Information Security Commons^™

Bytewise Approximate Matching: The Good, The Bad, And The Unknown, Vikram S. Harichandran, Frank Breitinger, Ibrahim Baggili

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

Hash functions are established and well-known in digital forensics, where they are commonly used for proving integrity and file identification (i.e., hash all files on a seized device and compare the fingerprints against a reference database). However, with respect to the latter operation, an active adversary can easily overcome this approach because traditional hashes are designed to be sensitive to altering an input; output will significantly change if a single bit is flipped. Therefore, researchers developed approximate matching, which is a rather new, less prominent area but was conceived as a more robust counterpart to traditional hashing. Since the conception …

New Secure Solutions For Privacy And Access Control In Health Information Exchange, Ahmed Fouad Shedeed Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

In the current digital age, almost every healthcare organization (HCO) has moved from storing patient health records on paper to storing them electronically. Health Information Exchange (HIE) is the ability to share (or transfer) patients’ health information between different HCOs while maintaining national security standards like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. Over the past few years, research has been conducted to develop privacy and access control frameworks for HIE systems. The goal of this dissertation is to address the privacy and access control concerns by building practical and efficient HIE frameworks to secure the sharing …

Gone In 200 Milliseconds: The Challenge Of Blocking Malvertising, Catherine Dwyer, Ameet Kanguri

Student and Faculty Research Days

Online advertising is a multi-billion dollar global industry that lets advertisers serve ads to specific customers of interest as they browse the web. Using real time bidding (RTB), as web visitors land on a site, advertising networks are alerted of space available and whatever profile information can be gleaned about the visitor. Ad networks then auction this combination of space and profile through ad exchanges, and the winning bid's ad content is served to the web visitor. The entire process, from a visitor landing on a publisher's page to ads being auctioned, takes 200 milliseconds--the time needed to snap your …

Exploring Deviant Hacker Networks (Dhm) On Social Media Platforms, Samer Al-Khateeb, Kevin J. Conlan, Nitin Agarwal, Ibrahim Baggili, Frank Breitinger

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Online Social Networks (OSNs) have grown exponentially over the past decade. The initial use of social media for benign purposes (e.g., to socialize with friends, browse pictures and photographs, and communicate with family members overseas) has now transitioned to include malicious activities (e.g., cybercrime, cyberterrorism, and cyberwarfare). These nefarious uses of OSNs poses a significant threat to society, and thus requires research attention. In this exploratory work, we study activities of one deviant groups: hacker groups on social media, which we term Deviant Hacker Networks (DHN). We investigated the connection between different DHNs on Twitter: how they are connected, identified …

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 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 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 …

Controlled Access To Cloud Resources For Mitigating Economic Denial Of Sustainability (Edos) Attacks, Zubair A. Baig, Sadiq M. Sait, Farid Binbeshr

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Cloud computing is a paradigm that provides scalable IT resources as a service over the Internet. Vulnerabilities in the cloud infrastructure have been readily exploited by the adversary class. Therefore, providing the desired level of assurance to all stakeholders through safeguarding data (sensitive or otherwise) which is stored in the cloud, is of utmost importance. In addition, protecting the cloud from adversarial attacks of diverse types and intents, cannot be understated. Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS) attack is considered as one of the concerns that has stalled many organizations from migrating their operations and/or data to the cloud. This is …

Optical Fiber Sensors In Physical Intrusion Detection Systems: A Review, Gary Andrew Allwood, Graham Wild, Steven Hinkley

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Fiber optic sensors have become a mainstream sensing technology within a large array of applications due to their inherent benefits. They are now used significantly in structural health monitoring, and are an essential solution for monitoring harsh environments. Since their first development over 30 years ago, they have also found promise in security applications. This paper reviews all of the optical fiber-based techniques used in physical intrusion detection systems. It details the different approaches used for sensing, interrogation, and networking, by research groups, attempting to secure both commercial and residential premises from physical security breaches. The advantages and the disadvantages …

Information-Theoretic Secure Outsourced Computation In Distributed Systems, Zhaohong Wang

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Secure multi-party computation (secure MPC) has been established as the de facto paradigm for protecting privacy in distributed computation. One of the earliest secure MPC primitives is the Shamir's secret sharing (SSS) scheme. SSS has many advantages over other popular secure MPC primitives like garbled circuits (GC) -- it provides information-theoretic security guarantee, requires no complex long-integer operations, and often leads to more efficient protocols. Nonetheless, SSS receives less attention in the signal processing community because SSS requires a larger number of honest participants, making it prone to collusion attacks. In this dissertation, I propose an agent-based computing framework using …

U.S. Energy Sector Cybersecurity: Hands-Off Approach Or Effective Partnership?, T. M. Ballou, Joseph A. Allen, Kyle Francis

Psychology Faculty Publications

Recent reporting has identified significant threats to the U.S. energy’s critical infrastructure from nation states and other groups through cyberspace. Efforts to improve the security and resilience of U.S. energy infrastructure relies upon voluntary partnerships between the U.S. Government and public and private energy infrastructure owners. This paper examines ideal Public-Private Partnership (PPP) characteristics and compares them to an actual PPP in the U.S. The results identify strengths of and challenges to efforts to secure U.S. energy infrastructure. The research was conducted through a combination of literature reviews and interviews with a sample of U.S-government and private-energy infrastructure representatives.