Information Security Commons^™

Managing Software Dependency Risks In Web Applications, Christopher Alan Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Web applications commonly rely on third-party software dependencies to reduce development time. This thesis examines how vulnerabilities in a dependency chain propagate to compromise an application. It analyzes two vulnerable Markdown libraries from the npm and Composer dependency ecosystems, both of which are used for managing packages in applications developed with JavaScript and PHP. The analysis demonstrates how each library’s sanitizing functions—intended for removing unsafe user input when transforming Markdown text to HTML—are defeated to achieve a cross-site scripting exploit and take control of the application. The paper discusses potential business impacts of a compromise, underscoring the need for security …

Cybersecurity's Pr Problem: The Education Gap Fueling Mfa Aversion, Tyler M. Stafford, Catherine Dwyer

Honors College Theses

Through surveying individuals with no professional experience in cybersecurity, this study examines the relationship between awareness and education surrounding security controls and end users’ willingness to adopt them. The findings reveal a strong link between understanding the effectiveness of these controls and user comfort, indicating that as end users’ understanding increases, so does their willingness to use the controls. Working in both identity and access management (IAM) and human risk management, I observed what appeared to be a connection between security education and positive attitudes toward security more broadly, but found limited research statistically linking the two. This study’s findings …

5g Network Slice Vulnerabilities And Exploit Chaining Through Enablers, John Breeden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Network slicing provides fundamental support for the enhanced features of 5G. Network slicing enablers, such as software-defined networking and network function virtualization facilitate the separation of the physical distributed infrastructures and the functions that create isolated slices. With this framework, the network slice is no longer under the control of a single entity. Multiple infrastructure providers share responsibility for the slice. The 5G architecture derives from multiple services, distributed over great distances, and managed by multiple parties. Each enabler and provider adds vulnerability to network slicing. We examine the interweaving of these enablers to identify vulnerabilities, discuss potential mitigation, and …

A Systemic Mapping Study On Intrusion Response Systems, Adel Rezapour, Mohammad Ghasemigol, Daniel Takabi

School of Cybersecurity Faculty Publications

With the increasing frequency and sophistication of network attacks, network administrators are facing tremendous challenges in making fast and optimum decisions during critical situations. The ability to effectively respond to intrusions requires solving a multi-objective decision-making problem. While several research studies have been conducted to address this issue, the development of a reliable and automated Intrusion Response System (IRS) remains unattainable. This paper provides a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS) for IRS, aiming to investigate the existing studies, their limitations, and future directions in this field. A novel semi-automated research methodology is developed to identify and summarize related works. The innovative …

A Systematic Review Of K-12 Cybersecurity Education Around The World, Ahmed Ibrahim, Marnie Mckee, Leslie F. Sikos, Nicola F. Johnson

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

This paper presents a systematic review of K-12 cybersecurity education literature from around the world. 24 academic papers dated from 2013-2023 were eligible for inclusion in the literature established within the research protocol. An additional 19 gray literature sources comprised the total. A range of recurring common topics deemed as aspects of cybersecurity behavior or practice were identified. A variety of cybersecurity competencies and skills are needed for K-12 students to apply their knowledge. As may be expected to be the case with interdisciplinary fields, studies are inherently unclear in the use of their terminology, and this is compounded in …

Security Compliance And Work-Issued Mobile Devices: Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind?, Kent Marett, Shan Xiao, Sumin Kim

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

For security, economic, and efficiency reasons, many businesses supply mobile devices to employees to use both in the workplace and remotely, accompanied by policies governing their appropriate use. Extant research has shown that work-issued mobile devices can disrupt employees' perceptions of work-life balance (WLB) and, indeed, WLB can impact employees' job satisfaction and performance. The global COVID-19 pandemic meant that more employees than usual performed their work remotely, but this situation may have not fit the preferred WLB for some. Did this encroachment mean that appropriate use policies were forgotten? We conducted two rounds of surveys, one pre-pandemic and the …

On Irs-Assisted Covert Communication With A Friendly Uav, Xiaobei Xu, Linzi Hu, Sha Wei, Yuwen Qian, Shihao Yan, Feng Shu, Jun Li

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Driven by the rapidly growing demand for information security, covert wireless communication has become an essential technology and attracted tremendous attention. However, traditional wireless covert communication is continuously exposing the inherent limitations, creating challenges around deployment in environments with a large number of obstacles, such as cities with high-rise buildings. In this paper, we propose an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted covert communication system (CCS) for communicating with a friendly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in which the UAV generates artificial noise (AN) to interfere with monitoring. Furthermore, we model the power of AN emitted by the UAV using an uncertainty model, …

Cybersecurity Continuity Risks: Lessons Learned From The Covid-19 Pandemic, Tyler Fezzey, John H. Batchelor, Gerald F. Burch, Randall Reid

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The scope and breadth of the COVID-19 pandemic were unprecedented. This is especially true for business continuity and the related area of cybersecurity. Historically, business continuity and cybersecurity are viewed and researched as separate fields. This paper synthesizes the two disciplines as one, thus pointing out the need to address both topics simultaneously. This study identifies blind spots experienced by businesses as they navigated through the difficult time of the pandemic by using data collected during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. One major shortcoming was that most continuity and cybersecurity plans focused on single-axis threats. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted …

A Different Way To Penetrate Nba Defenses, Trey Trucksis

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project proposal will document the design, configuration, and penetration testing of a network consisting of three routers (labeled as Lakers, Celtics, Cavaliers), one switch (labeled as NBA), and three end devices (labeled as Kali, Windows 10, and Ubuntu) each connected to one of three routers present on the network. Each router will be attached to a different subnet on the network. The network will be secured using encrypted passwords on the router interfaces, OSPF MD5 authentication between the routers, port security on the switch, as well as Access Control Lists to to control the privileges of each subnetwork accordingly. …

Ict Security Tools And Techniques Among Higher Education Institutions: A Critical Review, Miko Nuñez, Xavier-Lewis Palmer, Lucas Potter, Chris Jordan Aliac, Lemuel Clark Velasco

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly relying on digital technologies for classroom and organizational management, but this puts them at higher risk for information and communication (ICT security attacks. Recent studies show that HEIs have experienced more security breaches in ICT security composed of both cybersecurity an information security. A literature review was conducted to identify common ICT security practices in HEIs over the last decade. 11 journal articles were profiled and analyzed, revealing threats to HEIs’ security and protective measures in terms of organizational security, technological security, physical security, and standards and frameworks. Security tools and techniques were grouped …

Principles Of Information Security, Alison Hedrick

KSU Distinguished Course Repository

An introduction to the various technical and administrative aspects of Information Security and Assurance. This course provides the foundation for understanding the key issues associated with protecting information assets, determining the levels of protection and response to security incidents, and designing a consistent, reasonable information security system, with appropriate intrusion detection and reporting features.

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 …

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 …

Precursors Of Email Response To Cybersecurity Scenarios: Factor Exploration And Scale Development, Miguel A. Toro-Jarrin, Pilar Pazos-Lago, Miguel Padilla

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

In the last decade, information security research has further expanded to include human factors as key elements of the organization's cybersecurity infrastructure. Numerous factors from several theories have been explored to explain and predict the multitude of information security-related behaviors in organizations. Lately, there has been a call for the study of specific cybersecurity behaviors in contextualized scenarios that reflect specific and realistic situations of a potential cyber-attack. This paper focuses on precursors of email response in situations that can be the origin of cybersecurity incidents in organizations (i.e., phishing attacks, ransomware, etc.). This study explores participants' intentions to follow …

Data Fusion For Trust Evaluation, Zheng Yan, Qinghua Zheng, Laurence T. Yang, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Trust evaluation is a process to quantify trust by analyzing the data related to the factors that affect trust. It has been widely applied in many fields to facilitate decision making, system entity collaboration and security establishment. For example, in social networking, trust evaluation helps users make a social decision, reduce the risk of social interactions, and ensure the quality of a social networking environment. In digital communications, trust evaluation can be applied to detect malicious nodes, filter unwanted traffic and improve communication security. In e-commerce and cloud services, trust evaluation helps users selecting an appropriate product or service from …

Impact Of Digital Nudging On Information Security Behavior: An Experimental Study On Framing And Priming In Cybersecurity, Kavya Sharma, Xinhui Zhan, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Keng Siau, Maggie X. Cheng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Purpose: Phishing attacks are the most common cyber threats targeted at users. Digital nudging in the form of framing and priming may reduce user susceptibility to phishing. This research focuses on two types of digital nudging, framing and priming, and examines the impact of framing and priming on users' behavior (i.e. action) in a cybersecurity setting. It draws on prospect theory, instance-based learning theory and dual-process theory to generate the research hypotheses. Design/methodology/approach: A 3 × 2 experimental study was carried out to test the hypotheses. The experiment consisted of three levels for framing (i.e. no framing, negative framing and …

Enterprise Environment Modeling For Penetration Testing On The Openstack Virtualization Platform, Vincent Karovic Jr., Jakub Bartalos, Vincent Karovic, Michal Gregus

Journal of Global Business Insights

The article presents the design of a model environment for penetration testing of an organization using virtualization. The need for this model was based on the constantly increasing requirements for the security of information systems, both in legal terms and in accordance with international security standards. The model was created based on a specific team from the unnamed company. The virtual working environment offered the same functions as the physical environment. The virtual working environment was created in OpenStack and tested with a Linux distribution Kali Linux. We demonstrated that the virtual environment is functional and its security testable. Virtualizing …

An Economical Method For Securely Disintegrating Solid-State Drives Using Blenders, Brandon J. Hopkins Phd, Kevin A. Riggle

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Pulverizing solid-state drives (SSDs) down to particles no larger than 2 mm is required by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to ensure the highest level of data security, but commercial disintegrators that achieve this standard are large, heavy, costly, and often difficult to access globally. Here, we present a portable, inexpensive, and accessible method of pulverizing SSDs using a household blender and other readily available materials. We verify this approach by pulverizing SSDs with a variety of household blenders for fixed periods of time and sieve the resulting powder to ensure appropriate particle size. Among the 6 household …

Establishing Blockchain-Related Security Controls, Maitha Ali Al Ketbi

Theses

Blockchain technology is a secure and relatively new technology of distributed digital ledgers which is based on interlinked blocks of transactions. There is a rapid growth in the adoption of the blockchain technology in different solutions and applications and within different industries throughout the world, such as but not limited to, finance, supply chain, digital identity, energy, healthcare, real estate and government. Blockchain technology has great benefits such as decentralization, transparency, immutability and automation. Like any other emerging technology, the blockchain technology has also several risks and threats associated with its expected benefits which in turns could have a negative …

Does Reputational Sanctions Deter Negligence In Information Security Management? A Field Quasi-Experiment, Qian Tang, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Security negligence, a major cause of data breaches, occurs when an organization’s information technology management fails to adequately address security vulnerabilities. By conducting a field quasi-experiment using outgoing spam as a focal security issue, this study investigates the effectiveness of reputational sanctions in reducing security negligence in a global context. In the quasi-experiment, a reputational sanction mechanism based on outgoing spam was established for four countries, and for each country, reputational sanctions were imposed on the 10 organizations with the largest outgoing spam volumes—that is, these organizations were listed publicly. We find that because of our reputational sanction mechanism, organizations …

Implementation Of Group Based Cryptosystems In Information Security, Bailey J. Moers

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

This capstone will focus on the implementation of cryptography in information security. The implementation can be achieved by studying different cryptosystems that will be secured using group based mathematics. Group based cryptosystems are preferable because research shows that group based cryptosystems are computationally infeasible. Understanding group based mathematics and its implementation in cryptography will allow us to better study the NTRU (Nth Truncated Ring Unit) cryptosystem with previous knowledge of group based cryptosystems. Although this cryptosystem is still very new, two sections of NTRU cryptosystem will be implemented in information security. The selected sections are: Multiplication of Polynomials modulo p …

Machine Learning For Real-Time Data-Driven Security Practices, Shane Coleman

Theses

The risk of cyber-attacks exploiting vulnerable organisations has increased significantly over the past several years. Cyber-attacks can be described as any type of aggressive strategy which targets computer information systems, computer networks, personal computer systems or other organisational infrastructures which may originate internally or externally. These attacks may combine to exploit a vulnerability breach within a system’s protection strategy which has the potential for loss, damage or destruction of assets. Consequently, every vulnerability has an accompanying risk which is defined as the “intersection of assets, threats, and vulnerabilities”.

This research project uses various types of recommender system techniques, employed for …

Implications Of Eu-Gdpr In Low-Grade Social, Activist And Ngo Settings, Lars Magnusson, Sarfraz Iqbal

International Journal of Business and Technology

Social support services are becoming popular among the citizens of every country and every age. Though, social support services easily accessible on mobile phones are used in different contexts, ranging from extending your presence and connectivity to friends, family and colleagues to using social media services for being a social activist seeking to help individuals confined in miserable situations such as homeless community, drug addicts or even revolutionists fighting against dictatorships etc. However, a very recent development in the European Parliament’s law (2016/679) on the processing and free movement of personal data in terms of EU-GDPR (General data protection rules) …

An Approach To Information Security For Smes Based On The Resource-Based View Theory, Blerton Abazi

International Journal of Business and Technology

The main focus of this proposal is to analyze implementation challenges, benefits and requirements in implementation of Information Systems and managing information security in small and medium size companies in Western Balkans countries. In relation to the study, the proposal will focus in the following questions to investigate: What are the benefits that companies mostly find after the implementation of Information Systems has been implemented, efficiency, how to they manage security of the information’s, competitive advantage, return of investments etc. The study should give a clear approach to Information Systems implementation, information security, maintenance, measurable benefits, challenges companies have gone …

Information Security Concepts And Administration (Ksu), Meng Han, Lei Li, Zhigang Li, Svetana Peltsverger, Ming Yang, Guangzhi Zheng

Computer Science and Information Technology Grants Collections

This Grants Collection for Information Security Concepts and Administration was created under a Round Ten ALG Textbook Transformation Grant.

Affordable Learning Georgia Grants Collections are intended to provide faculty with the frameworks to quickly implement or revise the same materials as a Textbook Transformation Grants team, along with the aims and lessons learned from project teams during the implementation process.

Documents are in .pdf format, with a separate .docx (Word) version available for download. Each collection contains the following materials:

• Linked Syllabus
• Initial Proposal
• Final Report

Suas: Cybersecurity Threats, Vulnerabilities, And Exploits, Philip Craiger, Gary Kessler, William Rose

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

The FAA predicts that purchases of hobbyist small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) will grow from 1.9 million in 2016 to 4.3 million by 2020, and commercial sUAS to increase from 600,000 in 2016 to 2.7 million by 2020. sUAS, often referred to as 'drones,' are comprised of aeronautical hardware, a CPU, RAM, onboard storage, radio frequency communications, sensors, a camera, and a controller used by the pilot-in-command (PIC). Some have argued that a sUAS is essentially a flying computer. As such, sUAS are sometimes susceptible to many of the types of attacks that are often used on PC-based computers attached …

A Resource View Of Information Security Incident Response, Mark-David J. Mclaughlin

2018

This dissertation investigates managerial and strategic aspects of InfoSec incident preparation and response. This dissertation is presented in four chapters:

Chapter 1: an introduction

Chapter 2: a systematic literature review

Chapter 3: two field-based case studies of InfoSec incident response processes

Chapter 4: a repertory grid study identifying characteristics of effective individual incident responders.

Together these chapters demonstrate that the lenses of the Resource Based View, Theory of Complementary Resources, and Accounting Control Theory, can be combined to classify and analyze the resources organizations use during incident response. I find that incident response is maturing as a discipline and organizations …

How Much Should We Spend To Protect Privacy?: Data Breaches And The Need For Information We Do Not Have, Richard Warner, Robert Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

A cost/benefit approach to privacy confronts two tradeoff issues. One is making appropriate tradeoffs between privacy and many goals served by the collection, distribution, and use of information. The other is making tradeoffs between investments in preventing unauthorized access to information and the variety of other goals that also make money, time, and effort demands. Much has been written about the first tradeoff. We focus on the second. The issue is critical. Data breaches occur at the rate of over three a day, and the aggregate social cost is extremely high. The puzzle is that security experts have long explained …

A Toolkit Approach To Information Security Awareness And Education, Peter Korovessis, Steven Furnell, Maria Papadaki, Paul Haskell-Dowland

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

In today’s business environment where all operations are enabled by technology, information security has become an established discipline as more and more businesses realize its value. The human component has been recognized to have an important role in information security since the only way to reduce security risks is through making employees more information security aware. Towards this goal the research will appreciate the importance of information security awareness by illustrating the need for more effective user training. Further to that it proposes and develops an information security toolkit as a prototype awareness raising initiative. Apart from the elements of …

A Data Hiding Scheme Based On Chaotic Map And Pixel Pairs, Sengul Dogan Sd

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Information security is one of the most common areas of study today. In the literature, there are many algorithms developed in the information security. The Least Significant Bit (LSB) method is the most known of these algorithms. LSB method is easy to apply however it is not effective on providing data privacy and robustness. In spite of all its disadvantages, LSB is the most frequently used algorithm in literature due to providing high visual quality. In this study, an effective data hiding scheme alternative to LSB, 2LSBs, 3LSBs and 4LSBs algorithms (known as xLSBs), is proposed. In this method, random …