Information Security Commons^™

Automatic Log Parser To Support Forensic Analysis, Hudan Studiawan, Ferdous Sohel, Christian Payne

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Event log parsing is a process to split and label each field in a log entry. Existing approaches commonly use regular expressions or parsing rules to extract the fields. However, such techniques are time-consuming as a forensic investigator needs to define a new rule for each log file type. In this paper, we present a tool, namely nerlogparser, to parse the log entries automatically, where log parsing is modeled as a named entity recognition problem. We use a deep machine learning technique, specifically the bidirectional long short-term memory networks, as the underlying architecture for this purpose. Unlike existing tools, nerlogparser …

Detection Techniques In Operational Technology Infrastructure, Glenn Murray, Matthew Peacock, Priya Rabadia, Paresh Kerai

Australian Information Security Management Conference

In previous decades, cyber-attacks have not been considered a threat to critical infrastructure. However, as the Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) domains converge, the vulnerability of OT infrastructure is being exploited. Nation-states, cyber criminals and hacktivists are moving to benefit from economic and political gains. The OT network, i.e. Industrial Control System (ICS) is referred to within OT infrastructure as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). SCADA systems were introduced primarily to optimise the data transfer within OT network infrastructure. The introduction of SCADA can be traced back to the 1960’s, a time where cyber-attacks were not considered. …

The Relevance Of A Good Internal Control System In A Computerised Accounting Information System, Raymond Lutui, Tau’Aho ‘Ahokovi

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Advancements in information technology (IT) have enabled companies to use computers to carry out their activities that were previously performed manually. Accounting systems that were previously performed manually can now be performed with the help of computers. With all the advantages of computerized accounting software, business owners need to realize that problems do arise for a variety of reasons. Dependence on computers sometimes leads to bigger problems. This paper, therefore provide a detail information about the concept of internal control to its relevance in a computerised accounting information. This study also considers the trend between manual and computerised accounting system. …

An Investigation Into A Denial Of Service Attack On An Ethereum Network, Richard Greene, Michael N. Johnstone

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Apart from its much-publicised use in crypto-currency, blockchain technology is used in a wide range of application areas, from diamonds to wine. The most common application of this technology is in smart contracts in supply chain management, where assurance of delivery and provenance are important. One problem for an Ethereum consortium is the potential for disruption caused by a Denial-of-Service attack across the consortium nodes. Such an attack can be launched from a single source or multiple sources to amplify the effect. This paper investigates the impact of various Denial-of-Service attacks on an Ethereum Consortium deployed on the Azure Cloud …

Mobile Device Wardriving Tools’ Comparison: Nuku’Alofa As Case Study, Raymond Lutui, ‘Osai Tete’Imoana, George Maeakafa

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper describes the justification for a project to assess the security status of wireless networks usage in Nuku’alofa, the CBD of Tonga, By War Driving these suburbs, actual data was gathered to indicate the security status of wireless networks and provide an understanding of the users’ level of awareness and attitudes towards wireless security. This paper also takes the opportunity to compare the performance of the War driving tools that this study employed – GMoN, SWardriving, and Wi-Fi Scan. Wireless network communication remains a challenging and critical issue. This study takes an exploratory approach in which it allows the …

Vulnerability Analysis: Protecting Information In The Iot, Brian Cusack, Feiqiu Zhuang

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The research was designed to study IoT security vulnerabilities and how to better protect IoT communications. By researching the system a Fitbit uses for communications, this research analyzes and reveals security defects in the IoT architecture. The research first uses a man-in the middle (MITM) attack to intercept and analyze the Fitbit system traffic to identify security weakness. Then uses a replay attack to further validate these flaws. Finally, countermeasures against these security threats are proposed. The research findings show the Fitbit’s IoT communication architecture has serious information security risks. Firstly, the Fitbit tested does not encrypt the raw data …

Mitigating Man-In-The-Middle Attacks On Mobile Devices By Blocking Insecure Http Traffic Without Using Vpn, Kevin Chong, Muhammad Imran Malik, Peter Hannay

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Mobile devices are constantly connected to the Internet, making countless connections with remote services. Unfortunately, many of these connections are in cleartext, visible to third-parties while in transit. This is insecure and opens up the possibility for man-in-the-middle attacks. While there is little control over what kind of connection running apps can make, this paper presents a solution in blocking insecure HTTP packets from leaving the device. Specifically, the proposed solution works on the device, without the need to tunnel packets to a remote VPN server, and without special privileges such as root access. Speed tests were performed to quantify …

Bringing Defensive Artificial Intelligence Capabilities To Mobile Devices, Kevin Chong, Ahmed Ibrahim

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Traditional firewalls are losing their effectiveness against new and evolving threats today. Artificial intelligence (AI) driven firewalls are gaining popularity due to their ability to defend against threats that are not fully known. However, a firewall can only protect devices in the same network it is deployed in, leaving mobile devices unprotected once they leave the network. To comprehensively protect a mobile device, capabilities of an AI-driven firewall can enhance the defensive capabilities of the device. This paper proposes porting AI technologies to mobile devices for defence against today’s ever-evolving threats. A defensive AI technique providing firewall-like capability is being …

The Impact Of Personality Traits On User’S Susceptibility To Social Engineering Attacks, Brian Cusack, Kemi Adedokun

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Phishing attacks and other social manipulation attacks are an everyday occurrence for most workers in their email boxes. Others experience social engineering tricks to take and divert payments on legitimate electronic commerce transactions. This exploratory pilot study aims to examine the impact of user’s personality on the likelihood of user’s susceptibility to social engineering attacks. Five expert interviews were conducted to investigate what traits makes some individuals more or sometimes less susceptible to social engineering attack than others. The personality traits were obtained using the big five personality model for correlation with interview data. The result suggests that users with …

A Framework For Development Of Android Mobile Electronic Prescription Transfer Applications In Compliance With Security Requirements Mandated By The Australian Healthcare Industry, Kyaw Kyaw Htat

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis investigates mobile electronic transfer of prescription (ETP) in compliance with the security requirements mandated by the Australian healthcare industry and proposes a framework for the development of an Android mobile electronic prescription transfer application. Furthermore, and based upon the findings and knowledge from constructing this framework, another framework is also derived for assessing Android mobile ETP applications for their security compliance.

The centralised exchange model-based ETP solution currently used in the Australian healthcare industry is an expensive solution for on-going use. With challenges such as an aging population and the rising burden of chronic disease, the cost of …

A Survey Of Distributed Certificate Authorities In Manets, Junaid Chaudhry, Kashif Saleem, Paul Haskell-Dowland Dr, Mahdi H. Miraz

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A Certificate Authority (CA) provides the critical authentication and security services for Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) which are used for the Internet and wired networks. In MANETs (wireless and ad hoc) there is an inability to offer a centralized CA to provide these security services. Recent research has looked to facilitate the use of CAs within MANETs through the use of a Distributed Certificate Authority (DCA) for wireless and ad hoc networks. This paper presents a number of different types of DCA protocols and categorizes them into groups based on their factors and specifications. The paper concludes by proposing the …

A Security Review Of Local Government Using Nist Csf: A Case Study, Ahmed Ibrahim, Craig Valli, Ian Mcateer, Junaid Chaudhry

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Evaluating cyber security risk is a challenging task regardless of an organisation’s nature of business or size, however, an essential activity. This paper uses the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cyber security framework (CSF) to assess the cyber security posture of a local government organisation in Western Australia. Our approach enabled the quantification of risks for specific NIST CSF core functions and respective categories and allowed making recommendations to address the gaps discovered to attain the desired level of compliance. This has led the organisation to strategically target areas related to their people, processes, and technologies, thus mitigating …

The Design And Evaluation Of A User-Centric Information Security Risk Assessment And Response Framework, Manal Alohali, Nathan Clarke, Steven Furnell

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Abstract: The risk of sensitive information disclosure and modification through the use of online services has increased considerably and may result in significant damage. As the management and assessment of such risks is a well-known discipline for organizations, it is a challenge for users from the general public. Users have difficulties in using, understanding and reacting to security-related threats. Moreover, users only try to protect themselves from risks salient to them. Motivated by the lack of risk assessment solutions and limited impact of awareness programs tailored for users of the general public, this paper aims to develop a structured approach …

Application Of 3d Delaunay Triangulation In Fingerprint Authentication System, Wencheng Yang, Ahmed Ibrahim, Junaid Chaudhry, Song Wang, Jiankun Hu, Craig Valli

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Biometric security has found many applications in Internet of Things (IoT) security. Many mobile devices including smart phones have supplied fingerprint authentication function. However, the authentication performance in such restricted environment has been downgraded significantly. A number of methods based on Delaunay triangulation have been proposed for minutiae-based fingerprint matching, due to some favorable properties of the Delaunay triangulation under image distortion. However, all existing methods are based on 2D pattern, of which each unit, a Delaunay triangle, can only provide limited discrimination ability and could cause low matching performance. In this paper, we propose a 3D Delaunay triangulation based …

Biometrics Based Privacy-Preserving Authentication And Mobile Template Protection, Wencheng Yang, Jiankun Hu, Song Wang, Qianhong Wu

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Smart mobile devices are playing a more and more important role in our daily life. Cancelable biometrics is a promising mechanism to provide authentication to mobile devices and protect biometric templates by applying a noninvertible transformation to raw biometric data. However, the negative effect of nonlinear distortion will usually degrade the matching performance significantly, which is a nontrivial factor when designing a cancelable template. Moreover, the attacks via record multiplicity (ARM) present a threat to the existing cancelable biometrics, which is still a challenging open issue. To address these problems, in this paper, we propose a new cancelable fingerprint template …

A Novel Privacy Preserving User Identification Approach For Network Traffic, Nathan Clarke, Fudong Li, Steven Furnell

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

The prevalence of the Internet and cloud-based applications, alongside the technological evolution of smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, has resulted in users relying upon network connectivity more than ever before. This results in an increasingly voluminous footprint with respect to the network traffic that is created as a consequence. For network forensic examiners, this traffic represents a vital source of independent evidence in an environment where anti-forensics is increasingly challenging the validity of computer-based forensics. Performing network forensics today largely focuses upon an analysis based upon the Internet Protocol (IP) address – as this is the only characteristic available. More typically, …

A Feature-Based Structural Measure: An Image Similarity Measure For Face Recognition, Noor A. Shnain, Zahir Hussain, Song F. Lu

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Facial recognition is one of the most challenging and interesting problems within the field of computer vision and pattern recognition. During the last few years, it has gained special attention due to its importance in relation to current issues such as security, surveillance systems and forensics analysis. Despite this high level of attention to facial recognition, the success is still limited by certain conditions; there is no method which gives reliable results in all situations. In this paper, we propose an efficient similarity index that resolves the shortcomings of the existing measures of feature and structural similarity. This measure, called …

A Framework For Forensic Reconstruction Of Spontaneous Ad Hoc Networks, Alastair Nisbet

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Spontaneous ad hoc networks are distinguished by rapid deployment for a specific purpose, with no forward planning or pre-design in their topology. Often these networks will spring up through necessity whenever a network is required urgently but briefly. This may be in a disaster recovery setting, military uses where often the network is unplanned but the devices are pre-installed with security settings, educational networks or networks created as a one-off for a meeting such as in a business organisation. Generally, wireless networks pose problems for forensic investigators because of the open nature of the medium, but if logging procedures and …

Analysis Of Attempted Intrusions: Intelligence Gathered From Ssh Honeypots, Priya Rabadia, Craig Valli, Ahmed Ibrahim, Zubair A. Baig

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Honeypots are a defensive cyber security countermeasure used to gather data on intruder activities. By analysing the data collected by honeypots, mitigation strategies for cyberattacks launched against cyber-enabled infrastructures can be developed. In this paper, intelligence gathered from six Secure Shell (SSH) honeypots is presented. The paper is part of an ongoing investigation into analysing malicious activities captured by the honeypots. This paper focuses on the time of day attempted intrusions have occurred. The honeypot data has been gathered from 18th July 2012 until 13th January 2016; a period of 1,247 days. All six honeypots have the same hardware and …

Proceedings Of The 15th Australian Digital Forensics Conference, 5-6 December 2017, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia, Craig Valli

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Conference Foreword This is the sixth year that the Australian Digital Forensics Conference has been held under the banner of the Security Research Institute, which is in part due to the success of the security conference program at ECU. As with previous years, the conference continues to see a quality papers with a number from local and international authors. 8 papers were submitted and following a double blind peer review process, 5 were accepted for final presentation and publication. Conferences such as these are simply not possible without willing volunteers who follow through with the commitment they have initially made, …

Iseek, A Tool For High Speed, Concurrent, Distributed Forensic Data Acquisition, Richard Adams, Graham Mann, Valerie Hobbs

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Electronic discovery (also written as e-discovery or eDiscovery) and digital forensics are processes in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and processed with the expectation that it may be used as evidence in legal proceedings. Electronic evidence plays a fundamental role in many aspects of litigation (Stanfield, 2009). However, both eDiscovery and digital forensic approaches that rely on the creation of an index as part of their processing are struggling to cope with the huge increases in hard disk storage capacity. This paper introduces a novel technology that meets the existing and future data volume challenges faced by practitioners …

Security Readiness Evaluation Framework For Tonga E-Government Initiatives, Raymond Lutui, Semisi Hopoi, Siaosi Maeakafa

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The rapid expansion of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the Pacific have reached the Kingdom of Tonga. The submarine fibre-optic cable which connects Tonga to Fiji and onward to a hub in Sydney went live 2013. Now the people of Tonga experience the high-speed impact of digital communication, fast international access, and social changes such as the government is implementing a digital society through e-government services. This study focuses on identifying the factors that will later become a vulnerability and a risk to the security of Tonga government e-government initiatives. Data was collected through interviews with three government …

Intelligent Feature Selection For Detecting Http/2 Denial Of Service Attacks, Erwin Adi, Zubair Baig

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Intrusion-detection systems employ machine learning techniques to classify traffic into attack and legitimate. Network flooding attacks can leverage the new web communications protocol (HTTP/2) to bypass intrusion-detection systems. This creates an urgent demand to understand HTTP/2 characteristics and to devise customised cyber-attack detection schemes. This paper proposes Step Sister; a technique to generate an optimum network traffic feature set for network intrusion detection. The proposed technique demonstrates that a consistent set of features are selected for a given HTTP/2 dataset. This allows intrusion-detection systems to classify previously unseen network traffic samples with fewer false alarm than when techniques used in …

The 2017 Homograph Browser Attack Mitigation Survey, Tyson Mcelroy, Peter Hannay, Greg Baatard

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Since their inception, International Domain Names (IDN) have allowed for non-Latin characters to be entered into domain names. This feature has led to attackers forging malicious domains which appear identical to the Latin counterpart. This is achieved through using non-Latin characters which appear identical to their Latin counterpart. This attack is referred to as a Homograph attack. This research continues the work of Hannay and Bolan (2009), and Hannay and Baatard (2012), which assessed the mitigation methods incorporated by web browsers in mitigating IDN homograph attacks. Since these works, time IDN mitigation algorithms have been altered, such as the one …

A Comparison Of 2d And 3d Delaunay Triangulations For Fingerprint Authentication, Marcelo Jose Macedo, Wencheng Yang, Guanglou Zheng, Michael N. Johnstone

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The two-dimensional (2D) Delaunay triangulation-based structure, i.e., Delaunay triangle, has been widely used in fingerprint authentication. However, we also notice the existence of three-dimensional (3D) Delaunay triangulation, which has not been extensively explored. Inspired by this, in this paper, the features of both 2D and 3D Delaunay triangulation-based structures are investigated and the findings show that a 3D Delaunay structure, e.g., Delaunay tetrahedron, can provide more feature types and a larger number of elements than a 2D Delaunay structure, which was expected to provide a higher discriminative capability. However, higher discrimination does not necessarily lead to better performance, especially in …

An Investigation Into Some Security Issues In The Dds Messaging Protocol, Thomas White, Michael N. Johnstone, Matthew Peacock

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The convergence of Operational Technology and Information Technology is driving integration of the Internet of Things and Industrial Control Systems to form the Industrial Internet of Things. Due to the influence of Information Technology, security has become a high priority particularly when implementations expand into critical infrastructure. At present there appears to be minimal research addressing security considerations for industrial systems which implement application layer IoT messaging protocols such as Data Distribution Services (DDS). Simulated IoT devices in a virtual environment using the DDSI-RTPS protocol were used to demonstrate that enumeration of devices is possible by a non-authenticated client in …

Deceptive Security Based On Authentication Profiling, Andrew Nicholson, Helge Janicke, Andrew Jones, Adeeb Alnajaar

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Passwords are broken. Multi-factor Authentication overcomes password insecurities, but its potentials are often not realised. This article presents InSight, a system to actively identify perpetrators by deceitful adaptation of the accessible system resources using Multi-factor Authentication profiles. This approach improves authentication reliability and attributes users by computing trust scores against profiles. Based on this score, certain functionality is locked, unlocked, buffered, or redirected to a deceptive honeypot, which is used for attribution. The novelty of this approach is twofold; a profile-based multi-factor authentication approach that is combined with a gradient, deceptive honeypot.

The Convergence Of It And Ot In Critical Infrastructure, Glenn Murray, Michael N. Johnstone, Craig Valli

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Automation and control systems, such as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), DCS (Distributed Control Systems) and are often referred to as Operational Technology (OT). These systems are used to monitor and control critical infrastructures such as power, pipelines, water distribution, sewage systems and production control,). Traditionally, these OT systems have had a degree of physical separation from Information Technology (IT) infrastructures. With changing technologies and a drive towards data-driven and remote operations the two technology environments are starting to converge. With this convergence, what was a relatively standalone secure and isolated environment is now connected and accessible via the …

A Centralised Platform For Digital Forensic Investigations In Cloud-Based Environments, Shaunak Mody, Alastair Nisbet

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Forensic investigations of digital media traditionally involve seizing a device and performing a forensic investigation. Often legal and physical obstructions must be overcome so that the investigator has access to the device and the right to secure it for investigation purposes. Taking a forensic image of a hard disk may need to be done in the field but analysis can usually be performed at a later time. With the rapid increase in hard disk size, the acquiring of a forensic image can take hours or days. This poses significant issues for forensic investigators when potential evidence resides in the cloud. …

Tonga’S Organisational Vulnerability To Social Engineering, Raymond Lutui, Viliami Fe’Aomoeata

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Tonga is a small developing island in the south pacific and ICT is still in its early stages. In this paper we ask the questions, what is social engineering and who is this social engineer, what are the threats to Tonga, how can these threats be identified and which countermeasures can be taken to mitigate the risk of social engineering? The answers to these questions will lead to a social engineering risk management framework to make the risks of social engineering more transparent and help organisations implement mitigating controls against social engineering. The study was performed in four chosen organisations …