Biblio
A mail spoofing attack is a harmful activity that modifies the source of the mail and trick users into believing that the message originated from a trusted sender whereas the actual sender is the attacker. Based on the previous work, this paper analyzes the transmission process of an email. Our work identifies new attacks suitable for bypassing SPF, DMARC, and Mail User Agent’s protection mechanisms. We can forge much more realistic emails to penetrate the famous mail service provider like Tencent by conducting the attack. By completing a large-scale experiment on these well-known mail service providers, we find some of them are affected by the related vulnerabilities. Some of the bypass methods are different from previous work. Our work found that this potential security problem can only be effectively protected when all email service providers have a standard view of security and can configure appropriate security policies for each email delivery node. In addition, we also propose a mitigate method to defend against these attacks. We hope our work can draw the attention of email service providers and users and effectively reduce the potential risk of phishing email attacks on them.
Web applications have become an essential resource to access the services of diverse subjects (e.g., financial, healthcare) available on the Internet. Despite the efforts that have been made on its security, namely on the investigation of better techniques to detect vulnerabilities on its source code, the number of vulnerabilities exploited has not decreased. Static analysis tools (SATs) are often used to test the security of applications since their outcomes can help developers in the correction of the bugs they found. The conducted investigation made over SATs stated they often generate errors (false positives (FP) and false negatives (FN)), whose cause is recurrently associated with very diverse coding styles, i.e., similar functionality is implemented in distinct manners, and programming practices that create ambiguity, such as the reuse and share of variables. Based on a common practice of using multiple forms in a same webpage and its processing in a single file, we defined a use case for user login and register with six coding styles scenarios for processing their data, and evaluated the behaviour of three SATs (phpSAFE, RIPS and WAP) with them to verify and understand why SATs produce FP and FN.
Cyber threat information can be utilized to investigate incidents by leveraging threat-related knowledge from prior incidents with digital forensic techniques and tools. However, the actionability of cyber threat information in digital forensics has not yet been evaluated. Such evaluation is important to ascertain that cyber threat information is as actionable as it can be and to reveal areas of improvement. In this study, a dataset of cyber threat information products was created from well-known cyber threat information sources and its actionability in digital forensics was evaluated. The evaluation results showed a high level of cyber threat information actionability that still needs enhancements in supporting some widely present types of attacks. To further enhance the provision of actionable cyber threat information, the development of the new TREVItoSTIX Autopsy module is presented. TREVItoSTIX allows the expression of the findings of an incident investigation in the structured threat information expression format in order to be easily shared and reused in future digital forensics investigations.
In cyberspace, a digital signature is a mathematical technique that plays a significant role, especially in validating the authenticity of digital messages, emails, or documents. Furthermore, the digital signature mechanism allows the recipient to trust the authenticity of the received message that is coming from the said sender and that the message was not altered in transit. Moreover, a digital signature provides a solution to the problems of tampering and impersonation in digital communications. In a real-life example, it is equivalent to a handwritten signature or stamp seal, but it offers more security. This paper proposes a scheme to enable users to digitally sign their communications by validating their identity through users’ mobile devices. This is done by utilizing the user’s ambient Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Moreover, the proposed scheme depends on something that a user possesses (i.e., Wi-Fi-enabled devices), and something that is in the user’s environment (i.e., ambient Wi-Fi access points) where the validation process is implemented, in a way that requires no effort from users and removes the "weak link" from the validation process. The proposed scheme was experimentally examined.
Phishing sends malicious links or attachments through emails that can perform various functions, including capturing the victim's login credentials or account information. These emails harm the victims, cause money loss, and identity theft. In this paper, we contribute to solving the phishing problem by developing an extension for the Google Chrome web browser. In the development of this feature, we used JavaScript PL. To be able to identify and prevent the fishing attack, a combination of Blacklisting and semantic analysis methods was used. Furthermore, a database for phishing sites is generated, and the text, links, images, and other data on-site are analyzed for pattern recognition. Finally, our proposed solution was tested and compared to existing approaches. The results validate that our proposed method is capable of handling the phishing issue substantially.
Blockchain is being pursued by a growing number of people with its characteristics of openness, transparency, and decentralization. At the same time, how to secure privacy protection in such an open and transparent ledger is an urgent issue to be solved for deep study. Therefore, this paper proposes a protocol based on Secure multi-party computation, which can merge and sign different transaction messages under the anonymous condition by using Pedersen commitment and Schnorr Signature. Through the rationality proof and security analysis, this paper demonstrates the private transaction is safe under the semi-honest model. And its computational cost is less than the equivalent multi-signature model. The research has made some innovative contributions to the privacy computing theory.
To reduce cost and ease maintenance, industrial control systems (ICS) have adopted Ethernetbased interconnections that integrate operational technology (OT) systems with information technology (IT) networks. This integration has made these critical systems vulnerable to attack. Security solutions tailored to ICS environments are an active area of research. Anomalybased network intrusion detection systems are well-suited for these environments. Often these systems must be optimized for their specific environment. In prior work, we introduced a method for assessing the impact of various anomaly-based network IDS settings on security. This paper reviews the experimental outcomes when we applied our method to a full-scale ICS test bed using actual attacks. Our method provides new and valuable data to operators enabling more informed decisions about IDS configurations.
When communication about security to end users is ineffective, people frequently misinterpret the protection offered by a system. The discrepancy between the security users perceive a system to have and the actual system state can lead to potentially risky behaviors. It is thus crucial to understand how security perceptions are shaped by interface elements such as text-based descriptions of encryption. This article addresses the question of how encryption should be described to non-experts in a way that enhances perceived security. We tested the following within-subject variables in an online experiment (N=309): a) how to best word encryption, b) whether encryption should be described with a focus on the process or outcome, or both c) whether the objective of encryption should be mentioned d) when mentioning the objective of encryption, how to best describe it e) whether a hash should be displayed to the user. We also investigated the role of context (between subjects). The verbs "encrypt" and "secure" performed comparatively well at enhancing perceived security. Overall, participants stated that they felt more secure not knowing about the objective of encryption. When it is necessary to state the objective, positive wording of the objective of encryption worked best. We discuss implications and why using these results to design for perceived lack of security might be of interest as well. This leads us to discuss ethical concerns, and we give guidelines for the design of user interfaces where encryption should be communicated to end users.