dollars each year worldwide (D'Arcy et al., 2011b). Organizations have therefore developed a combination of technical, administrative, and physical controls to reduce this risk (D'Arcy et al., 2011a). Administrative measures include the development of information security …

Journey Into Windows 8 Recovery Artifacts, W. K. Johnson

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

One of the most difficult processes of digital forensics is to understand how new technology interacts with current technology and how digital forensic analysts can utilize current Digital Forensics technologies and processes to recover and find information hidden. Microsoft has released their new operating system Windows 8, with this new release Microsoft has added some features to the operating system that will present some interesting complications to digital forensics. Since the initial release of the Windows 8 Release Candidates there have been some research released that focus primarily on the new user created artifacts and a few artifacts that have …

An Image Forensic Scheme With Robust And Fragile Watermarking For Business Documents, Sai Ho Kwok

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper proposes an image forensic scheme with both robust and fragile watermarking techniques for business documents. Through a dual watermarking approach, the proposed scheme can achieve image forensics objectives of (a) identification of source; (b) authentication of documents; and (c) locating the tempered areas of documents due to attacks. An example is presented to prove the concepts of the proposed scheme.

Keywords: Image Forensics, Fragile and Robust Watermarking, Business Document.

Significance Of Semantic Reconciliation In Digital Forensics, Nickson M. Karie, H. S. Venter

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Digital forensics (DF) is a growing field that is gaining popularity among many computer professionals, law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders who must always cooperate in this profession. Unfortunately, this has created an environment replete with semantic disparities within the domain that needs to be resolved and/or eliminated. For the purpose of this study, semantic disparity refers to disagreements about the meaning, interpretation, descriptions and the intended use of the same or related data and terminologies. If semantic disparity is not detected and resolved, it may lead to misunderstandings. Even worse, since the people involved may not be from the …

System-Generated Digital Forensic Evidence In Graphic Design Applications, Enos Mabuto, Hein Venter

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Graphic design applications are often used for the editing and design of digital art. The same applications can be used for creating counterfeit documents such as identity documents (IDs), driver’s licences, passports, etc. However, the use of any graphic design application leaves behind traces of digital information that can be used during a digital forensic investigation. Current digital forensic tools examine a system to find digital evidence, but they do not examine a system specifically for the creating of counterfeit documents created through the use of graphic design applications. The paper in hand reviews the system-generated digital forensic evidence gathered …

Money Laundering Detection Framework To Link The Disparate And Evolving Schemes, Murad Mehmet, Duminda Wijesekera, Miguel F. Buchholtz

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Money launderers hide traces of their transactions with the involvement of entities that participate in sophisticated schemes. Money laundering detection requires unraveling concealed connections among multiple but seemingly unrelated human money laundering networks, ties among actors of those schemes, and amounts of funds transferred among those entities. The link among small networks, either financial or social, is the primary factor that facilitates money laundering. Hence, the analysis of relations among money laundering networks is required to present the full structure of complex schemes. We propose a framework that uses sequence matching, case-based analysis, social network analysis, and complex event processing …

Identifying Peer-To-Peer Traffic On Shared Wireless Networks, Simon Piel, Ej Jung

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Tracing contraband downloads leads investigators to an IP address, and in turn Internet Service Providers (ISP) can provide a physical location using this IP address. However, most homes and offices share this IP address among many computers using wireless networks. In other words, there needs to be another investigation to find out which computer was responsible for contraband downloads. To make matters worse, these shared wireless networks often have vulnerabilities in access control such as using WEP or using weak passwords. In such cases, any computer in range, not necessarily at the given physical address, could be responsible. We use …

On Resolving The Cloud Forensics Conundrum, John Bagby

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The “cloud” is idiom for an ill-defined set of online services. The cloud simultaneously offers IT savings and promises advances in functionality (e.g., ubiquity). However, the cloud also imposes poorly understood burdens on security and it may provoke injustice. Thus, the cloud presents a durable and seemingly irreconcilable conundrum for the digital forensics communit(ies). First, cloud proponents make efficiency promises for cloud services (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS). These translate well into the digital forensics domain. Indeed, the cloud may enable crowd sourcing of investigatory data vastly lowering costs of dispute resolution. For example, cloud-based litigation war rooms may reduce electronic discovery …

Cybercrime And Punishment: An Analysis Of The Deontological And Utilitarian Functions Of Punishment In The Information Age, Karim Jetha

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This conceptual piece analyzes the role of criminal punishment and the nature of cyber crime to investigate whether the current punishment schemes are appropriate given the deontological and utilitarian goals of punishment: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. The research has implications for policymaking in cybercriminal law.

Keywords: cybercrime, criminal law, punishment, retribution, deterrence, information economics

The Development Of Computer Forensic Legal System In China, Yonghao Mai, K. P. Chow, Rongsheng Xu, Gang Zhou, Fei Xu, Jun Zhang

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The computer forensic discipline was established around 2000 in China, which was further developed along with Chinese judicial appraisal system in 2005. The new criminal and civil procedure laws of the People’s Republic of China was enacted on 1 Jan 2013. The new laws specified electronic data is legal evidence and has great impact on the current practice on handling electronic evidence. This paper introduces the electronic data and electronic evidence examination procedure in mainland China, the general concept of computer forensic legal system, the management of computer judicial experts, the management of computer judicial expertise institutions.

Keywords: China legal …

Anonymous Authentication Of Visitors For Mobile Crowd Sensing At Amusement Parks, Divyan Konidala, Robert H. Deng, Yingjiu Li, Hoong Chuin Lau, Stephen Fienberg

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper we focus on authentication and privacy aspects of an application scenario that utilizes mobile crowd sensing for the benefit of amusement park operators and their visitors. The scenario involves a mobile app that gathers visitors’ demographic details, preferences, and current location coordinates, and sends them to the park’s sever for various analyses. These analyses assist the park operators to efficiently deploy their resources, estimate waiting times and queue lengths, and understand the behavior of individual visitors and groups. The app server also offers visitors optimal recommendations on routes and attractions for an improved dynamic experience and minimized …

Rootkit Detection Using A Cross-View Clean Boot Method, Bridget N. Flatley

Theses and Dissertations

In cyberspace, attackers commonly infect computer systems with malware to gain capabilities such as remote access, keylogging, and stealth. Many malware samples include rootkit functionality to hide attacker activities on the target system. After detection, users can remove the rootkit and associated malware from the system with commercial tools. This research describes, implements, and evaluates a clean boot method using two partitions to detect rootkits on a system. One partition is potentially infected with a rootkit while the other is clean. The method obtains directory listings of the potentially infected operating system from each partition and compares the lists to …

Mobile Network Defense Interface For Cyber Defense And Situational Awareness, James C. Hannan

Theses and Dissertations

Today's computer networks are under constant attack. In order to deal with this constant threat, network administrators rely on intrusion detection and prevention services (IDS) (IPS). Most IDS and IPS implement static rule sets to automatically alert administrators and resolve intrusions. Network administrators face a difficult challenge, identifying attacks against a vast number of benign network transactions. Also after a threat is identified making even the smallest policy change to the security software potentially has far-reaching and unanticipated consequences. Finally, because the administrator is primarily responding to alerts they may lose situational awareness of the network. During this research a …

Automating Vendor Fraud Detection In Enterprise Systems, Kishore Singh, Peter Best, Joseph Mula

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Fraud is a multi-billion dollar industry that continues to grow annually. Many organizations are poorly prepared to prevent and detect fraud. Fraud detection strategies are intended to quickly and efficiently identify fraudulent activities that circumvent preventative measures. In this paper, we adopt a DesignScience methodological framework to develop a model for detection of vendor fraud based on analysis of patterns or signatures identified in enterprise system audit trails. The concept is demonstrated by developing prototype software. Verification of the prototype is achieved by performing a series of experiments. Validation is achieved by independent reviews from auditing practitioners. Key findings of …

Technology Corner Visualising Forensic Data: Evidence (Part 1), Damian Schofield, Ken Fowle

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Visualisation is becoming increasingly important for understanding information, such as investigative data (for example: computing, medical and crime scene evidence) and analysis (for example: network capability assessment, data file reconstruction and planning scenarios). Investigative data visualisation is used to reconstruct a scene or item and is used to assist the viewer (who may well be a member of the general public with little or no understanding of the subject matter) to understand what is being presented. Analysis visualisations, on the other hand, are usually developed to review data, information and assess competing scenario hypotheses for those who usually have an …

A Simple Experiment With Microsoft Office 2010 And Windows 7 Utilizing Digital Forensic Methodology, Gregory H. Carlton

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Digital forensic examiners are tasked with retrieving data from digital storage devices, and frequently these examiners are expected to explain the circumstances that led to the data being in its current state. Through written reports or verbal, expert testimony delivered in court, digital forensic examiners are expected to describe whether data have been altered, and if so, then to what extent have data been altered. Addressing these expectations results from opinions digital forensic examiners reach concerning their understanding of electronic storage and retrieval methods. The credibility of these opinions evolves from the scientific basis from which they are drawn using …

Information Security Challenge Of Qr Codes, Nik Thompson, Kevin Lee

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The discipline of information security must adapt to new technologies and methods of interaction with those technologies. New technologies present both challenges and opportunities for the security professional, especially for areas such as digital forensics. Challenges can be in the form of new devices such as smartphones or new methods of sharing information, such as social networks. One such rapidly emerging interaction technology is the use of Quick Response (QR) codes. These offer a physical mechanism for quick access to Web sites for advertising and social interaction. This paper argues that the common implementation of QR codes potentially presents security …

Book Review: Placing The Suspect Behind The Keyboard: Using Digital Forensics And Investigative Techniques To Identify Cybercrime Suspects, Thomas Nash

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this must read for any aspiring novice cybercrime investigator as well as the seasoned professional computer guru alike, Brett Shaver takes the reader into the ever changing and dynamic world of Cybercrime investigation. Shaver, an experienced criminal investigator, lays out the details and intricacies of a computer related crime investigation in a clear and concise manner in his new easy to read publication, Placing the Suspect behind the Keyboard. Using Digital Forensics and Investigative techniques to Identify Cybercrime Suspects. Shaver takes the reader from start to finish through each step of the investigative process in well organized …