Computer Engineering Commons^™

Why Are We Not Getting Better At Data Disposal?, Andy Jones

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper describes two sets of research, the first of which has been carried out over a period of four years into the levels and types of information that can be found on computer hard disks that are offered for sale on the second hand market. The second research project examined a number of second-hand hand held devices including PDAs, mobile (cell) phones and RIM Blackberry devices. The primary purpose of this research was to gain an understanding of the reasons for the failure to effectively remove potentially sensitive information from the disks and handheld devices. Other objectives included determining …

The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act And The Law Of Unintended Consequences, Milton Luoma, Vicki Luoma

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

One of the most unanticipated results of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act arose from the law of unintended consequences. The CFAA was originally enacted in 1984 to protect federal government computers from intrusions and damage caused by hackers, identity thieves, and other cyber criminals. The law was later amended to extend the scope of its application to financial institutions’, business’s and consumers’ computers. To aid in the pursuit of cyber criminals, one of the subsequent revisions to the law included provision “G” that gave the right to private parties to seek compensation for damages in a civil action for …

Correlating Orphaned Windows Registry Data Structures, Damir Kahvedžić, Tahar Kechadi

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Recently, it has been shown that deleted entries of the Microsoft Windows registry (keys) may still reside in the system files once the entries have been deleted from the active database. Investigating the complete keys in context may be extremely important from both a Forensic Investigation point of view and a legal point of view where a lack of context can bring doubt to an argument. In this paper we formalise the registry behaviour and show how a retrieved value may not maintain a relation to the part of the registry it belonged to and hence lose that context. We …

Analysis Of The ‘Db’ Windows Registry Data Structure, Damir Kahvedžić, Tahar Kechadi

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The Windows Registry stores a wide variety of data representing a host of different user properties, settings and program information. The data structures used by the registry are designed to be adaptable to store these differences in a simple format. In this paper we will highlight the existence of a rare data structure that is used to store a large amount of data within the registry hives. We analyse the manner in which this data structure stores its data and the implications that it may have on evidence retrieval and digital investigation. In particular, we reveal that the three of …

Graduate Accounting Students' Perception Of It Forensics: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis, Grover S. Kearns

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Forensics and information technology (IT) have become increasingly important to accountants and auditors. Undergraduate accounting students are introduced to general IT topics but discussion of forensic knowledge is limited. A few schools have introduced an undergraduate major in forensic accounting. Some graduate schools offer accounting students an emphasis in forensic or fraud accounting that includes instruction in forensics and information technology. When students do not view the IT topics as being equally important to their careers as traditional accounting topics, these attitudes may reduce the quality of the course. In an effort to assess student attitudes, a survey of 46 …

Visualization Of Honeypot Data Using Graphviz And Afterglow, Craig Valli

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This research in progress paper explores the use of Graphviz and Afterglow for the analysis of data emanating from a honeypot system. Honeypot systems gather a wide range of data that is often difficult to readily search for patterns and trends using conventional log file analysis techniques. The data from the honeypots has been statically extracted and processed through Afterglow scripts to produce inputs suitable for use by the DOT graph based tools contained within Graphviz. This paper explores some of the benefits and drawbacks of currently using this type of approach.

Keywords: honeypot, network forensics, visualization, Graphviz, Afterglow

A Hidden Markov Model Based Approach To Detect Rogue Access Points, Gayathri Shivaraj

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

One of the most challenging security concerns for network administrators is the presence of Rogue access points. The challenge is to detect and disable a Rogue access point before it can cause hazardous damage to the network. This thesis proposes a statistically based approach to detect Rogue access points using a Hidden Markov Model, which is applied to passively measure packet-header data collected at a gateway router or any monitoring point. This approach utilizes variations in packet inter-arrival time to differentiate between authorized access points and Rouge access points. This approach used the inter-arrival time of a packet as a …

A Taxonomy For And Analysis Of Anonymous Communications Networks, Douglas J. Kelly

Theses and Dissertations

Any entity operating in cyberspace is susceptible to debilitating attacks. With cyber attacks intended to gather intelligence and disrupt communications rapidly replacing the threat of conventional and nuclear attacks, a new age of warfare is at hand. In 2003, the United States acknowledged that the speed and anonymity of cyber attacks makes distinguishing among the actions of terrorists, criminals, and nation states difficult. Even President Obama’s Cybersecurity Chief-elect recognizes the challenge of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks. Now through April 2009, the White House is reviewing federal cyber initiatives to protect US citizen privacy rights. Indeed, the rising quantity and ubiquity …

Using Covert Means To Establish Cybercraft Command And Control, Bradley D. Sevy

Theses and Dissertations

With the increase in speed and availability of computers, our nation's computer and information systems are being attacked with increased sophistication. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Information Directorate (RI) is researching a next generation network defense architecture, called Cybercraft, that provides automated and trusted cyber defense capabilities for AF network assets. This research we consider the issues to protect or obfuscate command and control aspects of Cybercraft. In particular, we present a methodology to hide aspects of Cybercraft platform initialization in context to formation of hierarchical, peer-to-peer groups that collectively form the Cybercraft network. Because malicious code networks (known …

Low Probability Of Intercept Waveforms Via Intersymbol Dither Performance Under Multipath Conditions, Jonathan K. Keen

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the effects of multipath interference on Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) waveforms generated using intersymbol dither. LPI waveforms are designed to be difficult for non-cooperative receivers to detect and manipulate, and have many uses in secure communications applications. In prior research, such a waveform was designed using a dither algorithm to vary the time between the transmission of data symbols in a communication system. This work showed that such a method can be used to frustrate attempts to use non-cooperative receiver algorithms to recover the data. This thesis expands on prior work by examining the effects of …

Numerical Analysis For Relevant Features In Intrusion Detection (Narfid), Jose Andres Gonzalez

Theses and Dissertations

Identification of cyber attacks and network services is a robust field of study in the machine learning community. Less effort has been focused on understanding the domain space of real network data in identifying important features for cyber attack and network service classification. Motivations for such work allow for anomaly detection systems with less requirements on data “sniffed” off the network, extraction of features from the traffic, reduced learning time of algorithms, and ideally increased classification performance of anomalous behavior. This thesis evaluates the usefulness of a good feature subset for the general classification task of identifying cyber attacks and …

Automated Virtual Machine Introspection For Host-Based Intrusion Detection, Brett A. Pagel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines techniques to automate configuration of an intrusion detection system utilizing hardware-assisted virtualization. These techniques are used to detect the version of a running guest operating system, automatically configure version-specific operating system information needed by the introspection library, and to locate and monitor important operating system data structures. This research simplifies introspection library configuration and is a step toward operating system independent introspection. An operating system detection algorithm and Windows virtual machine system service dispatch table monitor are implemented using the Xen hypervisor and a modified version of the XenAccess library. All detection and monitoring is implemented from …

An Fpga-Based System For Tracking Digital Information Transmitted Via Peer-To-Peer Protocols, Karl R. Schrader

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the problem of identifying and tracking digital information that is shared using peer-to-peer file transfer and Voice over IP (VoIP) protocols. The goal of the research is to develop a system for detecting and tracking the illicit dissemination of sensitive government information using file sharing applications within a target network, and tracking terrorist cells or criminal organizations that are covertly communicating using VoIP applications. A digital forensic tool is developed using an FPGA-based embedded software application. The tool is designed to process file transfers using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol and VoIP phone calls made using the Session …

Defining A Forensic Audit, G. S. Smith, D. L. Crumbley

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Disclosures about new financial frauds and scandals are continually appearing in the press. As a consequence, the accounting profession's traditional methods of monitoring corporate financial activities are under intense scrutiny. At the same time, there is recognition that principles-based GAAP from the International Accounting Standards Board will become the recognized standard in the U.S. The authors argue that these two factors will change the practices used to fight corporate malfeasance as investigators adapt the techniques of accounting into a forensic audit engagement model.

Visualisation Of Honeypot Data Using Graphviz And Afterglow, Craig Valli

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This research in progress paper explores the use of Graphviz and Afterglow for the analysis of data emanating from a honeypot system. Honeypot systems gather a wide range of data that is often difficult to readily search for patterns and trends using conventional log file analysis techniques. The data from the honeypots has been statically extracted and processed through Afterglow scripts to produce inputs suitable for use by the DOT graph based tools contained within Graphviz. This paper explores some of the benefits and drawbacks of currently using this type of approach.

Insecurity By Obscurity: A Review Of Soho Router Literature From A Network Security Perspective, Patryk Szewczyk, Craig Valli

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Because of prevalent threats to SoHo based ADSL Routers, many more devices are compromised. Whilst an end-user may be at fault for not applying the appropriate security mechanisms to counter these threats, vendors should equally share the blame. This paper reveals that the lack of security related content and poor overall design could impact on end-users’ interpretation and willingness to implement security controls on their ADSL router. It argues that whilst the number of threats circulating the Internet is increasing, vendors are not improving their product literature.

Telecommunications Liberalisation In Africa: Proposed Regulatory Model For The Sadc Region, Z. N. Jobodwana

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The liberalisation of the telecommunication industry in Africa, and the further development of the region’s physical infrastructure was accompanied by the further development of Africa’s information, communication and technology infrastructure. Competition within the industry stimulated heavy economic investment in other sectors of the economy. The outcome of liberalisation also included the establishment of community-based structures that continue to enable communities to manage their own development and gain access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in an unprecedented manner. The telecommunication infrastructure further stimulated the fast development of other related services, for example, ecommerce and mobile commerce (m-commerce), e-government, internet banking, …

Self-Reported Cyber Crime: An Analysis On The Effects Of Anonymity And Pre-Employment Integrity, Ibrahim Baggili, Marcus Rogers

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

A key issue facing today’s society is the increase in cyber crimes. Cyber crimes pose threats to nations, organizations and individuals across the globe. Much of the research in cyber crime has risen from computer science-centric programs, and little experimental research has been performed on the psychology of cyber crime. This has caused a knowledge gap in the study of cyber crime. To this end, this research focuses on understanding psychological concepts related to cyber crime. Through an experimental design, participants were randomly assigned to three groups with varying degrees of anonymity. After each treatment, participants were asked to self-report …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Online Child Sexual Abuse: The French Response, Mohamed Chawki

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Online child sexual abuse is an increasingly visible problem in society today. The introduction, growth and utilization of information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs) have been accompanied by an increase in illegal activities. With respect to cyberspace the Internet is an attractive environment to sex offenders. In addition to giving them greater access to minors, extending their reach from a limited geographical area to victims all around the world, it allows criminals to alter or conceal their identities. Sexual predators, stalkers, child pornographers and child traffickers can use various concealment techniques to make it more difficult for investigators to identify them …

Correlating Orphaned Windows Registry Data Structures, Damir Kahvedžić, Tahar Kechadi

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Recently, it has been shown that deleted entries of the Microsoft Windows registry (keys) may still reside in the system files once the entries have been deleted from the active database. Investigating the complete keys in context may be extremely important from both a Forensic Investigation point of view and a legal point of view where a lack of context can bring doubt to an argument. In this paper we formalise the registry behaviour and show how a retrieved value may not maintain a relation to the part of the registry it belonged to and hence lose that context. We …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Continuous Fraud Detection In Enterprise Systems Through Audit Trail Analysis, Peter J. Best, Pall Rikhardsson, Mark Toleman

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Enterprise systems, real time recording and real time reporting pose new and significant challenges to the accounting and auditing professions. This includes developing methods and tools for continuous assurance and fraud detection. In this paper we propose a methodology for continuous fraud detection that exploits security audit logs, changes in master records and accounting audit trails in enterprise systems. The steps in this process are: (1) threat monitoringsurveillance of security audit logs for ‘red flags’, (2) automated extraction and analysis of data from audit trails, and (3) using forensic investigation techniques to determine whether a fraud has actually occurred. We …

A Synopsis Of Proposed Data Protection Legislation In Sa, Francis S. Cronjé

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Privacy International1 made the following statement regarding South Africa’s financial sector in its 2005 world survey: “South Africa has a well-developed financial system and banking infrastructure. Despite the sophistication of the financial sector, the privacy of financial information is weakly regulated by a code of conduct for banks issued by the Banking Council.” This extract highlights some of the problems South Africa are experiencing with its current status on privacy as viewed from an International perspective. In recent years the International society has stepped up its efforts in creating a global village wherein the individual could be assured of having …

Bluetooth Hacking: A Case Study, Dennis Browning, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper describes a student project examining mechanisms with which to attack Bluetooth-enabled devices. The paper briefly describes the protocol architecture of Bluetooth and the Java interface that programmers can use to connect to Bluetooth communication services. Several types of attacks are described, along with a detailed example of two attack tools, Bloover II and BT Info.

Detection Of Steganography-Producing Software Artifacts On Crime-Related Seized Computers, Asawaree Kulkarni, James Goldman, Brad Nabholz, William Eyre

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Steganography is the art and science of hiding information within information so that an observer does not know that communication is taking place. Bad actors passing information using steganography are of concern to the national security establishment and law enforcement. An attempt was made to determine if steganography was being used by criminals to communicate information. Web crawling technology was used and images were downloaded from Web sites that were considered as likely candidates for containing information hidden using steganographic techniques. A detection tool was used to analyze these images. The research failed to demonstrate that steganography was prevalent on …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Prevention Is Better Than Prosecution: Deepening The Defence Against Cyber Crime, Jacqueline Fick

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In the paper the author proposes that effectively and efficiently addressing cyber crime requires a shift in paradigm. For businesses and government departments alike the focus should be on prevention, rather than the prosecution of cyber criminals. The Defence in Depth strategy poses a practical solution for achieving Information Assurance in today’s highly networked environments. In a world where “absolute security” is an unachievable goal, the concept of Information Assurance poses significant benefits to securing one of an organization’s most valuable assets: Information. It will be argued that the approach of achieving Information Assurance within an organisation, coupled with the …

To License Or Not To License Revisited: An Examination Of State Statutes Regarding Private Investigators And Digital Examiners, Thomas Lonardo, Doug White, Alan Rea

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this update to the previous year's study, the authors examine statutes that regulate, license, and enforce investigative functions in each US state. After identification and review of Private Investigator licensing requirements, the authors find that very few state statutes explicitly differentiate between Private Investigators and Digital Examiners. After contacting all state agencies the authors present a distinct grouping organizing state approaches to professional Digital Examiner licensing. The authors conclude that states must differentiate between Private Investigator and Digital Examiner licensing requirements and oversight.