Information Security Commons^™

Data Profits Vs. Privacy Rights: Ethical Concerns In Data Commerce, Amiah Armstrong

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

In today’s digital age, the collection and sale of customer data for advertising is gaining a growing number of ethical concerns. The act of amassing extensive datasets encompassing customer preferences, behaviors, and personal information raises questions of its true purpose. It is widely acknowledged that companies track and store their customer’s digital activities under the pretext of benefiting the customer, but at what cost? Are users aware of how much of their data is being collected? Do they understand the trade-off between personalized services and the potential invasion of their privacy? This paper aims to show the advantages and disadvantages …

Comparing Cognitive Theories Of Learning Transfer To Advance Cybersecurity Instruction, Assessment, And Testing, Daniel T. Hickey Ph.D., Ronald J. Kantor

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The cybersecurity threat landscape evolves quickly, continually, and consequentially. This means that the transfer of cybersecurity learning is crucial. We compared how different recognized “cognitive” transfer theories might help explain and synergize three aspects of cybersecurity education. These include teaching and training in diverse settings, assessing learning formatively & summatively, and testing & measuring achievement, proficiency, & readiness. We excluded newer sociocultural theories and their implications for inclusion as we explore those theories elsewhere. We first summarized the history of cybersecurity education and proficiency standards considering transfer theories. We then explored each theory and reviewed the most relevant cybersecurity education …

Unveiling The Origins Of Source Code Through Authorship Attribution: A Comparative Study Of Ai And Human Coding Patterns, Shamma Humaid Alalawi

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have been used for source code authorship attribution, which is the process of identifying the original author of a given piece of code. With the advancement of AI technologies like ChatGPT, which can generate code, there is a need to accurately identify whether a piece of code is written by a human or generated by a machine. This is crucial for intellectual property protection, cybersecurity, and software forensics. The main objective of this thesis is to review existing research on source code authorship attribution and conduct several experiments to determine the best AI …

Enhancing Cybersecurity Awareness In The United Arab Emirates: An Assessment Of Current Practices And The Development Of An Ai-Enhanced Mobile Application, Meera Alalawi

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

In today's interconnected world, individuals, private corporations, public institutions, and governments face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats and attacks, highlighting the critical need for individuals and organizations to understand cybersecurity comprehensively. Cyberattacks have affected many countries and infrastructures in different sectors worldwide, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has become a main target for cybercrime due to its booming economy and tourism. The UAE considers cybersecurity an increasingly critical issue in our digital world, and increasing cybersecurity awareness among residents is essential to protect themselves and their organizations from cyberattacks. The primary objectives of this study are to identify key …

Unveiling The Origins Of Source Code Through Authorship Attribution: A Comparative Study Of Ai And Human Coding Patterns, Shamma Humaid Alalawi

Theses

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been used for source code authorship attribution, which is the process of identifying the original author of a given piece of code. With the advancement of AI technologies like ChatGPT, which can generate code, there is a need to accurately identify whether a piece of code is written by a human or generated by a machine. This is crucial for intellectual property protection, cybersecurity, and software forensics. The main objective of this thesis is to review existing research on source code authorship attribution and conduct several experiments to determine the best AI …

Improving Ethics Surrounding Collegiate-Level Hacking Education: Comprehensive Implementation Plan And Affiliation With Peer-Led Initiatives, Shannon O. Morgan

ALL - Honors Theses

The purpose of this research study is to analyze the ethical ramifications of hacking education on the collegiate level in relation to cybersecurity majors and minors. Educators and university officials must take action to prevent the misuse of the information, skills, and knowledge gained from being a student in a cyber-related course. As the dependence on technology rises, it is crucial that future technology professionals are effectively trained and taught the ins and outs of the field to better protect users from becoming a victim of a cyberattack. The outcome of this study is to compile a comprehensive list of …

Gradual Memory Safety, Jack Phillips

All NMU Master's Theses

This paper extends the theory of Gradual Types to include memory safe Region-Types and Region-Based Memory Management. It also makes advancements in the capabilities of Region-Based systems. Lastly, it presents the Svejk language and Hasek Type System.

Network Level Detection Of Iot Attacks Via Time Series Shape Mining, Srijani Basu

Masters Theses

This research proposes a method, for detecting intrusions in the Internet of Things (IoT) realm. This approach was specifically tested using datasets containing both benign, and attacks on smart home devices like the Belkin Wemo Power Switch, Lifx Smart Bulb, Amazon Echo, and Netatmo Welcome Camera. These attacks consist of specification-compliant volumetric DDoS attacks, which can be both direct and reflective, with very low traffic volumes implemented in an ON-OFF pattern. Here, the ON-OFF pattern can be referred to as a pulse attack strategy.

We combined non-linear statistical moving averages, and Dynamic Time Warping into a single framework that can …

Enhancing Cybersecurity Awareness In The United Arab Emirates: An Assessment Of Current Practices And The Development Of An Ai-Enhanced Mobile Application, Meera Humaid Alalawi

Theses

In today's interconnected world, individuals, private corporations, public institutions, and governments face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats and attacks, highlighting the critical need for individuals and organizations to understand cybersecurity comprehensively. Cyberattacks have affected many countries and infrastructures in different sectors worldwide, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has become a main target for cybercrime due to its booming economy and tourism. The UAE considers cybersecurity an increasingly critical issue in our digital world, and increasing cybersecurity awareness among residents is essential to protect themselves and their organizations from cyberattacks. The primary objectives of this study are to identify key …

Stealthy Backdoor Attack For Code Models, Zhou Yang, Bowen Xu, Jie M. Zhang, Hong Jin Kang, Jieke Shi, Junda He, David Lo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Code models, such as CodeBERT and CodeT5, offer general-purpose representations of code and play a vital role in supporting downstream automated software engineering tasks. Most recently, code models were revealed to be vulnerable to backdoor attacks. A code model that is backdoor-attacked can behave normally on clean examples but will produce pre-defined malicious outputs on examples injected with that activate the backdoors. Existing backdoor attacks on code models use unstealthy and easy-to-detect triggers. This paper aims to investigate the vulnerability of code models with backdoor attacks. To this end, we propose A (dversarial eature as daptive Back). A achieves stealthiness …

Flgan: Gan-Based Unbiased Federated Learning Under Non-Iid Settings, Zhuoran Ma, Yang Liu, Yinbin Miao, Guowen Xu, Ximeng Liu, Jianfeng Ma, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Federated Learning (FL) suffers from low convergence and significant accuracy loss due to local biases caused by non-Independent and Identically Distributed (non-IID) data. To enhance the non-IID FL performance, a straightforward idea is to leverage the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to mitigate local biases using synthesized samples. Unfortunately, existing GAN-based solutions have inherent limitations, which do not support non-IID data and even compromise user privacy. To tackle the above issues, we propose a GAN-based unbiased FL scheme, called FlGan, to mitigate local biases using synthesized samples generated by GAN while preserving user-level privacy in the FL setting. Specifically, FlGan first …

Going Viral: Case Studies On The Impact Of Protestware, Youmei Fan, Dong Wang, Supastsara Wattanakriengkrai, Hathaichanok Damrongsiri, Christoph Treude, Hideaki Hata, Raula Gaikovina Kula

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Maintainers are now self-sabotaging their work in order to take political or economic stances, a practice referred to as "protestware". In this poster, we present our approach to understand how the discourse about such an attack went viral, how it is received by the community, and whether developers respond to the attack in a timely manner. We study two notable protestware cases, i.e., Colors.js and es5-ext, comparing with discussions of a typical security vulnerability as a baseline, i.e., Ua-parser, and perform a thematic analysis of more than two thousand protest-related posts to extract the different narratives when discussing protestware.

Intelligent Tutoring System Ontology, Wael Mohamed Hassan

Theses

The integration of pedagogical rules into Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) using semantic web technologies, particularly the Web Ontology Language (OWL), holds great promise for enhancing the capabilities of these systems. However, a significant challenge arises from the labor-intensive process of manually constructing ontologies, which can consume valuable time and resources. While ontologies offer numerous advantages, including robust knowledge inference and scalability, the limitations of manual ontology creation are evident in terms of time and flexibility. Therefore, the primary objective of this research is to develop an efficient and automated solution that harnesses the benefits of ontologies while reducing the time …

Enhancing Health Analytics: Secure And Private Federated Learning Solutions, Nisha Thorakkattu Madathil

Dissertations

Federated Learning (FL) is a collaborative method allowing individuals to train a model jointly without sharing their local datasets. It utilizes decentralized data sources to protect privacy, making it particularly promising in medical contexts where data confidentiality is paramount. FL facilitates the use of diverse datasets from various healthcare organizations while upholding patient confidentiality. It also plays a crucial role in advancing medical research and healthcare services while adhering to data distribution and compliance requirements. The primary challenges within federated healthcare encompass privacy preservation among sensitive distributed data, ensuring efficient communication, addressing data heterogeneity, and ultimately guaranteeing model accuracy. To …

Cybersecurity Education And Continuous Learning Towards Uae Ncsp Fulfilment, Saleh Hamad Aldaajeh

Dissertations

This dissertation delves into enhancing cybersecurity education by aligning academic curricula with national cybersecurity strategic plan (NCSP) objectives, emphasizing the crucial role of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in developing a skilled cybersecurity workforce. Analyzing ten NCSPs, it identifies strategic themes and gaps between national goals and HEI offerings. The study reviews NCSP guidelines, international cybersecurity indices, and literature, including the NICE-NIST framework, to develop a framework that bridges the educational gap, improving learning outcomes and arming students with vital skills, knowledge, and competencies. Furthermore, it introduces a platform for continuous cybersecurity learning, employing micro-credentials, blockchain technology, and AI-driven systems. Based …

A Trustworthy Self-Sovereign Data And Identity Management Framework, Efat Fathalla

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Data is a fundamental building block in the digital world, providing a basis for decision making and growth across numerous applications. In our modern world, we have become accustomed to collecting data on everything, including devices, machines, and people. The increased value of such data has led to aggressive harvesting mechanisms that prioritize data collection, storage, and pervasiveness while often disregarding security, privacy concerns, and compliance with regulations and standards. Such a pervasive attitude towards data has resulted in a loss of control, prompting concerns among individuals and mobilizing the scientific community towards advocating for data self-sovereignty.

Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) …

Improving Educational Delivery And Content In Juvenile Detention Centers, Yomna Elmousalami

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Students in juvenile detention centers have the greatest need to receive improvements in educational delivery and content; however, they are one of the “truly disadvantaged” populations in terms of receiving those improvements. This work presents a qualitative data analysis based on a focus group meeting with stakeholders at a local Juvenile Detention Center. The current educational system in juvenile detention centers is based on paper worksheets, single-room style teaching methods, outdated technology, and a shortage of textbooks and teachers. In addition, detained students typically have behavioral challenges that are deemed "undesired" in society. As a result, many students miss classes …

An Analysis And Ontology Of Teaching Methods In Cybersecurity Education, Sarah Buckley

LSU Master's Theses

The growing cybersecurity workforce gap underscores the urgent need to address deficiencies in cybersecurity education: the current education system is not producing competent cybersecurity professionals, and current efforts are not informing the non-technical general public of basic cybersecurity practices. We argue that this gap is compounded by a fundamental disconnect between cybersecurity education literature and established education theory. Our research addresses this issue by examining the alignment of cybersecurity education literature concerning educational methods and tools with education literature.

In our research, we endeavor to bridge this gap by critically analyzing the alignment of cybersecurity education literature with education theory. …

Artificial Intelligence Usage And Data Privacy Discoveries Within Mhealth, Jennifer Schulte

Research & Publications

Advancements in artificial intelligence continue to impact nearly every aspect of human life by providing integration options that aim to supplement or improve current processes. One industry that continues to benefit from artificial intelligence integration is healthcare. For years now, elements of artificial intelligence have been used to assist in clinical decision making, helping to identify potential health risks at earlier stages, and supplementing precision medicine. An area of healthcare that specifically looks at wearable devices, sensors, phone applications, and other such devices is mobile health (mHealth). These devices are used to aid in health data collection and delivery. This …

On Global Security Governance’S New Trends And China’S Responses From Perspective Of Scientific And Technological Revolution, Haoguang Liang, Linman Wu, Zhujun Liu, Yaojun Zhang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Due to the new round of sci-tech revolution and industrial transformation, the relation between scientific progress and national security has been upgraded to an unprecedented strategic height. Therefore, it is vitally important to explore the current situation and future trajectory of the relation between the two. This study discusses the new trends between global scientific progress and the security of sovereign countries. It believes that scientific progress has catalyzed the new geopolitical contests, development contradiction and hegemonic tools in global security governance, thereby enlightening China’s approach to national security. To maintain holistic national security, China should formulate an overall strategic …