Computer Sciences Commons^™

A Relevance Model For Threat-Centric Ranking Of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities, Corren G. Mccoy

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

The relentless and often haphazard process of tracking and remediating vulnerabilities is a top concern for cybersecurity professionals. The key challenge they face is trying to identify a remediation scheme specific to in-house, organizational objectives. Without a strategy, the result is a patchwork of fixes applied to a tide of vulnerabilities, any one of which could be the single point of failure in an otherwise formidable defense. This means one of the biggest challenges in vulnerability management relates to prioritization. Given that so few vulnerabilities are a focus of real-world attacks, a practical remediation strategy is to identify vulnerabilities likely …

Addressing Human Error Through Effective Cyber Policy Design, Katherine Amoresano

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity

Human error is a significant contributing factor to the rise in Cybersecurity attacks regardless of increased technical control implemented to safeguard Information systems. Adversaries can circumvent technical safeguards due to human errors which result from inadequate enforceable policies and training on Cybersecurity for the everyday user. Several studies and articles show that the majority of successful attacks are human enabled, proving the need for human-centric cybersecurity research and practices. This exploratory work reviews the human aspect of Cybersecurity by investigating the cybersecurity policies at SUNY Albany and other SUNY institutions. We used a survey of students and faculty members at …

Analyzing The Robustness Of Prevalent Social Engineering Defense Mechanisms, Bhupendra Acharya

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Most cybersecurity attacks begin with a social engineering attack component that exploits human fallibilities. Hence, it is very important to study the prevailing defense mechanisms against such attacks. Unfortunately, not much is known about the effectiveness of these defense mechanisms. This dissertation attempts to fill this knowledge gap by adopting a two-fold approach that conducts a holistic analysis of social engineering attacks.

In the first fold, we focused on phishing attacks, which remain a predominant class of social engineering attacks despite two decades of their existence. Entities such as Google and Microsoft deploy enormous Anti-Phishing Entity systems (APEs) to enable …

Cyber Resilience Analytics For Cyber-Physical Systems, Md Ariful Haque

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are complex systems that evolve from the integrations of components dealing with physical processes and real-time computations, along with networking. CPSs often incorporate approaches merging from different scientific fields such as embedded systems, control systems, operational technology, information technology systems (ITS), and cybernetics. Today critical infrastructures (CIs) (e.g., energy systems, electric grids, etc.) and other CPSs (e.g., manufacturing industries, autonomous transportation systems, etc.) are experiencing challenges in dealing with cyberattacks. Major cybersecurity concerns are rising around CPSs because of their ever-growing use of information technology based automation. Often the security concerns are limited to probability-based possible attack …

The Minority In The Minority, Black Women In Computer Science Fields: A Phenomenological Study, Blanche' D. Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the lived experiences of Black women with a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in computer science, currently employed in the United States. The theory guiding this study was Krumboltz’s social learning theory of career decision-making, as it provides a foundation for understanding how a combination of factors leads to an individual’s educational and occupational preferences and skills. This qualitative study answered the following central research question: What are the lived experiences of Black women with a bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degree in computer science, currently employed in the United States? …

Optimizing Cybersecurity Budgets With Attacksimulation, Alexander Master, George Hamilton, J. Eric Dietz

Faculty Publications

Modern organizations need effective ways to assess cybersecurity risk. Successful cyber attacks can result in data breaches, which may inflict significant loss of money, time, and public trust. Small businesses and non-profit organizations have limited resources to invest in cybersecurity controls and often do not have the in-house expertise to assess their risk. Cyber threat actors also vary in sophistication, motivation, and effectiveness. This paper builds on the previous work of Lerums et al., who presented an AnyLogic model for simulating aspects of a cyber attack and the efficacy of controls in a generic enterprise network. This paper argues that …

Software Protection And Secure Authentication For Autonomous Vehicular Cloud Computing, Muhammad Hataba

Dissertations

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing every technology we deal with. Autonomy has been a sought-after goal in vehicles, and now more than ever we are very close to that goal. Vehicles before were dumb mechanical devices, now they are becoming smart, computerized, and connected coined as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Moreover, researchers found a way to make more use of these enormous capabilities and introduced Autonomous Vehicles Cloud Computing (AVCC). In these platforms, vehicles can lend their unused resources and sensory data to join AVCC.

In this dissertation, we investigate security and privacy issues in AVCC. As background, we built our …

Supporting The Discovery, Reuse, And Validation Of Cybersecurity Requirements At The Early Stages Of The Software Development Lifecycle, Jessica Antonia Steinmann

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The focus of this research is to develop an approach that enhances the elicitation and specification of reusable cybersecurity requirements. Cybersecurity has become a global concern as cyber-attacks are projected to cost damages totaling more than $10.5 trillion dollars by 2025. Cybersecurity requirements are more challenging to elicit than other requirements because they are nonfunctional requirements that requires cybersecurity expertise and knowledge of the proposed system. The goal of this research is to generate cybersecurity requirements based on knowledge acquired from requirements elicitation and analysis activities, to provide cybersecurity specifications without requiring the specialized knowledge of a cybersecurity expert, and …

Anomaly Detection In Cybersecurity Datasets Via Cooperative Co-Evolution-Based Feature Selection, Bazlur A. N. M. Rashid, Mohiuddin Ahmed, Leslie F. Sikos, Paul Haskell-Dowland

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Anomaly detection from Big Cybersecurity Datasets is very important; however, this is a very challenging and computationally expensive task. Feature selection (FS) is an approach to remove irrelevant and redundant features and select a subset of features, which can improve the machine learning algorithms’ performance. In fact, FS is an effective preprocessing step of anomaly detection techniques. This article’s main objective is to improve and quantify the accuracy and scalability of both supervised and unsupervised anomaly detection techniques. In this effort, a novel anomaly detection approach using FS, called Anomaly Detection Using Feature Selection (ADUFS), has been introduced. Experimental analysis …

A Novel Qkd Approach To Enhance Iiot Privacy And Computational Knacks, Kranthi Kumar Singamaneni, Gaurav Dhiman, Sapna Juneja, Ghulam Muhammad, Salman A Alqahtani, John Zaki

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The industry-based internet of things (IIoT) describes how IIoT devices enhance and extend their capabilities for production amenities, security, and efficacy. IIoT establishes an enterprise-to-enterprise setup that means industries have several factories and manufacturing units that are dependent on other sectors for their services and products. In this context, individual industries need to share their information with other external sectors in a shared environment which may not be secure. The capability to examine and inspect such large-scale information and perform analytical protection over the large volumes of personal and organizational information demands authentication and confidentiality so that the total data …

Development Of A Security-Focused Multi-Channel Communication Protocol And Associated Quality Of Secure Service (Qoss) Metrics, Paul M. Simon

Theses and Dissertations

The threat of eavesdropping, and the challenge of recognizing and correcting for corrupted or suppressed information in communication systems is a consistent challenge. Effectively managing protection mechanisms requires an ability to accurately gauge the likelihood or severity of a threat, and adapt the security features available in a system to mitigate the threat. This research focuses on the design and development of a security-focused communication protocol at the session-layer based on a re-prioritized communication architecture model and associated metrics. From a probabilistic model that considers data leakage and data corruption as surrogates for breaches of confidentiality and integrity, a set …

Cyber Deception For Critical Infrastructure Resiliency, Md Ali Reza Al Amin

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The high connectivity of modern cyber networks and devices has brought many improvements to the functionality and efficiency of networked systems. Unfortunately, these benefits have come with many new entry points for attackers, making systems much more vulnerable to intrusions. Thus, it is critically important to protect cyber infrastructure against cyber attacks. The static nature of cyber infrastructure leads to adversaries performing reconnaissance activities and identifying potential threats. Threats related to software vulnerabilities can be mitigated upon discovering a vulnerability and-, developing and releasing a patch to remove the vulnerability. Unfortunately, the period between discovering a vulnerability and applying a …

Predictors Of Email Response: Determinants Of The Intention Of Not Following Security Recommendations, Miguel Angel Toro-Jarrin

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Organizations and government leaders are concerned about cyber incidents. For some time, researchers have studied what motivates people to act in ways that put the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information in organizations at risk. Still, several areas remained unexplored, including the role of employees’ evaluation of the organizational systems and the role of value orientation at work as precursors of secure and insecure actions in relation to information technologies (information security [IS] action). The objective of this research project was to examine how the evaluations of formal and informal security norms are associated with the intention to follow them …

Cybersecurity Educational Resources For K-12, Debra Bowen, James Jaurez, Nancy Jones, William Reid, Christopher Simpson

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

There are many resources to guide successful K-12 cybersecurity education. The objective of these resources is to prepare skilled and ethical cybersecurity students at the earliest level to meet the demands of higher-level programs. The goal of this article is to provide, as a starting point, a list of as many currently popular K-12 educational resources as possible. The resources provided are broken into five categories: 1) Career Information, 2) Curriculum, 3) Competitions, 4) CyberCamps, and 5) Labs and Gaming. Each resource listed has a link, the K-12 levels that are supported, whether the resource is free or has a …

Assessing The Practical Cybersecurity Skills Gained Through Criminal Justice Academic Programs To Benefit Security Operations Centers (Socs), Lucy Tsado, Jung Seob "Scott" Kim

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Private-sector and public-sector organizations have increasingly built specific business units for securing company assets, reputation, and lives, known as security operations centers (SOCs). Depending on the organization, these centers may also be referred to as global security operations centers, cybersecurity operations centers, fusion centers, and corporate command centers, among many other names. The concept of centralized function within an organization to improve an organization’s security posture has attracted both the government and the private sectors to either build their own SOCs or hire third-party SOC companies.

In this article, the need for a multidisciplinary approach to cybersecurity education at colleges …

Zero Trust Architecture: Framework And Case Study, Cody Shepherd

Cyber Operations and Resilience Program Graduate Projects

The world and business are connected and a business does not exist today that does not have potentially thousands of connections to the Internet in addition to the thousands of connections to other various parts of its own infrastructure. That is the nature of the digital world we live in and there is no chance the number of those interconnections will reduce in the future. Protecting from the “outside” world with a perimeter solution might have been enough to reduce risk to an acceptable level in an organization 20 years ago, but today’s threats are sophisticated, persistent, abundant, and can …

Cybersecurity Of Critical Infrastructures: Challenges And Solutions, Leandros Maglaras, Helge Janicke, Mohamed Amine Ferrag

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

People’s lives are becoming more and more dependent on information and computer technology. This is accomplished by the enormous benefits that the ICT offers for everyday life. Digital technology creates an avenue for communication and networking, which is characterized by the exchange of data, some of which are considered sensitive or private. There have been many reports recently of data being hijacked or leaked, often for malicious purposes. Maintaining security and privacy of information and systems has become a herculean task. It is therefore imperative to understand how an individual’s or organization’s personal data can be protected. Moreover, critical infrastructures …

Adaptive Pedagogy Framework For Risk Management, Incident Response And Disaster Recovery Education, Hsiao-An Wang

Dissertations (1934 -)

The field of Cybersecurity, both in cybersecurity education and cybersecurity workforce demands, has been growing steadily as the dangers of cyber-threats continue to rise. The gap between the supply and demand of the cybersecurity workforce has been widening throughout the past decade. In response to the increased demand, many government agencies have actively engaged in collaborative efforts with higher education institutions to produce more capable graduates to address the need. However, with the various educational utilities available to instructors, few utilities offer content related to risk management, incident response, and disaster recovery practices. Furthermore, many students lack the awareness to …

Aligning The Transit Industry And Their Vendors In The Face Of Increasing Cyber Risk: Recommendations For Identifying And Addressing Cybersecurity Challenges, Scott Belcher, Terri Belcher, Kathryn Seckman, Brandon Thomas, Homayun Yaqub

Mineta Transportation Institute

Public transit agencies in the United States depend on external vendors to help deliver and maintain many essential services and to provide critical technologies, from ticket purchases to scheduling to email management. While the integration of new, advanced technologies into the public transit industry brings important advancements to U.S. critical transportation infrastructure, the application of digital technologies also brings with it a new assortment of digital risks. Transit agencies of all sizes are finding themselves subject to cyber incidents—most notably ransomware attacks—like those experienced by larger, more prominent companies and critical infrastructure providers. The findings in this report focus on …

Actuator Cyberattack Handling Using Lyapunov-Based Economic Model Predictive Control, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Henrique Oyama, Helen Durand

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cybersecurity has gained increasing interest as a consequence of the potential impacts of cyberattacks on profits and safety. While attacks can affect various components of a plant, prior work from our group has focused on the impact of cyberattacks on control components such as process sensors and actuators and the development of detection strategies for cybersecurity derived from control theory. In this work, we provide greater focus on actuator attacks; specifically, we extend a detection and control strategy previously applied for sensor attacks and based on an optimization-based control technique called Lyapunov-based economic model predictive control (LEMPC) to detect attacks …

Quantum Computing And Resilient Design Perspectives For Cybersecurity Of Feedback Systems, Keshav Kasturi Rangan, Jihan Abou Halloun, Henrique Oyama, Samantha Cherney, Ilham Azali Assoumani, Nazir Jairazbhoy, Helen Durand, Simon Ka Ng

Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty Research Publications

Cybersecurity of control systems is an important issue in next-generation manufac- turing that can impact both operational objectives (safety and performance) as well as process designs (via hazard analysis). Cyberattacks differ from faults in that they can be coordinated efforts to exploit system vulnerabilities to create otherwise unlikely hazard scenarios. Because coordination and targeted process manipulation can be characteristics of attacks, some of the tactics previously analyzed in our group from a control system cybersecurity perspective have incorporated randomness to attempt to thwart attacks. The underlying assumption for the generation of this randomness has been that it can be achieved …

Investigation Of Python Variable Privacy, Joshua Bartholomew

Honors Theses

This study looks at the relative security of Python regarding private variables and functions used in most other programming languages. Python has only grown in popularity due to its simple syntax and developing capabilities. However, little research has been published about how secure Python code and programs compiled from Python code actually are. This research seeks to expose vulnerabilities in Python code and determine what must be done for these vulnerabilities to be exploited by hackers to abuse potentially sensitive information contained within the program.

The proposed methodology includes examining the private variable concept in other programming languages and conducting …

Small Business Cybersecurity: A Loophole To Consumer Data, Matthew R. Espinosa

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Small businesses and small minority owned businesses are vital to our nation’s economy; therefore legislation, regulation, and policy has been created in order to assist them in overcoming their economic stability issues and ensure they continue to serve the communities that rely on them. However, there is not a focus on regulating nor assisting small businesses to ensure their cybersecurity standards are up to par despite them increasingly becoming a victim of cyberattacks that yield high consequences. The external oversight and assistance is necessary for small businesses due to their lack of knowledge in implementing effective cybersecurity policies, the fiscal …

Active Learning With Cybersecurity, Carole Shook

TFSC Publications and Presentations

A global campus grant was obtained in Spring 2020 to develop modules for Cybersecurity. This presentation encompasses the use of Cyberciege and case studies that require active learning of students.

The Applications Of The Internet Of Things In The Medical Field, Cody Repass

Theses and Dissertations

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm promises to make “things” include a more generic set of entities such as smart devices, sensors, human beings, and any other IoT objects to be accessible at anytime and anywhere. IoT varies widely in its applications, and one of its most beneficial uses is in the medical field. However, the large attack surface and vulnerabilities of IoT systems needs to be secured and protected. Security is a requirement for IoT systems in the medical field where the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) applies.

This work investigates various applications of IoT in healthcare …

Automated Computer Network Exploitation With Bayesian Decision Networks, Graeme Roberts, Gilbert L. Peterson

Faculty Publications

Penetration Testing (pentesting) is the process of using tactics and techniques to penetrate computer systems and networks to expose any issues in their cybersecurity \cite{rsa}. It is currently a manual process requiring significant experience and time that are in limited supply. One way to supplement the shortage is through automation. This paper presents the Automated Network Discovery and Exploitation System (ANDES) which demonstrates that it is feasible to automate the pentesting process. The uniqueness of ANDES is the use of Bayesian decision networks to represent the pentesting domain and subject matter expert knowledge. ANDES conducts multiple execution cycles, which build …

Demonstration Of Cyberattacks And Mitigation Of Vulnerabilities In A Webserver Interface For A Cybersecure Power Router, Benjamin Allen

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Cyberattacks are a threat to critical infrastructure, which must be secured against them to ensure continued operation. A defense-in-depth approach is necessary to secure all layers of a smart-grid system and contain the impact of any exploited vulnerabilities. In this undergraduate thesis a webserver interface for smart-grid devices communicating over Modbus TCP was developed and exposed to SQL Injection attacks and Cross-Site Scripting attacks. Analysis was performed on Supply-Chain attacks and a mitigation developed for attacks stemming from compromised Content Delivery Networks. All attempted attacks were unable to exploit vulnerabilities in the webserver due to its use of input sanitization …

Canary: An Automated Approach To Security Scanning And Remediation, David Wiles

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Modern software has a smaller attack surface today than in the past. Memory-safe languages, container runtimes, virtual machines, and a mature web stack all contribute to the relative safety of the web and software in general compared to years ago. Despite this, we still see high-profile bugs, hacks, and outages which affect major companies and widely-used technologies. The extensive work that has gone into hardening virtualization, containerization, and commonly used applications such as Nginx still depends on the end-user to configure correctly to prevent a compromised machine.

In this paper, I introduce a tool, which I call Canary, which can …

“Lasso The Moon? Is It Possible? What About Hack The Moon? Today’S International Framework For Activities On The Moon”, Diane M. Janosek, Armando Seay, Josa P. Natera

Military Cyber Affairs

The global interest in the moon and outer space continues to skyrocket. The current U.S. commercial investment in space is $350 billion annually, and it is expected to grow to $1 Trillion or more by 2040. The U.S. military investment in space defense and research likewise continues to grow, with the total investment amount remaining classified. With the frequent activity in space, as well as concerns about attacks to US space assets to and from space, the U.S, created the United States Space Command and its Space Force. With private space travel, nanosatellites, lunar exploration, and the proliferation of space …

Malware And Memory Forensics On M1 Macs, Charles E. Glass

LSU Master's Theses

As malware continues to evolve, infection mechanisms that can only be seen in memory are increasingly commonplace. These techniques evade traditional forensic analysis, requiring the use of memory forensics. Memory forensics allows for the recovery of historical data created by running malware, including information that it tries to hide. Memory analysis capabilities have lagged behind on Apple's new M1 architecture while the number of malicious programs only grows. To make matters worse, Apple has developed Rosetta 2, the translation layer for running x86_64 binaries on an M1 Mac. As a result, all malware compiled for Intel Macs is theoretically functional …