Information Security Commons^™

High Performance Distributed File System Based On Blockchain, Ajinkya Rajguru

Master's Projects

Distributed filesystem architectures use commodity hardware to store data on a large scale with maximum consistency and availability. Blockchain makes it possible to store information that can never be tampered with and incentivizes a traditional decentralized storage system. This project aimed to implement a decentralized filesystem that leverages the blockchain to keep a record of all the transactions on it. A conventional filesystem viz. GFS [1] or HDFS [2] uses designated servers owned by their organization to store the data and are governed by a master service. This project aimed at removing a single point of failure and makes use …

Ml-Based User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics, Sai Kiran Davuluri

Master's Projects

Increasing reliance on digital services and the limitations of traditional authentication methods have necessitated the development of more advanced and secure user authentication methods. For user authentication and intrusion detection, mouse dynamics, a form of behavioral biometrics, offers a promising and non-invasive method. This paper presents a comprehensive study on ML-Based User Authentication Through Mouse Dynamics.

This project proposes a novel framework integrating sophisticated techniques such as embeddings extraction using Transformer models with cutting-edge machine learning algorithms such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN). The project aims to accurately identify users based on their distinct mouse behavior and detect unauthorized access …

Concept Drift Detection In Android Malware, Inderpreet Singh

Master's Projects

Machine learning and deep learning algorithms have been successfully applied to the problems of malware detection, classification, and analysis. However, most of such studies have been limited to applying learning algorithms to a static snapshot of malware, which fails to account for concept drift, that is, the non-stationary nature of the data. In practice, models need to be updated whenever a sufficient level of concept drift has occurred. In this research, we consider concept drift detection in the context of Android malware. We train a series of Support Vector Machines (SVM) over sliding windows of time and compare the resulting …

Classifying World War Ii Era Ciphers With Machine Learning, Brooke Dalton

Master's Projects

We examine whether machine learning and deep learning techniques can classify World War II era ciphers when only ciphertext is provided. Among the ciphers considered are Enigma, M-209, Sigaba, Purple, and Typex. For our machine learning models, we test a variety of features including the raw ciphertext letter sequence, histograms, and n-grams. The classification is approached in two scenarios. The first scenario considers fixed plaintext encrypted with fixed keys and the second scenario considers random plaintext encrypted with fixed keys. The results show that histograms are the best feature and classic machine learning methods are more appropriate for this kind …

Keystroke Dynamics And User Identification, Atharva Sharma

Master's Projects

We consider the potential of keystroke dynamics for user identification and authentication. We work with a fixed-text dataset, and focus on clustering users based on the difficulty of distinguishing their typing characteristics. After obtaining a confusion matrix, we cluster users into different levels of classification difficulty based on their typing patterns. Our goal is to create meaningful clusters that enable us to apply appropriate authentication methods to specific user clusters, resulting in an optimized balance between security and efficiency. We use a novel feature engineering method that generates image-like features from keystrokes and employ multiclass Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to …

Spam Comments Detection In Youtube Videos, Priyusha Kotta

Master's Projects

This paper suggests an innovative way for finding spam or ham comments on the video- sharing website YouTube. Comments that are contextually irrelevant for a particular video or have a commercial motive constitute as spam. In the past few years, with the advent of advertisements spreading to new arenas such as the social media has created a lucrative platform for many. Today, it is being widely used by everyone. But this innovation comes with its own impediments. We can see how malicious users have taken over these platforms with the aid of automated bots that can deploy a well-coordinated spam …

Machine Learning-Based Anomaly Detection In Cloud Virtual Machine Resource Usage, Tarun Mourya Satveli

Master's Projects

Anomaly detection is an important activity in cloud computing systems because it aids in the identification of odd behaviours or actions that may result in software glitch, security breaches, and performance difficulties. Detecting aberrant resource utilization trends in virtual machines is a typical application of anomaly detection in cloud computing (VMs). Currently, the most serious cyber threat is distributed denial-of-service attacks. The afflicted server's resources and internet traffic resources, such as bandwidth and buffer size, are slowed down by restricting the server's capacity to give resources to legitimate customers.

To recognize attacks and common occurrences, machine learning techniques such as …

Improving Developers' Understanding Of Regex Denial Of Service Tools Through Anti-Patterns And Fix Strategies, Sk Adnan Hassan, Zainab Aamir, Dongyoon Lee, James C. Davis, Francisco Servant

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Regular expressions are used for diverse purposes, including input validation and firewalls. Unfortunately, they can also lead to a security vulnerability called ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service), caused by a super-linear worst-case execution time during regex matching. Due to the severity and prevalence of ReDoS, past work proposed automatic tools to detect and fix regexes. Although these tools were evaluated in automatic experiments, their usability has not yet been studied; usability has not been a focus of prior work. Our insight is that the usability of existing tools to detect and fix regexes will improve if we complement them …

Detection And Localization Of Data Forgery Attacks In Automatic Generation Control, Fengli Zhang, Yatish R. Dubasi, Wei Bao, Qinghua Li

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) is a key control system to maintain the power system’s balance between load and supply by maintaining its frequency in a specific range. It collects the tie-line power flow and frequency measurements of each control area to calculate the Area Control Error (ACE) and then adjusts power generation based on the calculated ACE. However, malicious frequency or tie-line power flow measurements can be injected and then AGC is misled to make false power generation adjustments which will harm power system operations. Such attacks can be carefully designed to pass the power system’s existing bad data detection …

The Future Between Quantum Computing And Cybersecurity, Daniel Dorazio

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Quantum computing, a novel branch of technology based on quantum theory, processes information in ways beyond the capabilities of classical computers. Traditional computers use binary digits [bits], but quantum computers use quantum binary digits [qubits] that can exist in multiple states simultaneously. Since developing the first two-qubit quantum computer in 1998, the quantum computing field has experienced rapid growth.

Cryptographic algorithms such as RSA and ECC, essential for internet security, rely on the difficulty of complex math problems that classical computers can’t solve. However, the advancement of quantum technology threatens these encryption systems. Algorithms, such as Shor’s, leverage the power …

Defense Of A Small Network, Isabella Adkins

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

A sample network will be virtually created consisting of three routers, one switch, and three hosts. The network will be secured using various methods such as enabling passwords and encryption. After the network has been properly secured, various attacks will be attempted with the goal of breaking into the network. These attacks include reconnaissance (gathering information), penetrating the network using the tool Metasploit, and attempting to get a credential phishing email to end users. If successful in the attacks, the network will be revisited and analyzed for any weaknesses or oversights.

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. …

Small Business Office Network, Michael Gerome

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This project will emulate a small office network environment. The project will demonstrate the process of building and configuring the network to meet the requirements laid out in the project plan. This network includes four subnets with Windows 10 end devices and a Kali Linux device, it also includes five Cisco layer 2 switches and three Cisco routers. There are also three subnets connecting the routers to each other to enable routing between the subnets. After the network environment is set up, various penetration tests are performed from the Kali Linux device to gather information. The Nmap reconnaissance tool is …

Spartanscript: New Language Design For Smart Contracts, Ajinkya Lakade

Master's Projects

Smart contracts have become a crucial element for developing decentralized applications on blockchain, resulting in numerous innovative projects on blockchain networks. Ethereum has played a significant role in this space by providing a high-performance Ethereum virtual machine, enabling the creation of several high- level programming languages that can run on the Ethereum blockchain. Despite its usefulness, the Ethereum Virtual Machine has been prone to security vulnerabilities that can result in developers succumbing to common pitfalls which are otherwise safeguarded by modern virtual machines used in programming languages. The project aims to introduce a new interpreted scripting programming language that closely …

Detecting Botnets Using Hidden Markov Model, Profile Hidden Markov Model And Network Flow Analysis, Rucha Mannikar

Master's Projects

Botnet is a network of infected computer systems called bots managed remotely by an attacker using bot controllers. Using distributed systems, botnets can be used for large-scale cyber attacks to execute unauthorized actions on the targeted system like phishing, distributed denial of service (DDoS), data theft, and crashing of servers. Common internet protocols used by normal systems for regular communication like hypertext transfer (HTTP) and internet relay chat (IRC) are also used by botnets. Thus, distinguishing botnet activity from normal activity can be challenging. To address this issue, this project proposes an approach to detect botnets using peculiar traits in …

Steganographic Capacity Of Selected Machine Learning And Deep Learning Models, Lei Zhang

Master's Projects

As machine learning and deep learning models become ubiquitous, it is inevitable that there will be attempts to exploit such models in various attack scenarios. For example, in a steganographic based attack, information would be hidden in a learning model, which might then be used to gain unauthorized access to a computer, or for other malicious purposes. In this research, we determine the steganographic capacity of various classic machine learning and deep learning models. Specifically, we determine the number of low-order bits of the trained parameters of a given model that can be altered without significantly affecting the performance of …

Application Of Adversarial Attacks On Malware Detection Models, Vaishnavi Nagireddy

Master's Projects

Malware detection is vital as it ensures that a computer is safe from any kind of malicious software that puts users at risk. Too many variants of these malicious software are being introduced everyday at increased speed. Thus, to guarantee security of computer systems, huge advancements in the field of malware detection are made and one such approach is to use machine learning for malware detection. Even though machine learning is very powerful, it is prone to adversarial attacks. In this project, we will try to apply adversarial attacks on malware detection models. To perform these attacks, fake samples that …

Automatic Detection And Analysis Towards Malicious Behavior In Iot Malware, Sen Li, Mengmeng Ge, Ruitao Feng, Xiaohong Li, Kwok Yan Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Our society is rapidly moving towards the digital age, which has led to a sharp increase in IoT networks and devices. This growth requires more network security professionals, who are focused on protecting IoT systems. One crucial task is to analyze malicious software to gain a deeper understanding of its functionalities and response methods. However, malware analysis is a complex process that requires the use of various analysis tools, including advanced reverse engineering techniques. For beginners, parsing complex binary data can be particularly challenging as they may be strange with these tools and the basic principles of analysis. Even for …

Cybersecurity And Digital Privacy Aspects Of V2x In The Ev Charging Structure, Umit Cali, Murat Kuzlu, Onur Elma, Osman Gazi Gucluturk, Ahmet Kilic, Ferhat Ozgur Catak

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

With the advancement of green energy technology and rising public and political acceptance, electric vehicles (EVs) have grown in popularity. Electric motors, batteries, and charging systems are considered major components of EVs. The electric power infrastructure has been designed to accommodate the needs of EVs, with an emphasis on bidirectional power flow to facilitate power exchange. Furthermore, the communication infrastructure has been enhanced to enable cars to communicate and exchange information with one another, also known as Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) technology. V2X is positioned to become a bigger and smarter system in the future of transportation, thanks to upcoming digital technologies …

Anomaly Based Intrusion Detection System Through Remote Virtual Machine Introspection, Huseyn Huseynov

Dissertations and Theses

Research on identifying malicious applications is an important direction in information security, especially when it comes to detection of evasive malware such as keyloggers, trojans, rootkits and their derivatives. Inspired by a biological immune system and based on negative selection algorithm approach to detect various types of malwares is proposed in this paper.

By deeply studying Linux kernel, understanding links behind different internal system processes, examining, and experimenting with hundreds of various keyloggers we propose a single Artificial Intelligence based solution as a comprehensive protection against wide range of malwares. Developed Intrusion Detection System (IDS) can be deployed in the …

Blockchain Securities Issues: Decentralized Identity System With Key Management Perspective, Olalekan O. Adaramola

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Blockchain was created many years ago to solve the problems of data transfer Integrity, several years later the issues persist. Blockchain securities are one of the most important considerations to be investigated, and data integrity is about ensuring the accuracy and validity of messages such that when they are read, they are the same as when they were first written. It is of the opinion that passing information across from one person to another cannot be the same as it was first said at the onset. Our work investigated Blockchain security issues, studying Integrity emanating from transactions across the blocks …

S-400s, Disinformation, And Anti-American Sentiment In Turkey, Russell "Alex" Korb, Saltuk Karahan, Gowri Prathap, Ekrem Kaya, Luke Palmieri, Hamdi Kavak, Richard L. Wilson (Ed.), Major Brendan Curran (Ed.)

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

As social and political discourse in most countries becomes more polarized, anti-Americanism has risen not only in the Middle East and Latin America but also among the U.S. allies in Europe. Social media is one platform used to disseminate anti-American views in NATO countries, and its effectiveness can be magnified when mass media, public officials, and popular figures adopt these views. Disinformation, in particular, has gained recognition as a cybersecurity issue from 2016 onward, but disinformation can be manufactured domestically in addition to being part of a foreign influence campaign. In this paper, we analyze Turkish tweets using sentiment analysis …

A Longitudinal Study Of Factors That Affect User Interactions With Social Media And Email Spam, Wojciech M. Mazurek

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Given the rapid growth of social media and the increasing prevalence of spam, it is crucial to understand users’ interactions with unsolicited content to develop effective countermeasures against spam. This thesis focuses on exploring the factors that influence users’ decisions to interact with spam on social media and email. It builds upon prior work, which serves as a foundation for further research and conducting a longitudinal analysis. Our results are based on the analysis of 221 responses collected through an online survey. The survey not only gathered demographic information such as age, gender, and race but also collected data on …

Crowdfa: A Privacy-Preserving Mobile Crowdsensing Paradigm Via Federated Analytics, Bowen Zhao, Xiaoguo Li, Ximeng Liu, Qingqi Pei, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) systems typically struggle to address the challenge of data aggregation, incentive design, and privacy protection, simultaneously. However, existing solutions usually focus on one or, at most, two of these issues. To this end, this paper presents CROWD FA, a novel paradigm for privacy-preserving MCS through federated analytics (FA), which aims to achieve a well-rounded solution encompassing data aggregation, incentive design, and privacy protection. Specifically, inspired by FA, CROWD FA initiates an MCS computing paradigm that enables data aggregation and incentive design. Participants can perform aggregation operations on their local data, facilitated by CROWD FA, which supports various …

Predictive Taxonomy Analytics (Lasso): Predicting Outcome Types Of Cyber Breach, Jing Rong Goh, Shaun S. Wang, Yaniv Harel, Gabriel Toh

Research Collection School Of Economics

Cyber breaches are costly for the global economy and extensive efforts have gone into improving the cybersecurity infrastructure. There are numerous types of cyber breaches that vary greatly in terms of cause and impact, resulting in an extensive literature for individual cyber breach type. Our paper seeks to provide a general framework that can be easily applied to analyze different types of cyber breaches. Our framework is inspired by the taxonomy approach in the cybersecurity literature, where it was proposed that an effective set of taxonomy can provide a direction on supporting improved decision-making in cyber risk management and selecting …

Security Of Internet Of Things (Iot) Using Federated Learning And Deep Learning — Recent Advancements, Issues And Prospects, Vinay Gugueoth, Sunitha Safavat, Sachin Shetty

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

There is a great demand for an efficient security framework which can secure IoT systems from potential adversarial attacks. However, it is challenging to design a suitable security model for IoT considering the dynamic and distributed nature of IoT. This motivates the researchers to focus more on investigating the role of machine learning (ML) in the designing of security models. A brief analysis of different ML algorithms for IoT security is discussed along with the advantages and limitations of ML algorithms. Existing studies state that ML algorithms suffer from the problem of high computational overhead and risk of privacy leakage. …

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 …

Defending Ai-Based Automatic Modulation Recognition Models Against Adversarial Attacks, Haolin Tang, Ferhat Ozgur Catak, Murat Kuzlu, Evren Catak, Yanxiao Zhao

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Automatic Modulation Recognition (AMR) is one of the critical steps in the signal processing chain of wireless networks, which can significantly improve communication performance. AMR detects the modulation scheme of the received signal without any prior information. Recently, many Artificial Intelligence (AI) based AMR methods have been proposed, inspired by the considerable progress of AI methods in various fields. On the one hand, AI-based AMR methods can outperform traditional methods in terms of accuracy and efficiency. On the other hand, they are susceptible to new types of cyberattacks, such as model poisoning or adversarial attacks. This paper explores the vulnerabilities …

Cyber-Aidd: A Novel Approach To Implementing Improved Cyber Security Resilience For Large Australian Healthcare Providers Using A Unified Modelling Language Ontology, Martin Dart, Mohiuddin Ahmed

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Purpose: This paper proposes a novel cyber security risk governance framework and ontology for large Australian healthcare providers, using the structure and simplicity of the Unified Modelling Language (UML). This framework is intended to mitigate impacts from the risk areas of: (1) cyber-attacks, (2) incidents, (3) data breaches, and (4) data disclosures. Methods Using a mixed-methods approach comprised of empirical evidence discovery and phenomenological review, existing literature is sourced to confirm baseline ontological definitions. These are supplemented with Australian government reports, professional standards publications and legislation covering cyber security, data breach reporting and healthcare governance. Historical examples of healthcare cyber …

Camdec: Advancing Axis P1435-Le Video Camera Security Using Honeypot-Based Deception, Leslie F. Sikos, Craig Valli, Alexander E. Grojek, David J. Holmes, Samuel G. Wakeling, Warren Z. Cabral, Nickson M. Karie

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The explosion of online video streaming in recent years resulted in advanced services both in terms of efficiency and convenience. However, Internet-connected video cameras are prone to exploitation, leading to information security issues and data privacy concerns. The proliferation of video-capable Internet of Things devices and cloud-managed surveillance systems further extend these security issues and concerns. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for video camera deception via honeypots, offering increased security measures compared to what is available on conventional Internet-enabled video cameras.