Information Security Commons^™

Investigating The Influence Of Perceived Uncertainty On Protection Motivation: An Experimental Study, Ali Vedadi

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

IS users and organizations must take necessary measures to adequately cope with security threats. Considering the importance and prevalence of these issues and challenges, IS security research has extensively investigated a variety of factors that influence IS users’ security intentions/behaviors. In this regard, protection-motivated behaviors are primarily based on individuals’ personal cognitive evaluations and vigilance. In reality, however, many users reach security hygiene decisions through various non-rational and non-protection-motivated processes. Such users may not necessarily rely on their own cognitive appraisals and information processing, but proceed to make decisions without careful cognitive assessments of security threats and coping responses. One …

Towards A Development Of A Mobile Application Security Invasiveness Index, Sam Espana

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The economic impact of Mobile IP, the standard that allows IP sessions to be maintained even when switching between different cellular towers or networks, has been staggering in terms of both scale and acceleration (Doherty, 2016). As voice communications transition to all-digital, all-IP networks such as 4G, there will be an increase in risk due to vulnerabilities, malware, and hacks that exist for PC-based systems and applications (Harwood, 2011). According to Gostev (2006), in June, 2004, a well-known Spanish virus collector known as VirusBuster, emailed the first known mobile phone virus to Kaspersky Lab, Moscow. Targeting the Symbian OS, the …

Teaching Security Of Internet Of Things In Using Raspberrypi, Oliver Nichols, Li Yang, Xiaohong Yuan

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The Internet of Things (IoTs) is becoming a reality in today’s society. The IoTs can find its application in multiple domains including healthcare, critical infrastructure, transportation, and home and personal use. It is important to teach students importance and techniques that are essential in protecting IoTs. We design a series of hands-on labs in a smart home setting, which can exercise attack and protection of IoTs. Our hands-on labs use a Raspberry Pi and several diverse smart things that communicate through Z-Wave technology. Using this environment, students can operate a home automation system and learn security concepts by performing these …

Is Security Research Development: Implications For Future Researchers, Kane Smith, Chris Merritt

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Security within the context of Information Systems has long been a concern for both academics and practitioners. For this reason an extensive body of research has been built around the need for protecting vital technical systems and the information contained within them. This stream of research, termed Information Systems Security (ISS), has evolved with technology over the last several decades in numerous different ways. This evolution can create a great deal of difficulty for researchers to identify under-represented areas of ISS research as well as ensure all relevant areas of concern are addressed. The purpose of this paper is threefold: …

Pedagogical Resources For Industrial Control Systems Security: Design, Implementation, Conveyance, And Evaluation, Guillermo A. Francia Iii, Greg Randall

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Industrial Control Systems (ICS), which are pervasive in our nation’s critical infrastructures, are becoming increasingly at risk and vulnerable to internal and external threats. It is imperative that the future workforce be educated and trained on the security of such systems. However, it is equally important that careful and deliberate considerations must be exercised in designing and implementing the educational and training activities that pertain to ICS. To that end, we designed and implemented pedagogical materials and tools to facilitate the teaching and learning processes in the area of ICS security. In this paper, we describe those resources, the professional …

Towards An In-Depth Understanding Of Deep Packet Inspection Using A Suite Of Industrial Control Systems Protocol Packets, Guillermo A. Francia Iii

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Industrial control systems (ICS) are increasingly at risk and vulnerable to internal and external threats. These systems are integral part of our nation’s critical infrastructures. Consequently, a successful cyberattack on one of these could present disastrous consequences to human life and property as well. It is imperative that cybersecurity professionals gain a good understanding of these systems particularly in the area of communication protocols. Traditional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) are made to encapsulate some of these ICS protocols which may enable malicious payload to get through the network firewall and thus, gain entry into the …

Investigating Cyberbullying In Social Media: The Case Of Twitter, Xin Tian

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Social media has profoundly changed how we interact with one another and the world around us. Recent research indicates that more and more people are using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter for a significant portion of their day for various reasons such as making new friends, socializing with old friends, receiving information, and entertaining themselves. However, social media has also caused some problems. One of the problems is called social media cyberbullying which has developed over time as new social media technologies have developed over time. Social media cyberbullying has received increasing attention in recent years as …

Towards A Model Of Senior Citizens’ Motivation To Pursue Cybersecurity Awareness Training: Lecture-Based Vs. Video-Cases Training, Carlene G. Blackwood-Brown

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cyber-attacks on Internet users, and in particular senior citizens, who have limited awareness of cybersecurity, have caused billions of dollars in losses annually. To mitigate the effects of cyber-attacks, several researchers have recommended that the cybersecurity awareness levels of Internet users be increased. Cybersecurity awareness training programs are most effective when they involve training that focus on making users more aware so that they can identify cyber-attacks as well as mitigate the effects of the cyber-attacks when they use the Internet. However, it is unclear about what motivates Internet users to pursue cybersecurity awareness training so that they can identify …

Towards A Comparison Of Training Methodologies On Employee’S Cybersecurity Countermeasures Awareness And Skills In Traditional Vs. Socio-Technical Programs, Jodi Goode

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Organizations, which have established an effective technical layer of security, continue to experience difficulties triggered by cyber threats. Ultimately, the cybersecurity posture of an organization depends on appropriate actions taken by employees whose naive cybersecurity practices have been found to represent 72% to 95% of cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities. However, employees cannot be held responsible for cybersecurity practices if they are not provided the education and training to acquire skills which allow for identification of security threats along with the proper course of action. This work-in-progress study addresses the first phase of a larger project to empirically assess if there …

Code Metrics For Predicting Risk Levels Of Android Applications, Akond A. Rahman

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Android applications pose security and privacy risks for end-users. Early prediction of risk levels that are associated with Android applications can help Android developers is releasing less risky applications to end-users. Researchers have showed how code metrics can be used as early predictors of failure prone software components. Whether or not code metrics can be used to predict risk levels of Android applications requires systematic exploration. The goal of this paper is to aid Android application developers in assessing the risk associated with developed Android applications by identifying code metrics that can be used as predictors to predict two levels …

Developing And Using Evidence-Based E-Learning Videos For Cybersecurity Education, Wu He, Xin Tian, Mohd Anwar

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

To help people improve their knowledge and security self-efficacy in dealing with malware attacks that are relevant and meaningful to their organizations, we recently developed over 30 e-learning videos based on the major types of malware attacks we captured using the state-of-the-art anti-malware solution. The preliminary evaluation results of the videos are quite positive and indicate that these evidence-based e-learning videos have great potential to increase users’ security self-efficacy.

Training Wheels: A New Approach To Teaching Mobile Device Security, Philip Menard, Jordan Shropshire

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Despite massive investments in cyber security education, training, and awareness programs, most people retain unsafe mobile computing habits. They not only jeopardize their own data, but also risk the security of their associated organizations. It appears that conventional training programs are not ingraining sound security practices on trainees. This research questions the efficacy of legacy SETA frameworks and proposes a new cyber training tool for mobile devices. The tool is called Training Wheels. Training Wheels stands a number of cyber security training practices on their heads: instead of using punitive methods of reinforcement it provides rewards to encourage good behavior, …

Teaching Static Call Analysis To Detect Anomalous Software Behavior, Jordan Shropshire, Philip Menard

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Malicious code detection is a critical part of any cyber security operation. Typically, the behavior of normal applications is modeled so that deviations from normal behavior can be identified. There are multiple approach to modeling good behavior but the most common approach is to observe applications’ system call activity. System calls are messages passed between user space applications and their underlying operating systems. The detection of irregular system call activity signals the presence of malicious software behavior. This method of malware-detection has been used successfully for almost two decades. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to cover this concept at the …

Active Snort Rules And The Needs For Computing Resources: Computing Resources Needed To Activate Different Numbers Of Snort Rules, Chad A. Arney, Xinli Wang

School of Technology Publications

This project was designed to discover the relationship between the number of enabled rules maintained by Snort and the amount of computing resources necessary to operate this intrusion detection system (IDS) as a sensor. A physical environment was set up to loosely simulate a network and an IDS sensor monitoring it.

The experiment was conducted in five trials. A different number of Snort rules was enabled in each trial and the corresponding utilization of computing resources was measured. Remarkable variation and a clear trend of CPU usage were observed in the experiment.

Mabic: Mobile Application Builder For Interactive Communication, Huy Manh Nguyen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Nowadays, the web services and mobile technology advance to a whole new level. These technologies make the modern communication faster and more convenient than the traditional way. People can also easily share data, picture, image and video instantly. It also saves time and money. For example: sending an email or text message is cheaper and faster than a letter. Interactive communication allows the instant exchange of feedback and enables two-way communication between people and people, or people and computer. It increases the engagement of sender and receiver in communication.

Although many systems such as REDCap and Taverna are built for …

Integrated Software Fingerprinting Via Neural-Network-Based Control Flow Obfuscation, Haoyu Ma, Ruiqi Li, Xiaoxu Yu, Chunfu Jia, Debin Gao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Dynamic software fingerprinting has been an important tool in fighting against software theft and pirating by embedding unique fingerprints into software copies. However, existing work uses methods from dynamic software watermarking as direct solutions in which secret marks are inside rather independent code modules attached to the software. This results in an intrinsic weakness against targeted collusive attacks since differences among software copies correspond directly to the fingerprint-related components. In this paper, we suggest a novel mode of dynamic fingerprinting called integrated fingerprinting, of which the goal is to ensure all fingerprinted software copies possess identical behaviors at semantic level. …

Dissecting Developer Policy Violating Apps: Characterization And Detection, Su Mon Kywe, Yingjiu Li, Jason Hong, Yao Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To ensure quality and trustworthiness of mobile apps, Google Play store imposes various developer policies. Once an app is reported for exhibiting policy-violating behaviors, it is removed from the store to protect users. Currently, Google Play store relies on mobile users’ feedbacks to identify policy violations. Our paper takes the first step towards understanding these policy-violating apps. First, we crawl 302 Android apps, which are reported in the Reddit forum by mobile users for policy violations and are later removed from the Google Play store. Second, we perform empirical analysis, which reveals that many violating behaviors have not been studied …

Attribute-Based Encryption With Granular Revocation, Hui Cui, Deng, Robert H., Xuhua Ding, Yingjiu Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Attribute-based encryption (ABE) enables an access control mechanism over encrypted data by specifying access policies over attributes associated with private keys or ciphertexts, which is a promising solution to protect data privacy in cloud storage services. As an encryption system that involves many data users whose attributes might change over time, it is essential to provide a mechanism to selectively revoke data users’ attributes in an ABE system. However, most of the previous revokable ABE schemes consider how to disable revoked data users to access (newly) encrypted data in the system, and there are few of them that can be …

Special Issue On Cyberharassment Investigation: Advances And Trends, Joanne Bryce, Virginia N. L. Franqueira, Andrew Marrington

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Empirical and anecdotal evidence indicates that cyberharassment is more prevalent as the use of social media becomes increasingly widespread, making geography and physical proximity irrelevant. Cyberharassment can take different forms (e.g., cyberbullying, cyberstalking, cybertrolling), and be motivated by the objectives of inflicting distress, exercising control, impersonation, and defamation. Little is currently known about the modus operandi of offenders and their psychological characteristics. Investigation of these behaviours is particularly challenging because it involves digital evidence distributed across the devices of both alleged offenders and victims, as well as online service providers, sometimes over an extended period of time. This special issue …

Masthead

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Low Self-Control On Online Harassment: Interaction With Opportunity., Hyunin Baek, Michael M. Losavio, George E. Higgins

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Developing Internet technology has increased the rates of youth online harassment. This study examines online harassment from adolescents with low self-control and the moderating effect of opportunity. The data used in this study were collected by the Korea Institute of Criminology in 2009. The total sample size was 1,091. The results indicated that low self-control, opportunity, and gender have a significant influence on online harassment. However, these results differed according to gender; for males, low self-control significantly impacted online harassment; for females, however, only low self-control significantly impacted online harassment. Furthermore, the interaction between low self-control and opportunity did not …

Front Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

A Legal Examination Of Revenge Pornography And Cyber-Harassment, Thomas Lonardo, Tricia Martland, Doug White

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper examines the current state of the statutes in the United States as they relate to cyber-harassment in the context of "revenge porn". Revenge porn refers to websites which cater to those wishing to exploit, harass, or otherwise antagonize their ex partners using pornographic images and videos which were obtained during their relationships. The paper provide examples and illustrations as well as a summary of current statute in the United States. The paper additionally explores some of the various legal remedies available to victims of revenge pornography.

Differentiating Cyberbullies And Internet Trolls By Personality Characteristics And Self-Esteem, Lauren A. Zezulka, Kathryn C. Seigfried-Spellar

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Cyberbullying and internet trolling are both forms of online aggression or cyberharassment; however, research has yet to assess the prevalence of these behaviors in relationship to one another. In addition, the current study was the first to investigate whether individual differences and self-esteem discerned between self-reported cyberbullies and/or internet trolls (i.e., Never engaged in either, Cyberbully-only, Troll-only, Both Cyberbully and Troll). Of 308 respondents solicited from Mechanical Turk, 70 engaged in cyberbullying behaviors, 20 engaged in only trolling behaviors, 129 self-reported both behaviors, and 89 self-reported neither behavior. Results yielded low self-esteem, low conscientiousness, and low internal moral values for …

Toward Online Linguistic Surveillance Of Threatening Messages, Brian H. Spitzberg, Jean Mark Gawron

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Threats are communicative acts, but it is not always obvious what they communicate or when they communicate imminent credible and serious risk. This paper proposes a research- and theory-based set of over 20 potential linguistic risk indicators that may discriminate credible from non-credible threats within online threat message corpora. Two prongs are proposed: (1) Using expert and layperson ratings to validate subjective scales in relation to annotated known risk messages, and (2) Using the resulting annotated corpora for automated machine learning with computational linguistic analyses to classify non-threats, false threats, and credible threats. Rating scales are proposed, existing threat corpora …

Physical Layer Defenses Against Primary User Emulation Attacks, Joan A. Betances

Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a promising technology that works by detecting unused parts of the spectrum and automatically reconfiguring the communication system's parameters in order to operate in the available communication channels while minimizing interference. CR enables efficient use of the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum by generating waveforms that can coexist with existing users in licensed spectrum bands. Spectrum sensing is one of the most important components of CR systems because it provides awareness of its operating environment, as well as detecting the presence of primary (licensed) users of the spectrum.

Understanding Firewalld In Multi-Zone Configurations, Nathan R. Vance, William F. Polik

Faculty Publications

Stories of compromised servers and data theft fill today's news. It isn't difficult for someone who has read an informative blog post to access a system via a misconfigured service, take advantage of a recently exposed vulnerability, or gain control using a stolen password. Any of the many internet services found on a typical Linux server could harbor a vulnerability that grants unauthorized access to the system.

Since it's an impossible task to harden a system at the application level against every possible threat, firewalls provide security by limiting access to a system. Firewalls filter incoming packets based on their …

Provably Secure Robust Optimistic Fair Exchange Of Distributed Signatures, Yujue Wang, Qianhong Wu, Duncan S. Wong, Bo Qin, Jian Mao, Yong Ding

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We introduce the concept of optimistic fair exchange of distributed signatures (OFEDS) which allows two groups of parties to fairly exchange digital signatures. Specifically, an authorized set of parties from each group can jointly take part in the protocol on behalf of the affiliated group to fulfill obligation, and a semi-trusted arbitrator will intervene in the protocol only when there are disputes between two sides. Our OFEDS extends the functionality of optimistic fair exchange of threshold signatures to a more generic case. We formalize the security model of OFEDS, in which besides the standard security requirements for existing optimistic fair …