2,328 research outputs found

    Insight:an application of information visualisation techniques to digital forensics investigations

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    As digital devices are becoming ever more ubiquitous in our day to day lives, more of our personal information and behavioural patterns are recorded on these devices. The volume of data held on these devices is substantial, and people investigating these datasets are facing growing backlog as a result. This is worsened by the fact that many software tools used in this area are text based and do not lend themselves to rapid processing by humans.This body of work looks at several case studies in which these datasets were visualised in attempt to expedite processing by humans. A number of different 2D and 3D visualisation methods were trialled, and the results from these case studies fed into the design of a final tool which was tested with the assistance of a group of individuals studying Digital Forensics.The results of this research show some encouraging results which indicate visualisation may assist analysis in some aspects, and indicates useful paths for future work

    The Applications of Blockchain To Cybersecurity

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    A blockchain is a decentralized public ledger facilitating secure transactions between untrusted network nodes. It has garnered significant recognition for its pivotal role in cryptocurrency systems, where it ensures secure and decentralized transaction records. Over the past decade, blockchain has attracted considerable attention from various industries, as it holds the potential to revolutionize multiple sectors, including cybersecurity. However, this field of study is relatively new, and numerous questions remain unanswered regarding the effectiveness of blockchain in cybersecurity. This research adopted a qualitative research design to investigate the current implementations of blockchain-based security and their applicability in the current cybersecurity context. Additionally, this work explored the mechanisms employed by blockchain to uphold the security triad. Findings indicate that blockchain exhibits substantial potential in addressing existing challenges in cybersecurity, particularly those related to the Internet of Things, data integrity and ownership, and network security. Nonetheless, widespread adoption faces limitations due to technological immaturity, high-cost complexity, and regulatory hurdles. Therefore, utilizing blockchain-based solutions in cybersecurity necessitates a thorough analysis of their applicability to an organization\u27s specific needs, a clear definition of implementation goals, and careful navigation of challenges

    Secure Software Engineering Education: Knowledge Area, Curriculum and Resources

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    This paper reviews current efforts and resources in secure software engineering education, with the goal of providing guidance for educators to make use of these resources in developing secure software engineering curriculum. These resources include Common Body of Knowledge, reference curriculum, sample curriculum materials, hands-on exercises, and resources developed by industry and open source community. The relationship among the Common Body of Knowledge proposed by the Department of Homeland Security, the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and ACM/IEEE are discussed. The recent practices on secure software engineering education, including secure software engineering related programs, courses, and course modules are reviewed. The course modules are categorized into four categories to facilitate the adoption of these course modules. Available hands-on exercises developed for teaching software security are described and mapped to the taxonomy of coding errors. The rich resources including various secure software development processes, methods and tools developed by industry and open source community are surveyed. A road map is provided to organize these resources and guide educators in adopting these resources and integrating them into their courses

    Supporting the Discovery, Reuse, and Validation of Cybersecurity Requirements at the Early Stages of the Software Development Lifecycle

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    The focus of this research is to develop an approach that enhances the elicitation and specification of reusable cybersecurity requirements. Cybersecurity has become a global concern as cyber-attacks are projected to cost damages totaling more than $10.5 trillion dollars by 2025. Cybersecurity requirements are more challenging to elicit than other requirements because they are nonfunctional requirements that requires cybersecurity expertise and knowledge of the proposed system. The goal of this research is to generate cybersecurity requirements based on knowledge acquired from requirements elicitation and analysis activities, to provide cybersecurity specifications without requiring the specialized knowledge of a cybersecurity expert, and to generate reusable cybersecurity requirements. The proposed approach can be an effective way to implement cybersecurity requirements at the earliest stages of the system development life cycle because the approach facilitates the identification of cybersecurity requirements throughout the requirements gathering stage. This is accomplished through the development of the Secure Development Ontology that maps cybersecurity features and the functional features descriptions in order to train a classification machine-learning model to return the suggested security requirements. The SD-SRE requirements engineering portal was created to support the application of this research by providing a platform to submit use case scenarios and requirements and suggest security requirements for the given system. The efficacy of this approach was tested with students in a graduate requirements engineering course. The students were presented with a system description and tasked with creating use case scenarios using the SD-SRE portal. The entered models were automatically analyzed by the SD-SRE system to suggest the security requirements. The results showed that the approach can be an effective approach to assist in the identification of security requirements

    Scalable Learning Environments for Teaching Cybersecurity Hands-on

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    This Innovative Practice full paper describes a technical innovation for scalable teaching of cybersecurity hands-on classes using interactive learning environments. Hands-on experience significantly improves the practical skills of learners. However, the preparation and delivery of hands-on classes usually do not scale. Teaching even small groups of students requires a substantial effort to prepare the class environment and practical assignments. Further issues are associated with teaching large classes, providing feedback, and analyzing learning gains. We present our research effort and practical experience in designing and using learning environments that scale up hands-on cybersecurity classes. The environments support virtual networks with full-fledged operating systems and devices that emulate real-world systems. The classes are organized as simultaneous training sessions with cybersecurity assignments and learners' assessment. For big classes, with the goal of developing learners' skills and providing formative assessment, we run the environment locally, either in a computer lab or at learners' own desktops or laptops. For classes that exercise the developed skills and feature summative assessment, we use an on-premises cloud environment. Our approach is unique in supporting both types of deployment. The environment is described as code using open and standard formats, defining individual hosts and their networking, configuration of the hosts, and tasks that the students have to solve. The environment can be repeatedly created for different classes on a massive scale or for each student on-demand. Moreover, the approach enables learning analytics and educational data mining of learners' interactions with the environment. These analyses inform the instructor about the student's progress during the class and enable the learner to reflect on a finished training. Thanks to this, we can improve the student class experience and motivation for further learning. Using the presented environments KYPO Cyber Range Platform (CRP) and Cyber Sandbox Creator (CSC), we delivered the classes on-site or remotely for various target groups of learners (K-12, university students, and professional learners). The learners value the realistic nature of the environments that enable exercising theoretical concepts and tools. The instructors value time-efficiency when preparing and deploying the hands-on activities. Engineering and computing educators can freely use our software, which we have released under an open-source license. We also provide detailed documentation and exemplary hands-on training to help other educators adopt our teaching innovations and enable sharing of reusable components within the community

    The “three M’s” counter-measures to children’s risky online behaviors:mentor, mitigate and monitor

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    PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to scope the field of child-related online harms and to produce a resource pack to communicate all the different dimensions of this domain to teachers and carers.Design/methodology/approachWith children increasingly operating as independent agents online, their teachers and carers need to understand the risks of their new playground and the range of risk management strategies they can deploy. Carers and teachers play a prominent role in applying the three M’s: mentoring the child, mitigating harms using a variety of technologies (where possible) and monitoring the child’s online activities to ensure their cybersecurity and cybersafety. In this space, the core concepts of “cybersafety” and “cybersecurity” are substantively different and this should be acknowledged for the full range of counter-measures to be appreciated. Evidence of core concept conflation emerged, confirming the need for a resource pack to improve comprehension. A carefully crafted resource pack was developed to convey knowledge of risky behaviors for three age groups and mapped to the appropriate “three M’s” to be used as counter-measures.FindingsThe investigation revealed key concept conflation, and then identified a wide range of harms and countermeasures. The resource pack brings clarity to this domain for all stakeholders.Research limitations/implicationsThe number of people who were involved in the empirical investigation was limited to those living in Scotland and Nigeria, but it is unlikely that the situation is different elsewhere because the internet is global and children’s risky behaviors are likely to be similar across the globe.Originality/valueOthers have investigated this domain, but no one, to the authors’ knowledge, has come up with the “Three M’s” formulation and a visualization-based resource pack that can inform educators and carers in terms of actions they can take to address the harms

    Mobile Software Assurance Informed through Knowledge Graph Construction: The OWASP Threat of Insecure Data Storage

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    Many organizations, to save costs, are moving to the Bring Your Own Mobile Device (BYOD) model and adopting applications built by third-parties at an unprecedented rate. Our research examines software assurance methodologies specifically focusing on security analysis coverage of the program analysis for mobile malware detection, mitigation, and prevention. This research focuses on secure software development of Android applications by developing knowledge graphs for threats reported by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). OWASP maintains lists of the top ten security threats to web and mobile applications. We develop knowledge graphs based on the two most recent top ten threat years and show how the knowledge graph relationships can be discovered in mobile application source code. We analyze 200+ healthcare applications from GitHub to gain an understanding of their software assurance of their developed software for one of the OWASP top ten mobile threats, the threat of “Insecure Data Storage.” We find that many of the applications are storing personally identifying information (PII) in potentially vulnerable places leaving users exposed to higher risks for the loss of their sensitive data
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