Biblio

As the centers of knowledge, discovery, and intellectual exploration, US universities provide appealing cybersecurity targets. Cyberattack origin patterns and relationships are not evident until data is visualized in maps and tested with statistical models. The current cybersecurity threat detection software utilized by University of North Florida's IT department records large amounts of attacks and attempted intrusions by the minute. This paper presents GIS mapping and spatial analysis of cybersecurity attacks on UNF. First, locations of cyberattack origins were detected by geographic Internet Protocol (GEO-IP) software. Second, GIS was used to map the cyberattack origin locations. Third, we used advanced spatial statistical analysis functions (exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial point pattern analysis) and R software to explore cyberattack patterns. The spatial perspective we promote is novel because there are few studies employing location analytics and spatial statistics in cyber-attack detection and prevention research.

In recent years, cyber security threats have become increasingly dangerous. Hackers have fabricated fake emails to spoof specific users into clicking on malicious attachments or URL links in them. This kind of threat is called a spear-phishing attack. Because spear-phishing attacks use unknown exploits to trigger malicious activities, it is difficult to effectively defend against them. Thus, this study focuses on the challenges faced, and we develop a Cloud-threat Inspection Appliance (CIA) system to defend against spear-phishing threats. With the advantages of hardware-assisted virtualization technology, we use the CIA to develop a transparent hypervisor monitor that conceals the presence of the detection engine in the hypervisor kernel. In addition, the CIA also designs a document pre-filtering algorithm to enhance system performance. By inspecting PDF format structures, the proposed CIA was able to filter 77% of PDF attachments and prevent them from all being sent into the hypervisor monitor for deeper analysis. Finally, we tested CIA in real-world scenarios. The hypervisor monitor was shown to be a better anti-evasion sandbox than commercial ones. During 2014, CIA inspected 780,000 mails in a company with 200 user accounts, and found 65 unknown samples that were not detected by commercial anti-virus software.

Massive online social networks with hundreds of millions of active users are increasingly being used by Cyber criminals to spread malicious software (malware) to exploit vulnerabilities on the machines of users for personal gain. Twitter is particularly susceptible to such activity as, with its 140 character limit, it is common for people to include URLs in their tweets to link to more detailed information, evidence, news reports and so on. URLs are often shortened so the endpoint is not obvious before a person clicks the link. Cyber criminals can exploit this to propagate malicious URLs on Twitter, for which the endpoint is a malicious server that performs unwanted actions on the person's machine. This is known as a drive-by-download. In this paper we develop a machine classification system to distinguish between malicious and benign URLs within seconds of the URL being clicked (i.e. `real-time'). We train the classifier using machine activity logs created while interacting with URLs extracted from Twitter data collected during a large global event - the Superbowl - and test it using data from another large sporting event - the Cricket World Cup. The results show that machine activity logs produce precision performances of up to 0.975 on training data from the first event and 0.747 on a test data from a second event. Furthermore, we examine the properties of the learned model to explain the relationship between machine activity and malicious software behaviour, and build a learning curve for the classifier to illustrate that very small samples of training data can be used with only a small detriment to performance.

Information threatening the security of critical infrastructures are exchanged over the Internet through communication platforms, such as online discussion forums. This information can be used by malicious hackers to attack critical computer networks and data systems. Much of the literature on the hacking of critical infrastructure has focused on developing typologies of cyber-attacks, but has not examined the communication activities of the actors involved. To address this gap in the literature, the language of hackers was analyzed to identify potential threats against critical infrastructures using automated analysis tools. First, discussion posts were collected from a selected hacker forum using a customized web-crawler. Posts were analyzed using a parts of speech tagger, which helped determine a list of keywords used to query the data. Next, a sentiment analysis tool scored these keywords, which were then analyzed to determine the effectiveness of this method.

Denial of Service (DoS) attacks is one of the major threats and among the hardest security problems in the Internet world. Of particular concern are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, whose impact can be proportionally severe. With little or no advance warning, an attacker can easily exhaust the computing resources of its victim within a short period of time. In this paper, we study the impact of a UDP flood attack on TCP throughput, round-trip time, and CPU utilization for a Web Server with the new generation of Linux platform, Linux Ubuntu 13. This paper also evaluates the impact of various defense mechanisms, including Access Control Lists (ACLs), Threshold Limit, Reverse Path Forwarding (IP Verify), and Network Load Balancing. Threshold Limit is found to be the most effective defense.

As mobile devices increasingly become bigger in terms of display and reliable in delivering paid entertainment and video content, we also see a rise in the presence of mobile applications that attempt to profit by streaming pirated content to unsuspected end-users. These applications are both paid and free and in the case of free applications, the source of funding appears to be advertisements that are displayed while the content is streamed to the device. In this paper, we assess the extent of content copyright infringement for mobile markets that span multiple platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile) and cover both official and unofficial mobile markets located across the world. Using a set of search keywords that point to titles of paid streaming content, we discovered 8,592 Android, 5,550 iOS, and 3,910 Windows mobile applications that matched our search criteria. Out of those applications, hundreds had links to either locally or remotely stored pirated content and were not developed, endorsed, or, in many cases, known to the owners of the copyrighted contents. We also revealed the network locations of 856,717 Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) pointing to back-end servers and cyber-lockers used to communicate the pirated content to the mobile application.

Cultivation of Smart Grid refurbish with brisk and ingenious. The delinquent breed and sow mutilate in massive. This state of affair coerces security as a sapling which incessantly is to be irrigated with Research and Analysis. The Cyber Security is endowed with resiliency to the SYN flooding induced Denial of Service attack in this work. The proposed secure web server algorithm embedded in the LPC1768 processor ensures the smart resources to be precluded from the attack.

Cyber security operations centre (CSOC) is an essential business control aimed to protect ICT systems and support an organisation's Cyber Defense Strategy. Its overarching purpose is to ensure that incidents are identified and managed to resolution swiftly, and to maintain safe & secure business operations and services for the organisation. A CSOC framework is proposed comprising Log Collection, Analysis, Incident Response, Reporting, Personnel and Continuous Monitoring. Further, a Cyber Defense Strategy, supported by the CSOC framework, is discussed. Overlaid atop the strategy is the well-known Her Majesty's Government (HMG) Protective Monitoring Controls (PMCs). Finally, the difficulty and benefits of operating a CSOC are explained.

To establish a secure connection between a mobile user and a remote server, this paper presents a session key agreement scheme through remote mutual authentication protocol by using mobile application software(MAS). We analyzed the security of our protocol informally, which confirms that the protocol is secure against all the relevant security attacks including off-line identity-password guessing attacks, user-server impersonation attacks, and insider attack. In addition, the widely accepted simulator tool AVISPA simulates the proposed protocol and confirms that the protocol is SAFE under the OFMC and CL-AtSe back-ends. Our protocol not only provide strong security against the relevant attacks, but it also achieves proper mutual authentication, user anonymity, known key secrecy and efficient password change operation. The performance comparison is also performed, which ensures that the protocol is efficient in terms of computation and communication costs.

The rate at which cyber-attacks are increasing globally portrays a terrifying picture upfront. The main dynamics of such attacks could be studied in terms of the actions of attackers and defenders in a cyber-security game. However currently little research has taken place to study such interactions. In this paper we use behavioral game theory and try to investigate the role of certain actions taken by attackers and defenders in a simulated cyber-attack scenario of defacing a website. We choose a Reinforcement Learning (RL) model to represent a simulated attacker and a defender in a 2×4 cyber-security game where each of the 2 players could take up to 4 actions. A pair of model participants were computationally simulated across 1000 simulations where each pair played at most 30 rounds in the game. The goal of the attacker was to deface the website and the goal of the defender was to prevent the attacker from doing so. Our results show that the actions taken by both the attackers and defenders are a function of attention paid by these roles to their recently obtained outcomes. It was observed that if attacker pays more attention to recent outcomes then he is more likely to perform attack actions. We discuss the implication of our results on the evolution of dynamics between attackers and defenders in cyber-security games.

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), especially the Internet, have become a key enabler for government organisations, businesses and individuals. With increasing growth in the adoption and use of ICT devices such as smart phones, personal computers and the Internet, Cybersecurity is one of the key concerns facing modern organisations in both developed and developing countries. This paper presents an overview of cybersecurity challenges in Bhutan, within the context that the nation is emerging as an ICT developing country. This study examines the cybersecurity incidents reported both in national media and government reports, identification and analysis of different types of cyber threats, understanding of the characteristics and motives behind cyber-attacks, and their frequency of occurrence since 1999. A discussion on an ongoing research study to investigate cybersecurity management and practices for Bhutan's government organisations is also highlighted.

In cyberspace, availability of the resources is the key component of cyber security along with confidentiality and integrity. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack has become one of the major threats to the availability of resources in computer networks. It is a challenging problem in the Internet. In this paper, we present a detailed study of DDoS attacks on the Internet specifically the attacks due to protocols vulnerabilities in the TCP/IP model, their countermeasures and various DDoS attack mechanisms. We thoroughly review DDoS attacks defense and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of different proposed mechanisms.

Increased use of Android devices and its open source development framework has attracted many digital crime groups to use Android devices as one of the key attack surfaces. Due to the extensive connectivity and multiple sources of network connections, Android devices are most suitable to botnet based malware attacks. The research focuses on developing a cloud-based Android botnet malware detection system. A prototype of the proposed system is deployed which provides a runtime Android malware analysis. The paper explains architectural implementation of the developed system using a botnet detection learning dataset and multi-layered algorithm used to predict botnet family of a particular application.

Distributed Denial of Service (DoS) attacks is one of the major threats and among the hardest security problems in the Internet world. In this paper, we study the impact of a UDP flood attack on TCP throughputs, round-trip time, and CPU utilization on the latest version of Windows and Linux platforms, namely, Windows Server 2012 and Linux Ubuntu 13. This paper also evaluates several defense mechanisms including Access Control Lists (ACLs), Threshold Limit, Reverse Path Forwarding (IP Verify), and Network Load Balancing. Threshold Limit defense gave better results than the other solutions.

The explosive growth of IT infrastructures, cloud systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) have resulted in complex systems that are extremely difficult to secure and protect against cyberattacks that are growing exponentially in the complexity and also in the number. Overcoming the cybersecurity challenges require cybersecurity environments supporting the development of innovative cybersecurity algorithms and evaluation of the experiments. In this paper, we present the design, analysis, and evaluation of the Cybersecurity Lab as a Service (CLaaS) which offers virtual cybersecurity experiments as a cloud service that can be accessed from anywhere and from any device (desktop, laptop, tablet, smart mobile device, etc.) with Internet connectivity. We exploit cloud computing systems and virtualization technologies to provide isolated and virtual cybersecurity experiments for vulnerability exploitation, launching cyberattacks, how cyber resources and services can be hardened, etc. We also present our performance evaluation and effectiveness of CLaaS experiments used by students.

The internet has had a major impact on how information is shared within supply chains, and in commerce in general. This has resulted in the establishment of information systems such as e-supply chains amongst others which integrate the internet and other information and communications technology (ICT) with traditional business processes for the swift transmission of information between trading partners. Many organisations have reaped the benefits of adopting the eSC model, but have also faced the challenges with which it comes. One such major challenge is information security. Digital forensic readiness is a relatively new exciting field which can prepare and prevent incidents from occurring within an eSC environment if implemented strategically. With the current state of cybercrime, tool developers are challenged with the task of developing cutting edge digital forensic readiness tools that can keep up with the current technological advancements, such as (eSCs), in the business world. Therefore, the problem addressed in this paper is that there are no DFR tools that are designed to support eSCs specifically. There are some general-purpose monitoring tools that have forensic readiness functionality, but currently there are no tools specifically designed to serve the eSC environment. Therefore, this paper discusses the limitations of current digital forensic readiness tools for the eSC environment and an architectural design for next-generation eSC DFR systems is proposed, along with the system requirements that such systems must satisfy. It is the view of the authors that the conclusions drawn from this paper can spearhead the development of cutting-edge next-generation digital forensic readiness tools, and bring attention to some of the shortcomings of current tools.

Presents a collection of slides covering the following topics: advanced attack; threat analysis; remote information gathering; on-site reconnaissance; spear phishing plan; spear phishing exercise; branch office attack plan; branch office attack exercise; head office attack plan; head office attack exercise.

During the last years, criminals have become aware of how digital evidences that lead them to courts and jail are collected and analyzed. Hence, they have started to develop antiforensic techniques to evade, hamper, or nullify their evidences. Nowadays, these techniques are broadly used by criminals, causing the forensic analysis to be in a state of decay. To defeat against these techniques, forensic analyst need to first identify them, and then to mitigate somehow their effects. In this paper, wereview the anti-forensic techniques and propose a new taxonomy that relates them to the initial phase of a forensic process mainly affected by each technique. Furthermore, we introduce mitigation techniques for these anti-forensic techniques, considering the chance to overcome the anti-forensic techniques and the difficulty to apply them.

Sony in United States and KHNP in South Korea were hit by a series of cyberattacks late in 2014 that were blamed on North Korea. U.S. president Obama responded strongly and positively as control tower, and led Sony do not surrender to hacker's demand. U.S government demonstrated retaliatory action against North Korea under the proportional principle, blacklisted 3 North Korean entities and 10 officials. That days, there was the outrage of internet of North Korea. In order to enhance the cyber security response capability, U.S created a new office, CTIIC and encouraged the development of ISAOs, and made Sanctions EO, Information Sharing EO etc. KHNP and the Ministry of Industry rectified incidents itself early period when cyber incident arose, and the situation did not recovered as quickly as desired. S. Korea had not retaliation actions, otherwise called for closer global cooperation against cyber-attacks. To enhance national cyber security and resilience, S. Korea government created the new post of presidential secretary for cyber security and draw up `Strengthening National Cyber Security Posture' initiative.

Security and making trust is the first step toward development in both real and virtual societies. Internet-based development is inevitable. Increasing penetration of technology in the internet banking and its effectiveness in contributing to banking profitability and prosperity requires that satisfied customers turn into loyal customers. Currently, a large number of cyber attacks have been focused on online banking systems, and these attacks are considered as a significant security threat. Banks or customers might become the victim of the most complicated financial crime, namely internet fraud. This study has developed an intelligent system that enables detecting the user's abnormal behavior in online banking. Since the user's behavior is associated with uncertainty, the system has been developed based on the fuzzy theory, This enables it to identify user behaviors and categorize suspicious behaviors with various levels of intensity. The performance of the fuzzy expert system has been evaluated using an receiver operating characteristic curve, which provides the accuracy of 94%. This expert system is optimistic to be used for improving e-banking services security and quality.

The digital forensics refers to the application of scientific techniques in investigation of a crime, specifically to identify or validate involvement of some suspect in an activity leading towards that crime. Network forensics particularly deals with the monitoring of network traffic with an aim to trace some suspected activity from normal traffic or to identify some abnormal pattern in the traffic that may give clue towards some attack. Network forensics, quite valuable phenomenon in investigation process, presents certain challenges including problems in accessing network devices of cloud architecture, handling large amount network traffic, and rigorous processing required to analyse the huge volume of data, of which large proportion may prove to be irrelevant later on. Cloud Computing technology offers services to its clients remotely from a shared pool of resources, as per clients customized requirement, any time, from anywhere. Cloud Computing has attained tremendous popularity recently, leading to its vast and rapid deployment, however Privacy and Security concerns have also increased in same ratio, since data and application is outsourced to a third party. Security concerns about cloud architecture have come up as the prime barrier hindering the major shift of industry towards cloud model, despite significant advantages of cloud architecture. Cloud computing architecture presents aggravated and specific challenges in the network forensics. In this paper, I have reviewed challenges and issues faced in conducting network forensics particularly in the cloud computing environment. The study covers limitations that a network forensic expert may confront during investigation in cloud environment. I have categorized challenges presented to network forensics in cloud computing into various groups. Challenges in each group can be handled appropriately by either Forensic experts, Cloud service providers or Forensic tools whereas leftover challenges are declared as be- ond the control.

Attributing the culprit of a cyber-attack is widely considered one of the major technical and policy challenges of cyber-security. The lack of ground truth for an individual responsible for a given attack has limited previous studies. Here, we overcome this limitation by leveraging DEFCON capture-the-flag (CTF) exercise data where the actual ground-truth is known. In this work, we use various classification techniques to identify the culprit in a cyberattack and find that deceptive activities account for the majority of misclassified samples. We also explore several heuristics to alleviate some of the misclassification caused by deception.

The issue of security has become ever more prevalent in the analysis and design of cyber-physical systems. In this paper, we analyze a consensus network in the presence of Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, namely attacks that prevent communication among the network agents. By introducing a notion of Persistency-of-Communication (PoC), we provide a characterization of DoS frequency and duration such that consensus is not destroyed. An example is given to substantiate the analysis.

Data mining has been used as a technology in various applications of engineering, sciences and others to analysis data of systems and to solve problems. Its applications further extend towards detecting cyber-attacks. We are presenting our work with simple and less efforts similar to data mining which detects email based phishing attacks. This work digs html contents of emails and web pages referred. Also domains and domain related authority details of these links, script codes associated to web pages are analyzed to conclude for the probability of phishing attacks.

Cyber-physical systems combine data processing and physical interaction. Therefore, security in cyber-physical systems involves more than traditional information security. This paper surveys recent research on security in cloud-based cyber-physical systems. In addition, this paper especially analyzes the security issues in modern production devices and smart mobility services, which are examples of cyber-physical systems from different application domains.