Information Security Commons^™

Hack The Planet! -- Cybersecurity Tips To Keep You, Your Data, And Your Clients Safe, Jason Tubinis

Continuing Legal Education Presentations

It is really easy to make you, your practice, and your clients safe from being the victims of a cyber-crime. This paper will discuss some tips, tricks, and considerations you can implement quickly, safely, and on the cheap.

These are relatively simple suggestions, though. You should be able to implement most of these practices within an hour, and while they will save you from the most common security flaws Bad Guys are looking to exploit.

When Good Components Go Bad: Formally Secure Compilation Despite Dynamic Compromise, Guglielmo Fachini, CăTăLin Hriţcu, Marco Stronati, Arthur Azevedo De Amorim, Carmine Abate, Roberto Blanco, Théo Laurent, Benjamin C. Pierce, Andrew Tolmach

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

We propose a new formal criterion for secure compilation, giving strong end-to-end security guarantees for software components written in unsafe, low-level languages with C-style undefined behavior. Our criterion is the first to model dynamic compromise in a system of mutually distrustful components running with least privilege. Each component is protected from all the others—in particular, from components that have encountered undefined behavior and become compromised. Each component receives secure compilation guarantees up to the point when it becomes compromised, after which an attacker can take complete control over the component and use any of its privileges to attack the remaining …

Long Term Key Management Architecture For Scada Systems, Hendra Saputra, Zhigang Zhao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

A SCADA key management is required to provide a key management protocol that will be used to secure the communication channel of the SCADA entities. The SCADA key management scheme often uses symmetric cryptography due to resource constraints of the SCADA entities. Normally the use of symmetric cryptography mechanism is in the form of pre-shared keys, which are installed manually and are fixed. Then, these pre-shared keys or long term keys are used to generate session keys. However, it is important that these long term keys can be updated and refreshed dynamically. With the nature of SCADA systems which may …

Attribute-Based Cloud Storage With Secure Provenance Over Encrypted Data, Hui Cui, Robert H. Deng, Yingjiu Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To securely and conveniently enjoy the benefits of cloud storage, it is desirable to design a cloud data storage system which protects data privacy from storage servers through encryption, allows fine-grained access control such that data providers can expressively specify who are eligible to access the encrypted data, enables dynamic user management such that the total number of data users is unbounded and user revocation can be carried out conveniently, supports data provider anonymity and traceability such that a data provider’s identity is not disclosed to data users in normal circumstances but can be traced by a trusted authority if …

Secure Fine-Grained Access Control And Data Sharing For Dynamic Groups In The Cloud, Shengmin Xu, Guomin Yang, Yi Mu, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cloud computing is an emerging computing paradigm that enables users to store their data in a cloud server to enjoy scalable and on-demand services. Nevertheless, it also brings many security issues, since cloud service providers (CSPs) are not in the same trusted domain as users. To protect data privacy against untrusted CSPs, existing solutions apply cryptographic methods (e.g., encryption mechanisms) and provide decryption keys only to authorized users. However, sharing cloud data among authorized users at a fine-grained level is still a challenging issue, especially when dealing with dynamic user groups. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient …

An Overview Of The Usage Of Default Passwords, Brandon Knierem, Xiaolu Zhang, Philip Levine, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The recent Mirai botnet attack demonstrated the danger of using default passwords and showed it is still a major problem. In this study we investigated several common applications and their password policies. Specifically, we analyzed if these applications: (1) have default passwords or (2) allow the user to set a weak password (i.e., they do not properly enforce a password policy). Our study shows that default passwords are still a significant problem: 61% of applications inspected initially used a default or blank password. When changing the password, 58% allowed a blank password, 35% allowed a weak password of 1 character.

Tactful Inattention: Erving Goffman, Privacy In The Digital Age, And The Virtue Of Averting One's Eyes, Elizabeth De Armond

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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 …

Introduction - Syllabus, C. Ariel Pinto

Module 1: Fundamentals of Cybersecurity Risk Management

Cybersecurity risk management is a necessary tool for decision making for all management levels from tactical to strategic and creating a common understanding between people from diverse domains or having different priorities. This course adopts a multidisciplinary perspective. It creates a common understanding of risk for a diverse set of students which are coming from different disciplines such as technical, social, economics, law, and politics to remove communication barriers between strategic, operational, and tactical level decision makers.

The course covers related government and industry regulations and standards along with best practices frequently used to assess, analyze and manage cyber risks, …

A Malware Analysis And Artifact Capture Tool, Dallas Wright, Josh Stroschein

Research & Publications

Malware authors attempt to obfuscate and hide their code in its static and dynamic states. This paper provides a novel approach to aid analysis by intercepting and capturing malware artifacts and providing dynamic control of process flow. Capturing malware artifacts allows an analyst to more quickly and comprehensively understand malware behavior and obfuscation techniques and doing so interactively allows multiple code paths to be explored. The faster that malware can be analyzed the quicker the systems and data compromised by it can be determined and its infection stopped. This research proposes an instantiation of an interactive malware analysis and artifact …

Preparing Millennials As Digital Citizens And Socially And Environmentally Responsible Business Professionals In A Socially Irresponsible Climate, Barbara Burgess-Wilkerson, Clovia Hamilton, Chlotia Garrison, Keith Robbins

Winthrop Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Examining The Influence Of Technology Acceptance, Self-Efficacy, And Locus Of Control On Information Security Behavior Of Social Media Users, Abdullah Almuqrin

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Due to recent advances in online communication technology, social networks have become a vital avenue for human interaction. At the same time, they have been exploited as a target for viruses, attacks, and security threats. The first line of defense against such attacks and threats— as well as their primary cause—are social media users themselves. This study investigated the relationship between certain personality factors among social media users—i.e., technology acceptance of security protection technologies, self-efficacy of information security, and locus of control—and their information security behavior. Quantitative methods were used to examine this relationship. The population consisted of all students …

Graduate Admissions Recruitment Project, Kevin Anderson, Chiemela Dike, Yixin Du, Arvinder Kaur, Amanda Popp, Huizhong Yang

School of Professional Studies

In this project, several comparison schools were interviewed and disclosed to have used search lists to find candidates. The organizations that have valuable search lists which may be of good use for the School of Professional Studies include Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). By choosing criteria such as demographics, location, academic performance, educational history provided by search lists, we believe there are many quality candidates for SPS programs. However, as we further investigated the functionality and cost-efficiency or return of investment of GRE search list, we spotted many uncertainties and few solid and successful …

Worcester Center For Crafts: A Transition To Online Sales, Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, Alberta Yamoah

School of Professional Studies

The Clark University School of Professional Studies created a capstone team consisting of Monica Gow, Carly Branconnier, Iana Matkovskaia, Srilatha Prodduturi, Ekaterina Shusharina, and Alberta Yamoah to assist Worcester Center for Crafts (WCC) with the launch of their new online store. Worcester Center for Crafts wanted to showcase their beautiful American handmade crafts on an online platform, Shopify, in order to increase their sales and expand their market reach. The capstone team created a charter that outlined the scope of the project and what the team would deliver to WCC by the end of the project. The team agreed to …

Audubon Data Project Final Report, Askhat Beygenov, Valinur Kutlambetov, Shrikant Patel, Phoebe Roberts, Ulfat Sayyed, Shriram Sivaraman

School of Professional Studies

The Audubon Data Project was initiated as a Clark University Capstone project. The project’s client, Mass Audubon’s Shaping the Future of Your Community program, had identified a need to improve their data management methods and make better use of their data. The Capstone team, composed of Clark University graduate students, met with the client regularly to review the current state of the data and potential improvements to be made. The process began with a data review. During the review we worked with the client to explicitly define the purposes and requirements of the data, the current process for updating and …

Assessment Of Information Security Culture In Higher Education, Henry Glaspie

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Information security programs are instituted by organizations to provide guidance to their users who handle their data and systems. The main goal of these programs is to protect the organization's information assets through the creation and cultivation of a positive information security culture within the organization. As the collection and use of data expands in all economic sectors, the threat of data breach due to human error increases. Employee's behavior towards information security is influenced by the organizations information security programs and the overall information security culture. This study examines the human factors of an information security program and their …

A Formally Verified Heap Allocator, Arash Sahebolamri, Scott D. Constable, Steve J. Chapin

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports

We present the formal verification of a heap allocator written in C. We use the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant to formally verify the correctness of the heap allocator at the source code level. The C source code of the heap allocator is imported into Isabelle/HOL using CParser and AutoCorres. In addition to providing the guarantee that the heap allocator is free of bugs and therefore is suitable for use in security critical projects, our work facilitates verification of other projects written in C that utilize Isabelle and AutoCorres.

The Legacy Of Multics And Secure Operating Systems Today, John Schriner

Publications and Research

This paper looks to the legacy of Multics from 1963 and its influence on computer security. It discusses kernel-based and virtualization-based containment in projects like SELinux and Qubes, respectively. The paper notes the importance of collaborative and research-driven projects like Qubes and Tor Project.

Construction Of A Custom Network Security Appliance, Jacob Rickerd

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Over the last three semesters, I worked toward my final goal to develop a custom network security appliance. I first began by completing a comparison analysis of network intrusion detection systems which are devices that read traffic from the network and determine if network packets should go through or be dropped. Second, I conducted a feasibility study of a custom framework to profile attackers in a network; this yielded positive results. Finally, I worked on creating a custom network security appliance; it uses the profiles I created in my framework to more efficiently block malicious attackers in comparison to other …

Economics-Based Risk Management Of Distributed Denial Of Service Attacks: A Distance Learning Case Study, Omer Keskin, Unal Tatar, Omer Poyraz, Ariel Pinto, Adrian Gheorghe

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Managing risk of cyber systems is still on the top of the agendas of Chief Information Security Officers (CISO). Investment in cybersecurity is continuously rising. Efficiency and effectiveness of cybersecurity investments are under scrutiny by boards of the companies. The primary method of decision making on cybersecurity adopts a risk-informed approach. Qualitative methods bring a notion of risk. However, particularly for strategic level decisions, more quantitative methods that can calculate the risk and impact in monetary values are required. In this study, a model is built to calculate the economic value of business interruption during a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack …

Isolated Mobile Malware Observation, Augustine Paul

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The idea behind Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) it that personal mobile devices can be used in the workplace to enhance convenience and flexibility. This development encourages organizations to allow access of personal mobile devices to business information and systems for businesses operation. However, BYOD opens a firm to various security risks such as data contamination and the exposure of user interest to criminal activities. Mobile devices were not designed to handle intense data security and advanced security features are frequently turned off. Using personal mobile devices can also expose a system to various forms of security threats like malware. …

Is Working With What We Have Enough?, Brian Cusack, Bryce Antony

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Augmented reality (AR) digital environments have introduced a new complexity to digital investigation where augmented overlays of real objects may be momentary, changed, distorted and evade the usual methods for evidence collection. It is possible an investigator applying standard investigation methods factually reports a real situation and its digital context but has none of the relevant evidence. In this situation the potential for a fair hearing is low and the chance of retrial high. Such situations are unacceptably dangerous and require redress. In this paper the AR condition is considered in terms of its complexity and management during an investigation. …

Digital Forensics Investigative Framework For Control Rooms In Critical Infrastructure, Brian Cusack, Amr Mahmoud

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

In this paper a cyber-forensic framework with a detailed guideline for protecting control systems is developed to improve the forensic capability for big data in critical infrastructures. The main objective of creating a cyber-forensic plan is to cover the essentials of monitoring, troubleshooting, data reconstruction, recovery, and the safety of classified information. The problem to be addressed in control rooms is the diversity and quantity of data, and for investigators, bringing together the different skill groups for managing data and device diversity. This research embraces establishing of a new digital forensic model for critical infrastructures that supports digital forensic investigators …

Consortium Blockchain-Based Sift: Outsourcing Encrypted Feature Extraction In The D2d Network, Xiaoqin Feng, Jianfeng Ma, Tao Feng, Yinbin Miao, Ximeng Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Privacy-preserving outsourcing algorithms for feature extraction not only reduce users' storage and computation overhead but also preserve the image privacy. However, the existing schemes still suffer from deficiencies induced by security, applications, efficiency and storage. To solve the problems, we implement a consortium chain-based outsourcing feature extraction scheme over encrypted images by using the smart contract, distributed autonomous corporation (DAC), sharding technique, and device to device (D2D) communication, which is secure, widely applied, highly efficient, and has less storage overhead. First, the effectiveness, security, and performance of our scheme are analyzed. Then, the efficiency and storage overhead of our scheme …

Can Ego Defense Mechanism Help Explain Is Security Dysfunctional Behavior, Abhijit Chaudhury, Debasish Mallick

Information Systems and Analytics Department Faculty Conference Proceedings

IS security behavior studies are becoming popular. To date, much of the research has been based on theories such as the Theory of Planned Behavior, Technology Adoption Model, Rational Choice theory and Theory of Reasoned Action. They view users as rational individuals making conscious utilitarian decisions when there is increasing evidence that security breaches are the result of human behavior such as carelessness, malicious intent, bad habits, and hostility. We propose the ego defense mechanism model, taken from the psychoanalytical world. This model makes no assumption of rationality and has been developed to help understand the roots of dysfunctional behavior …

Developing A Cyberterrorism Policy: Incorporating Individual Values, Osama Bassam J. Rabie

Theses and Dissertations

Preventing cyberterrorism is becoming a necessity for individuals, organizations, and governments. However, current policies focus on technical and managerial aspects without asking for experts and non-experts values and preferences for preventing cyberterrorism. This study employs value focused thinking and public value forum to bare strategic measures and alternatives for complex policy decisions for preventing cyberterrorism. The strategic measures and alternatives are per socio-technical process.

Security Vulnerabilities In Android Applications, Crischell Montealegre, Charles Rubia Njuguna, Muhammad Imran Malik, Peter Hannay, Ian Noel Mcateer

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Privacy-related vulnerabilities and risks are often embedded into applications during their development, with this action being either performed out of malice or out of negligence. Moreover, the majority of the mobile applications initiate connections to websites, other apps, or services outside of its scope causing significant compromise to the oblivious user. Therefore, mobile data encryption or related data-protection controls should be taken into account during the application development phase. This paper evaluates some standard apps and their associated threats using publicly available tools and demonstrates how an ignorant user or an organisation can fall prey to such apps.

Xmpp Architecture And Security Challenges In An Iot Ecosystem, Muhammad Imran Malik, Ian Noel Mcateer, Peter Hannay, Syed Naeem Firdous, Zubair Baig

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The elusive quest for technological advancements with the aim to make human life easier has led to the development of the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT technology holds the potential to revolutionise our daily life, but not before overcoming barriers of security and data protection. IoTs’ steered a new era of free information that transformed life in ways that one could not imagine a decade ago. Hence, humans have started considering IoTs as a pervasive technology. This digital transformation does not stop here as the new wave of IoT is not about people, rather it is about intelligent connected devices. …

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 …