Information Security Commons^™

Towards Privacy And Security Concerns Of Adversarial Examples In Deep Hashing Image Retrieval, Yanru Xiao

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

With the explosive growth of images on the internet, image retrieval based on deep hashing attracts spotlights from both research and industry communities. Empowered by deep neural networks (DNNs), deep hashing enables fast and accurate image retrieval on large-scale data. However, inheriting from deep learning, deep hashing remains vulnerable to specifically designed input, called adversarial examples. By adding imperceptible perturbations on inputs, adversarial examples fool DNNs to make wrong decisions. The existence of adversarial examples not only raises security concerns for real-world deep learning applications, but also provides us with a technique to confront malicious applications.

In this dissertation, we …

The Importance Of Social Engineering, Jalaya Allen

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Most people are afraid of being attacked when walking to their car, relaxing at home, or doing normal things like shopping. Though the unlikeliest of attacks have become one of the most dangerous. Just imagine someone having the ability to watch your every move online and virtually. They can find your credit card information, passwords, social security number and so much more. Then with that information, they can steal your identity and sell it on the black market as well as threaten you for money. Attacks like these use something called Social Engineering to trick the user into giving up …

Applications Of Blockchain In Business Processes: A Comprehensive Review, Wattana Viriyasitavat, Li Xu, Dusit Niyato, Zhuming Bi, Danupol Hoonsopon

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

Blockchain (BC), as an emerging technology, is revolutionizing Business Process Management (BPM) in multiple ways. The main adoption is to serve as a trusted infrastructure to guarantee the trust of collaborations among multiple partners in trustless environments. Especially, BC enables trust of information by using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). With the power of smart contracts, BC enforces the obligations of counterparties that transact in a business process (BP) by programming the contracts as transactions. This paper aims to study the state-of-the-art of BC technologies by (1) exploring its applications in BPM with the focus on how BC provides the trust …

The Impact Of Ethical Hacking Within Small Businesses, Nygia Tribbey

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The Internet has brought about a new way for businesses to reach their customers. With the help of social media, websites, and email marketing, small businesses have gained a lot of new customers. However, these new online customers have also opened up their businesses to a whole new world of cyber crime. Cyber crime is the illegal use of computers and networks to cause damage or steal information. This type of crime affects small businesses as well as large corporations. Small businesses often find themselves at a disadvantage because they don't have the resources to hire an ethical hacker or …

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 …

Deep Learning: The Many Approaches Of Intrusion Detection System Can Be Implemented And Improved Upon, Trinity Taylor

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

For my research topic I decided to look at Deep learning. Deep learning can be used in many ways for example in web searching. Deep learning can also can improve new businesses and products. Deep learning could lead to amazing discoveries. Deep learning is making a neural network learn something. In my research I talk about Intrusion detection system, traditional approach for intrusion detection, existing intrusion detection, machine learning and deep learning based intrusion detection system, and future work.

Deapsecure Computational Training For Cybersecurity: Third-Year Improvements And Impacts, Bahador Dodge, Jacob Strother, Rosby Asiamah, Karina Arcaute, Wirawan Purwanto, Masha Sosonkina, Hongyi Wu

Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Student Capstone Conference

The Data-Enabled Advanced Training Program for Cybersecurity Research and Education (DeapSECURE) was introduced in 2018 as a non-degree training consisting of six modules covering a broad range of cyberinfrastructure techniques, including high performance computing, big data, machine learning and advanced cryptography, aimed at reducing the gap between current cybersecurity curricula and requirements needed for advanced research and industrial projects. By its third year, DeapSECURE, like many other educational endeavors, experienced abrupt changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The training had to be retooled to adapt to fully online delivery. Hands-on activities were reformatted to accommodate self-paced learning. In this paper, …

Medical Devices And Cybersecurity, Hilary Finch

School of Cybersecurity Posters

I begin by looking at the role of cybersecurity in the medical world. The healthcare industry adopted information technology quite quickly. While the advancement was obviously beneficial and necessary to keep up with an ever-growing demand, the healthcare industry did not place any kind of pointed focus on the security of their IT department, or the sensitive information housed therein.

When rapid advancements of technology outpaced the gradual advancement of hospital cybersecurity, security concerns became a difficult issue to control. There is a serious need for more advancements in hospital security. Each interconnected medical device has its own unique security …

Application Of U.S. Sanction Laws And Ransomware Payments, Trinity Woodbury

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Ransomware is a major threat that widely affects individuals and organizations, including businesses. Ransomware victims face the situation of potentially paying ransom payments to threat actors, some of whom might be foreign-based criminals. Ransomware affects victims from all sectors and industries.

Cova Cci Undergrad Cyber Research, Nana Jeffrey

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Is your digital assistant your worst enemy? Modern technology has impacted our lives in a positive way making tasks that were once time consuming become more convenient. For example a few years ago writing down your grocery list with a paper and pen was a norm, now with technology we have access to IoT devices such as smart fridges that can inform us on what items are low in stock, send a message to our digital assistants such as iOS Siri and Amazon's Alexa to remind us to buy those groceries. Although these digital assistants have helped make our daily …

How Online Platforms Are Used By Child Predators And What Are The Effective Preventive Measures?, Kayla Macpherson

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

As technology has evolved greatly in the twenty-first century alone, younger generations have had an opportunity to grow up with devices at their fingertips none have ever before. This accessibility has strengthened their ability of quick use, skill, and a strong feeling of comfort with using and having access to technology. There seems to be more children with access to the internet than there are without, but there is also an ongoing issue behind the screens.

A Probabilistic Perspective Of Human-Machine Interaction, Mustafa Canan, Mustafa Demir, Samuel Kovacic

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Human-machine interaction (HMI) has become an essential part of the daily routine in organizations. Although the machines are designed with state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence applications, they are limited in their ability to mimic human behavior. The human-human interaction occurs between two or more humans; when a machine replaces a human, the interaction dynamics are not the same. The results indicate that a machine that interacts with a human can increase the mental uncertainty that a human experiences. Developments in decision sciences indicate that using quantum probability theory (QPT) improves the understanding of human decision-making than merely using classical probability theory (CPT). …

Cybersecurity In Fintech Companies, Efstratios Zouros

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Have you recently accessed your bank account online? Have you accessed any financial instrument through your computer or your mobile device? If you are reading this, chances are you have. Every time you utilize those services, you ultimately put your trust in the financial institutions that offer them. You trust that they can securely keep your private information, while also keeping your savings safe. Ultimately, there is a certain dependability and trust in financial institutions that have been present on earth before most of us.

Digital Forensic Investigation, Dejuan Green

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Finding, acquiring, processing, analyzing, and reporting data on electronically stored data is the main goal of the forensic science discipline known as "digital forensics." Nearly all illegal acts include the use of electronic evidence, making digital forensics support essential for law enforcement investigations. Furthermore, digital forensics is very important to cases aiding in many cases and can lead to saving lives/ victims and locking up criminals. A wide range of devices, including laptops, cellphones, remote storage, unmanned aerial systems, shipborne equipment, and more, can be used to gather electronic evidence. [2] Digital forensics' major objective is to take data from …

Understanding The Effectivity And Increased Reliance Of Credit Risk Machine Learning Models In Banking, Grishma Baruah

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Credit risk analysis and making accurate investment and lending decisions has been a challenge for the financial industry for many years, as can be seen with the 2008 financial crisis. However, with the rise of machine learning models and predictive analytics, there has been a shift to increased reliance on technology for determining credit risk. This transition to machine learning comes with both advantages, such as potentially eliminating human error and assumptions from lending decisions, and disadvantages, such as time constraints, data usage inabilities, and lack of understanding nuances in machine learning models. In this paper, I look at four …

Ransombuster Iot: A Intrusion Detection And Dataset Creation Tool For Ransomware Attacks Within Iot Networks, Jackson M. Walker

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The proposed research follows the design-science guidelines(Hevner, 2004). This paper uses these design-science methods for developing the guidelines for the implementation of the proposed architecture, understanding previous research contributions, and evaluating of research. This paper proposes a network artifact for studying ransomware IoT intrusion detection techniques and offers a proposed network architecture to serve as a framework for creating a publicly available dataset for IoT research on ransomware.

Deepfakes: Ai Technology Of The Future, Hosanna Root

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Deepfakes technology’s danger stems from its ability to create realistic but fake synthesized media that people often identify as something that is real. With this powerful technology in the wrong hands, deepfakes can cause devastating havoc through information warfare, election campaign disruptions, and more, creating distrust in society. Disinformation is already rampant today, even without wide deployments of deepfakes, which is concerning given the fact that deepfakes’ nefarious full potentials are yet to be reached.

Mitigation Of Algorithmic Bias To Improve Ai Fairness, Kathy Wang

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve rapidly with emerging innovations, mass-scale digitization could be disrupted due to unfair algorithms with historically biased data. With the rising concerns of algorithmic bias, detecting biases is essential in mitigating and implementing an algorithm that promotes inclusive representation. The spread of ubiquitous artificial intelligence means that improving modeling robustness is at its most crucial point. This paper examines the omnipotence of artificial intelligence and its resulting bias, examples of AI bias in different groups, and a potential framework and mitigation strategies to improve AI fairness and remove AI bias from modeling techniques.

Cyber Threat On The High Seas. A Growing Threat To Infrastructure, James Cummins

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

In a growing digital and cloud-connected world, all aspects of our lives are becoming interconnected. All these interconnections breed a possibility for ever-increasing cybersecurity threats. The oceans are not impervious to these attacks. In this research paper, we address the following questions.

What threats do commercial ships face today?

What actions are necessary to mitigate these threats?

Exploratory Analysis Of Password And Login Security Methods, Sofia Huang

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

In 2022, the average cost of a data breach is $4.35 million. Passwords are the first line of defense against unauthorized access to accounts and important data. Ensuring that accounts are secure is vital to protect personal and corporate information. Although big tech companies are researching ways to implement password-free authentication systems, they will likely not be replaced by new technology all of a sudden. Therefore, methods to strengthen passwords and optimize security must be used until more advanced options are easily accessible. In this paper, common forms of password attacks and various methods of password security evaluation and login …

Examining Trends And Experiences Of The Last Four Years Of Socially Engineered Ransomware Attacks, William Seymour

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

This study examines and reports the trends of social engineering-based ransomware attacks over the past four years from three major technology corporations. The focus of the reports was on major threat actors and their attacks against the corporations and their clients. The data were organized chronologically by year, and prevalent or abnormal findings were shared in this report. It was found that social engineering attacks were tremendously effective. Many ransomware attacks stemmed from Phishing. Social engineering approaches allowed attackers to conduct breaches using ransomware applications like GandCrab and Ryuk. Humans are incredibly susceptible and fall for social engineering tactics- primarily …

Security Issues With Network Connected Scada Systems, Chad Holm

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The use of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems has become common place and are being used in several different industries. These have evolved as the technology has progressed. The use of Internet of Things (IOT) devices makes for less human intervention to run daily operations in these industries. This can also allow hackers to gain access to these devices due to security holes that are overlooked. There have several different ways that have been exploited on SCADA networks and the goal is to recognize and secure them so hackers cannot gain access to them.

Corporate Cybersecurity In The Context Of M&A Transactions, Cameron Beck

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The rapid rise of digital devices has unlocked a new dimension of innovation and prosperity in the 21st century. Computers are now an integrated and ubiquitous part of our global culture. You would be hard-pressed to walk into any given room without several computer chips humming inaudibly inside the machines that facilitate our modern world. Even lightbulbs and doorbells are connected to the Internet, capturing information from the world around them and sending that information to the Cloud. The Internet expands access to communication, international marketplaces, entertainment, professional resources, and nearly every book in the world.

Random Password Generation, Kirk Smith

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

This paper will discuss the topic of random generation, first by explaining the topic, followed by how the literature review was performed. Then, a literature review will be performed, followed by a discussion of human biases and the strength of random password generation.

The Future Of Blockchain, Elijah N. Gartrell

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Blockchain is the leading technology for cryptocurrencies, NFT’s and other online marketplace transactions that go through it because of it’s secure technology and how they distribute their data with Smart Contracts. This report shows how we can use Blockchain for other uses in our world and how it could advance us in the cybersecurity aspects. Showing also why we should use blockchain with basic cybersecurity concerns as in: Malware Detection, Voter Fraud, and Medical Record Security.

The Effects Of Antecedents And Mediating Factors On Cybersecurity Protection Behavior, Ling Li, Li Xu, Wu He

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper identifies opportunities for potential theoretical and practical improvements in employees' awareness of cybersecurity and their motivational behavior to protect themselves and their organizations from cyberattacks using the protection motivation theory. In addition, it contributes to the literature by examining additional variables and mediators besides the core constructs of the Protection Motivation Model (PMT). This article uses empirical data and structural equation modeling to test the antecedents and mediators of employees' cybersecurity motivational behavior. The study offers theoretical and pragmatic guidance for cybersecurity programs. First, the model developed in this study can partially explain how people may change their …

Modeling Iot Solutions: A Lack Of Iot Device Security, And User Education, Benjamin Newlin

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The Internet of Things, more commonly known as IoT devices, is an ever growing topic, both in the marketplace and in cyber security. While new devices are released into the public every year, a lack of standardized security concepts is also growing ever so clear. By having a model or standard for IoT devices and manufacturers to follow, the customer-base of these devices will have an easier time identifying trustworthy devices as well as how to secure their own devices.

Cyber Whistleblowers: The Black Sheep Of Whistleblowing?, Andrew Wisniewski Jr.

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

From the Introduction:

Contrary to popular belief, this paper argues that cyber whistleblowing can contribute to a greater cyber security posture. However, this requires the development of clearer legal obligations and protections for cyber whistleblowers. This paper will explore the psychology behind whistleblowing, the effectiveness of whistleblowing in a cybersecurity context, how to create a safer and more transparent environment for whistleblowers and companies, and how current laws contribute to cyber whistleblowing.

A Review Of Distributed Identity Technology In Iot Devices, Myles Perry

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Distributed identity technology provides solutions to many of the faults currently found in federated identity systems. Applying this technology to internet of things devices has many possible benefits in the realm of device authentication. However, this also provides new challenges not present in existing distributed identity systems. The large number of devices that would enter and leave the system means balancing sybil attack vulnerability and linkage attack vulnerability becomes challenging. Internet of things devices also have less memory and computing power than a standard personal computer or phone. This means any protocol to execute distributed identity in these devices must …