Information Security Commons^™

What Effects Do Large Language Models Have On Cybersecurity, Josiah Marshall

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Large Language Models (LLMs) are artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can process, summarize, and translate texts and predict future words in a sentence, letting the LLM generate sentences similar to how humans talk and write. One concern that needs to be flagged is that, often, the content generated by different LLMs is inaccurate. LLMs are trained on code that can be used to detect data breaches, detect ransomware, and even pinpoint organizational vulnerabilities in advance of a cyberattack. LLMs are new but have unbelievable potential with their ability to generate code that brings awareness to cyber analysts and IT professionals. …

Visual Art In The Age Of Ai, Roshnica Gurung

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Artists and researchers have been deeply interested in using AI programs that generate art for quite some time now. As a result, there have been many advancements in making AI more accessible and easier to use for the public. This is because AI is not just for business anymore. Nowadays an individual without a college degree with even the slightest interest in art can go on a website like Stable Diffusion and create an artistic image using a text prompt in a quick couple minutes. The only limit is your imagination- and your internet’s stability. This accessibility was a huge …

Role Of Ai In Threat Detection And Zero-Day Attacks, Kelly Morgan

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Cybercrime and attack methods have been steadily increasing since the 2019 pandemic. In the years following 2019, the number of victims and attacks per hour rapidly increased as businesses and organizations transitioned to digital environments for business continuity amidst lockdowns. In most scenarios cybercriminals continued to use conventional attack methods and known vulnerabilities that would cause minimal damage to an organization with a robust cyber security posture. However, zero-day exploits have skyrocketed across all industries with an increasingly growing technological landscape encompassing internet of things (IoT), cloud hosting, and more advanced mobile technologies. Reports by Mandiant Threat Intelligence (2022) concluded …

Cybersecurity Workforce Development In Nigeria: Transforming The Cybercrime Gangs Into Cybersecurity Specialists, Olohi Favor Anteyi

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

This paper addresses the issue of cybercrime in Nigeria and the possibility of creating a cybersecurity workforce development program for cyber criminals to develop their skills for the cybersecurity profession, which may facilitate Nigeria’s economic development.

Unveiling The Dark Web And The Impact Of Revil's Cyberattacks, Tanya Sasnouskaya

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

The United States Navy originally created the Dark Web for intelligence purposes, but it was later promoted by Western countries as a tool for safeguarding privacy and anonymity. Currently, the Dark Web serves as a platform for deliberate information leaks by nations that want to keep certain information out of the mainstream media. This paper provides an overview of the dark web and the browser used to access it. It covers the layers of the internet and highlights REvil ransomware and some of its technical details. By understanding these risks, users can take appropriate preventive measures to protect themselves from …

Some Legal And Practical Challenges In The Investigation Of Cybercrime, Ritz Carr

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), in 2021, the United States lost around $6.9 billion to cybercrime. In 2022, that number grew to over $10.2 billion (IC3, 2022). In one of many efforts to combat cybercrimes, at least 40 states “introduced or considered more than 250 bills or resolutions that deal significantly with cybersecurity” with 24 states officially enacting a total of 41 bills (National Conference on State Legislatures, 2022).

The world of cybercrime evolves each day. Nevertheless, challenges arise when we investigate and prosecute cybercrime, which will be examined in the following collection of essays that highlight …

The Linkage Between The Climate Change And The Cybercrimes, Min Kim

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

At the beginning of the new era, the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has been rapidly transforming society into a new form that has never been experienced before. While previous industrial revolutions have also contributed to societal growth through phenomenal inventions and discoveries, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to break the most conventional rule, and one that has dominated social and economic activities: physical interaction. In the near future, sitting at the office, having an in-person meeting, or going on a business trip may no longer be needed as physical barriers are destroyed by cyberspace. However, two …

Cyber Security In Cyber Space, James D. Lee Jr.

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

For almost twenty years, the Internet has been a driving force in global communication and an integral part of people's everyday lives. As a result of technical developments and declining prices, over 3 billion people worldwide now utilize the Internet. The Internet has created a global infrastructure, and it is worth billions of dollars annually to the global economy (Judge et al.). Today's economic, commercial, cultural, social, and governmental activities and exchanges occur in Cyberspace, involving individuals, enterprises, non-profit organizations, and government and governmental agencies (Aghajani and Ghadimi 220). Cyberspace is the birthplace of much of the world's most essential …

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning For Enhanced Cybersecurity: A Proposal To Defeat Malware, Emmanuel Boateng

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Cybersecurity is very crucial in the digital age in order to safeguard the availability, confidentiality, and integrity of data and systems. Mitigation techniques used in the industry include Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), Incident Response Planning (IRP), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), and Signature-based and Heuristic Detection.

MFA is employed as an additional layer of protection in several sectors to help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data. IRP is a plan in place to address cybersecurity problems efficiently and expeditiously. SIEM offers real-time analysis and alerts the system of threats and vulnerabilities. Heuristic-based detection relies on detecting anomalies when it comes …

The Rise And Risks Of Internet Of Things, Diamond E. Hicks

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Internet of Things (IoT) has become a necessary part of our everyday lives. IoT is the network in which many different devices communicate, connect, and share data. Though how IoT got to where it is today, the issues it faced, and how it affects our lives today is not common knowledge. Despite the fact that IoT has advanced our technology to what it is today, people do not completely understand what it does.

Federated Learning And Applications In Cybersecurity, Ani Sreekumar

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Machine learning is a subfield of artificial intelligence that focuses on making predictions about some outcome based on information from a dataset. In cybersecurity, machine learning is often used to improve intrusion detection systems and identify trends in data that could indicate an oncoming cyber attack. Data privacy is an extremely important aspect of cybersecurity, and there are many industries that have more demanding laws to ensure the security of user data. Due to these regulations, machine learning algorithms can not be widely utilized in these industries to improve outcomes and accuracy of predictions. However, federated learning is a recent …

Is Cybersecurity Training Practical Or Not?, Bhawnish Sharma

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

With technology growing, there has been an increase in cybercrime. Because of this, private and public sectors face global problems, i.e., phishing, security breaches, and identity theft. With cybersecurity software available on the internet, anyone can access it. As technology advances, cybersecurity experts must answer the tough question of, “is cybersecurity training practical or not”?

Investigating Privacy Policies Using Policylint Tool, Tricia Camaya

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Organizations essentially inform clients about data collection and sharing practices through privacy policies. Recent research has proposed tools to help users better comprehend these lengthy and intricate legal documents that summarize collection and sharing. However, these instruments have a significant flaw. They overlook the possibility of contradictions within a particular policy. This paper introduces PolicyLint, a tool for analyzing privacy policies that simultaneously considers negation and varying semantic levels of data objects and entities. PolicyLint accomplishes this by using sentence-level natural language processing to automatically create ontologies from a large corpus of privacy policies and capturing both positive and negative …

Ethical Concerns In Self-Driving Cars, Victoria Shand

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Automobiles have been in existence since 1672 and only went up from there. Self-driving cars are a fantastic piece of technology; they can self-park, laser ranger finder, and near vision; they can map the road in advance, understand road signs, and, in some cases, handle certain variables on the road.

When talking about any form of technology, the possibilities are endless technology is a continuously evolving idea. When discussing self-driving cars, they have some fantastic and encouraging benefits and ideas. Some ideas would be that vehicles could communicate with each other, we could eliminate the need for traffic lights, and …

A Brief Review Of Dns, Root Servers, Vulnerabilities And Decentralization, Mallory Runyan

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

Since the 1980’s and creation of the World Wide Web, Internet utilization is a common and arguably, necessary, part of daily life. The internet is young and still relatively new, but as of 2016, 3.4 billion people were online, and that number has since grown [1]. This is a significant number, but as such a common part of daily life, how elements of the internet or its infrastructure work is complex. The world would very likely be thrown into dark ages if DNS or any other significant aspect of the internet's infrastructure were to succumb to an attack. The Colonial …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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 …