Information Security Commons^™

A Forensic Examination Of Several Mobile Device Faraday Bags & Materials To Test Their Effectiveness, Ashleigh Lennox-Steele, Alastair Nisbet

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

A Faraday bag is designed to shield a mobile phone or small digital device from radio waves entering the bag and reaching the device, or to stop radio waves escaping through the bag from the device. The effectiveness of these shields is vital for security professionals and forensic investigators who seize devices and wish to ensure that their contents are not read, modified or deleted prior to a forensic examination. This research tests the effectiveness of several readily available Faraday bags. The Faraday bags tested are all available through online means and promise complete blocking of all signals through the …

An Empirical Assessment Of Employee Cyberslacking In The Public Sector, Wilnelia Hernández

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

With the increasing use of the Internet, new challenges are presented to employees in the workplace. Employees spend time during work hours on non-work related activities including visiting e-commerce Websites, managing personal email accounts, and engaging in e-banking. These types of actions in the workplace are known as cyberslacking. Cyberslacking affects the employees’ productivity, presents legal concerns, and undermines the security of the organization’s network. This research study addressed the problem of cyberslacking in the public sector, by assessing the ethical severity of cyberslacking activities, as well as how employees perceived that the frequency of such activities occurred by their …

An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Security Information Technology Enhancements And Computer Security Breaches And Incidents, Linda Betz

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Financial services institutions maintain large amounts of data that include both intellectual property and personally identifiable information for employees and customers. Due to the potential damage to individuals, government regulators hold institutions accountable for ensuring that personal data are protected and require reporting of data security breaches. No company wants a data breach, but finding a security incident or breach early in the attack cycle may decrease the damage or data loss a company experiences. In multiple high profile data breaches reported in major news stories over the past few years, there is a pattern of the adversary being inside …

Detecting And Tracing Slow Attacks On Mobile Phone User Service, Brian Cusack, Zhuang Tian

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

The lower bandwidth of mobile devices has until recently filtered the range of attacks on the Internet. However, recent research shows that DOS and DDOS attacks, worms and viruses, and a whole range of social engineering attacks are impacting on broadband smartphone users. In our research we have developed a metric-based system to detect the traditional slow attacks that can be effective using limited resources, and then employed combinations of Internet trace back techniques to identify sources of attacks. Our research question asked: What defence mechanisms are effective? We critically evaluate the available literature to appraise the current state of …

The Proceedings Of 14th Australian Digital Forensics Conference, 5-6 December 2016, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia, Craig Valli

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Conference Foreword

This is the fifth year that the Australian Digital Forensics Conference has been held under the banner of the Security Research Institute, which is in part due to the success of the security conference program at ECU. As with previous years, the conference continues to see a quality papers with a number from local and international authors. 11 papers were submitted and following a double blind peer review process, 8 were accepted for final presentation and publication. Conferences such as these are simply not possible without willing volunteers who follow through with the commitment they have initially made, …

Using Graphic Methods To Challenge Cryptographic Performance, Brian Cusack, Erin Chapman

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Block and stream ciphers have formed the traditional basis for the standardisation of commercial ciphers in the DES, AES, RC4, and so on. More recently alternative graphic methods such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) have been adopted for performance gains. In this research we reviewed a range of graphic and non-graphic methods and then designed our own cipher system based on several graphic methods, including Visual Cryptography (VC). We then tested our cipher against RC4 and the AES algorithms for performance and security. The results showed that a graphics based construct may deliver comparable or improved security and performance in …

Accelerating Ntruencrypt For In-Browser Cryptography Utilising Graphical Processing Units And Webgl, Dajne Win, Seth Hall, Alastair Nisbet

Australian Information Security Management Conference

One of the challenges encryption faces is it is computationally intensive and therefore slow, it is vital to find faster methods to accelerate modern encryption algorithms to keep performance high whilst also preserving information security. Users often do not want to wait for applications to become responsive, applications on limited devices such as mobiles often compromise security in order to keep execution times quick. Often they use algorithms and key sizes which are not considered cryptographically secure in order to maintain a smooth user experience. Emerging approaches have begun using a devices Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to offload some of …

A Survey Of Social Media Users Privacy Settings & Information Disclosure, Mashael Aljohani, Alastair Nisbet, Kelly Blincoe

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This research utilises a comprehensive survey to ascertain the level of social networking site personal information disclosure by members at the time of joining the membership and their subsequent postings to the sites. Areas examined are the type of information they reveal, their level of knowledge and awareness regarding how their information is protected by SNSs and the awareness of risks that over-sharing may pose. Additionally, this research studies the effect of gender, age, education, and level of privacy concern on the amount and kind of personal information disclosure and privacy settings applied. A social experiment was then run for …

An Investigation Of Potential Wireless Security Issues In Traffic Lights, Brian Bettany, Michael N. Johnstone, Matthew Peacock

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The purpose of automated traffic light systems is to safely and effectively manage the flow of vehicles through (usually) urban environments. Through the use of wireless-based communication protocols, sets of traffic lights are increasingly being connected to larger systems and also being remotely accessed for management purposes, both for monitoring and emergency purposes. These protocols, however, were not designed with security as a primary requirement, thus systems may operate with sub-standard or non-existent security implementations. This research aims to test if the same issues and vulnerabilities that appear to be present in traffic light systems in the USA are prevalent …

A Hybrid Behaviour Recognition And Intrusion Detection Method For Mobile Devices, Ashley Woodiss-Field

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Behaviour-based authorisation is a technique that assesses the user of a device for authenticity by comparing their activities to previously established behaviour profiles. Passwords and other point of entry authorisation techniques are often inadequate for protecting mobile device security as they only provide an initial barrier to usage and do not operate continuously. Behaviour-based authorisation continuously assesses user authorisation, using the device owner’s profile for authentication. This research improves upon behaviour-based authorisation performance by applying a hybridised intrusion detection method. The constituent intrusion detection methods that were applied include context-awareness and self-correction. Performance of a behaviour-based authorisation method can be …

Empirical Analysis Of Socio-Cognitive Factors Affecting Security Behaviors And Practices Of Smartphone Users, Joseph P. Simpson

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The overall security posture of information systems (IS) depends on the behaviors of the IS users. Several studies have shown that users are the greatest vulnerability to IS security. The proliferation of smartphones is introducing an entirely new set of risks, threats, and vulnerabilities. Smartphone devices amplify this data exposure problem by enabling instantaneous transmission and storage of personally identifiable information (PII) by smartphone users, which is becoming a major security risk. Moreover, companies are also capitalizing on the availability and powerful computing capabilities of these smartphone devices and developing a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program, which makes companies susceptible to divulgence …

An Empirical Study Of Authentication Methods To Secure E-Learning System Activities Against Impersonation Fraud, Shauna Beaudin

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Studies have revealed that securing Information Systems (IS) from intentional misuse is a concern among organizations today. The use of Web-based systems has grown dramatically across industries including e-commerce, e-banking, e-government, and e learning to name a few. Web-based systems provide e-services through a number of diverse activities. The demand for e-learning systems in both academic and non-academic organizations has increased the need to improve security against impersonation fraud. Although there are a number of studies focused on securing Web-based systems from Information Systems (IS) misuse, research has recognized the importance of identifying suitable levels of authenticating strength for various …

An Experimental Study On The Role Of Password Strength And Cognitive Load On Employee Productivity, Stephen Mujeye

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of information systems (IS) over the past decades has increased the demand for system authentication. While the majority of system authentications are password-based, it is well documented that passwords have significant limitations. To address this issue, companies have been placing increased requirements on the user to ensure their passwords are more complex and consequently stronger. In addition to meeting a certain complexity threshold, the password must also be changed on a regular basis. As the cognitive load increases on the employees using complex passwords and changing them often, they may have difficulty recalling their passwords. As such, the …

An Empirical Investigation Of Factors Affecting Resistance To Using Multi-Method Authentication Systems In Public-Access Environments, Joseph Marnell

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Over the course of history, different means of object and person identification as well as verification have evolved for user authentication. In recent years, a new concern has emerged regarding the accuracy of verifiable authentication and protection of personal identifying information (PII), because previous misuses have resulted in significant financial loss. Such losses have escalated more noticeably because of human identity-theft incidents due to breaches of PII within multiple public-access environments. Although the use of various biometric and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies is expanding, resistance to using these technologies for user authentication remains an issue. This study addressed the …

Understanding The Impact Of Hacker Innovation Upon Is Security Countermeasures, Sean M. Zadig

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Hackers external to the organization continue to wreak havoc upon the information systems infrastructure of firms through breaches of security defenses, despite constant development of and continual investment in new IS security countermeasures by security professionals and vendors. These breaches are exceedingly costly and damaging to the affected organizations. The continued success of hackers in the face of massive amounts of security investments suggests that the defenders are losing and that the hackers can innovate at a much faster pace.

Underground hacker communities have been shown to be an environment where attackers can learn new techniques and share tools pertaining …

An Empirical Investigation Of The Willingness Of Us Intelligence Community Analysts To Contribute Knowledge To A Knowledge Management System (Kms) In A Highly Classified And Sensitive Environment, Robert Hambly

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Since September 11, 2001, the United States Government (USG) has possessed unparalleled capability in terms of dedicated intelligence and information collection assets supporting the analysts of the Intelligence Community (IC). The USG IC has sponsored, developed, and borne witness to extraordinary advances in technology, techniques, and procedures focused on knowledge harvesting, knowledge sharing, and collaboration. Knowledge, within successful (effective & productive) organizations, exists as a commodity; a commodity that can be created, captured, imparted, shared, and leveraged. The research problem that this study addressed is the challenge of maintaining strong organizational effectiveness and productivity through the use of an information …

Big Data And The Fourth Estate: Protecting The Development Of News Media Monitoring Databases, Joseph A. Tomain

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

In The Wild Residual Data Research And Privacy, William Bradley Glisson, Tim Storer, Andrew Blyth, George Grispos, Matt Campbell

Interdisciplinary Informatics Faculty Publications

As the world becomes increasingly dependent on technology, researchers in both industry and academia endeavor to understand how technology is used, the impact it has on everyday life, the artifact life-cycle and overall integrations of digital information. In doing so, researchers are increasingly gathering ‘real- world’ or ‘in-the-wild’ residual data, obtained from a variety of sources, without the explicit consent of the original owners. This data gathering raises significant concerns regarding privacy, ethics and legislation, as well as practical considerations concerning investigator training, data storage, overall security and data disposal. This research surveys recent studies of residual data gathered in-the-wild …

Topics On Register Synthesis Problems, Weihua Liu

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Pseudo-random sequences are ubiquitous in modern electronics and information technology. High speed generators of such sequences play essential roles in various engineering applications, such as stream ciphers, radar systems, multiple access systems, and quasi-Monte-Carlo simulation. Given a short prefix of a sequence, it is undesirable to have an efficient algorithm that can synthesize a generator which can predict the whole sequence. Otherwise, a cryptanalytic attack can be launched against the system based on that given sequence.

Linear feedback shift registers (LFSRs) are the most widely studied pseudorandom sequence generators. The LFSR synthesis problem can be solved by the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm, …

Secure And Authenticated Message Dissemination In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks And An Incentive-Based Architecture For Vehicular Cloud, Kiho Lim

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Vehicular ad hoc Networks (VANETs) allow vehicles to form a self-organized network. VANETs are likely to be widely deployed in the future, given the interest shown by industry in self-driving cars and satisfying their customers various interests. Problems related to Mobile ad hoc Networks (MANETs) such as routing, security, etc.have been extensively studied. Even though VANETs are special type of MANETs, solutions proposed for MANETs cannot be directly applied to VANETs because all problems related to MANETs have been studied for small networks. Moreover, in MANETs, nodes can move randomly. On the other hand, movement of nodes in VANETs are …