An Argumentation-Based Reasoner to Assist Digital Investigation and Attribution of Cyber-Attacks

We expect an increase in the frequency and severity of cyber-attacks that comes along with the need for efficient security countermeasures. The process of attributing a cyber-attack helps to construct efficient and targeted mitigating and preventive security measures. In this work, we propose an argumentation-based reasoner (ABR) as a proof-of-concept tool that can help a forensics analyst during the analysis of forensic evidence and the attribution process. Given the evidence collected from a cyber-attack, our reasoner can assist the analyst during the investigation process, by helping him/her to analyze the evidence and identify who performed the attack. Furthermore, it suggests to the analyst where to focus further analyses by giving hints of the missing evidence or new investigation paths to follow. ABR is the first automatic reasoner that can combine both technical and social evidence in the analysis of a cyber-attack, and that can also cope with incomplete and conflicting information. To illustrate how ABR can assist in the analysis and attribution of cyber-attacks we have used examples of cyber-attacks and their analyses as reported in publicly available reports and online literature. We do not mean to either agree or disagree with the analyses presented therein or reach attribution conclusions

Sosiaaliturvauudistuksen retoriikka : Sata-komitean sekä Sosiaalitieto ja Talentia -lehtien argumentit sosiaaliturvauudistuksesta 2008-2010

Pro gradu -tutkielmani tavoitteena on selvittää, miten uusliberalistiset ja sosiaalityön arvot sekä periaatteet näkyivät sosiaaliturvauudistuksen retoriikassa vuosina 2008-2010. Sosiaaliturvan uudistaminen käynnistyi vuonna 2007 Matti Vanhasen II hallituksen asettaessa sosiaaliturvan uudistamisen hallituksen tavoitteeksi. Sosiaaliturvan uudistamisehdotuksen laatimista varten koottiin työryhmä, niin sanottu Sata-komitea. Aineistona tutkielmassa on Sata-komitean mietintö Sosiaaliturvan uudistamiskomitean (SATA) esitys sosiaaliturvan kokonaisuudistuksen keskeisistä linjauksista ja sosiaaliturvauudistusta käsittelevät artikkelit Sosiaalitieto ja Talentia -lehdistä vuosilta 2008-2010. Teoreettisena viitekehyksenä tutkielmassa on uusliberalismin sekä sosiaalityön arvot ja periaatteet. Esioletuksena on, että sosiaalityön arvot ja periaatteet ovat ainakin osittain ristiriidassa uusliberalististen arvojen ja periaatteiden kanssa ja tuottavat siten erilaista argumentointia sosiaaliturvan uudistamisesta. Tutkielma on retorinen analyysi ja käytän analyysissa apuna Cháim Perelmanin argumentaatioteoriaa. Tutkielmassa keskitytään tällöin sosiaaliturvasta käytyyn argumentointiin, ja siihen oliko argumentoinnissa uusliberalismin tai sosiaalityön arvoihin ja periaatteisiin pohjautuvia argumentteja. Lisäksi argumentoinnin rakentuminen on tutkimuskohteena. Retorisessa analyysissa Sata-komitean mietinnöstä löytyi kolme pääargumenttia, joilla sosiaaliturvauudistuksia perusteltiin. Kyseiset argumentit ovat: 1. Sosiaaliturvan tulee olla köyhyyttä ja eriarvoisuutta vähentävää 2. Sosiaaliturvan tulee olla aktivoivaa ja tehokasta 3. Nykyisen sosiaaliturvan rakenteelliset ongelmat ja rahoituspohjan haasteet ovat merkittäviä. Sosiaalitieto ja Talentia -lehdistä löytyi myös kolme pääargumenttia, joilla sosiaaliturvan uudistamisesta keskusteltiin: 1. Sosiaaliturvan uudistamisehdotus on riittävän hyvä 2. Sosiaalityön arvot ja periaatteet eivät tule kuulluiksi uudistuksissa 3. Asiakkaan kohtaaminen ja sosiaalityö ovat tärkeitä toimeentulotukea myönnettäessä. Sosiaalityöntekijät osallistuivat sosiaaliturvan uudistamisesta käytyyn keskusteluun sosiaalialan ammattilehdissä laimeasti. Sosiaalialan ammattilehdissä keskusteluun osallistuneiden argumentointi pohjautui kuitenkin pääsääntöisesti sosiaalityön arvoihin ja periaatteisiin. Sata-komitean mietinnön argumentointi pohjautui köyhyydestä ja eriarvoisuudesta kirjoitettaessa osittain samoihin arvoihin ja periaatteisiin kuin sosiaalityössä. Mietinnön argumentoinnissa oli kuitenkin myös uusliberalistisia piirteitä. Tällöin sosiaaliturvaan haluttiin tehokkuutta, ihmisten aktivointi ja sen haluttiin olevan rakenteelta selkeä ja rahoituspohjaltaan kansantaloudellisesti kestävän. ________________________________________________________________________________ The Rhetoric of a Social Security Reform. The Arguments of the SATA Committee and the Sosiaalitieto and Talentia journals on the Finnish social security reform, 2008–2010 Abstract: The purpose of this Master's thesis was to determine how neo-liberal and social work values and principles manifested in the rhetoric of the Finnish social security reform in 2008-2010. The social security reform was launched in 2007, as Matti Vanhanen's II Government set the reform of social security as one of the Government's objectives. A working group, the so-called SATA Committee, was set up for preparing a proposal for the reform. The research material consisted of the Committee's report, Proposal of the Committee for reforming social protection (SATA Committee) for the main policy lines in the total reform of social protection, as well as articles concerned with reform published in the Sosiaalitieto and Talentia journals between 2008 and 2010. The theoretical framework of this study consists of the values and principles of neo-liberalism and social work. The presumption was that there would be at least partial conflict between the values and principles of social work and those of neo-liberalism, and this would thus produce varying argumentation in the context of the reform of social security. This study is a rhetorical analysis. Cháim Perelman's theory of argumentation was utilised in the analysis. The focus of the thesis was thus on the argumentation used in relation to social security and whether the argumentation contained arguments based on the values and principles of neo-liberalism or social work. The construction of argumentation was a further research focus. The rhetorical analysis of the report of the SATA Committee revealed three main arguments used to promote the reform. These were as follows: 1. Social security must reduce poverty and inequality 2. Social security must be effective and support activity 3. The current social security has significant structural problems and challenges related to its the financial basis. Three main arguments were also found in the Sosiaalitieto and Talentia journals in relation to the discussion on the reform: 1.The proposal for the reform of social security is sufficiently good 2. The values and principles of social work are not heard in the reforms 3. Customer encounters and social work are important in granting social assistance. In the journals, the participation of social workers in the discussion on the reform was low. Nevertheless, the argumentation of those involved in the discussions in the journals was primarily founded on the values and principles of social work. When concerned with poverty and inequality, the argumentation of the report by the SATA Committee was partly based on the same values and principles as social work. However, the argumentation in the report also contained neo-liberal characteristics; there were calls for social security to be effective and activate people, and its structures were expected to be clear and its financial basis economically sustainable

Sosiaaliturvauudistuksen retoriikka : Sata-komitean sekä Sosiaalitieto ja Talentia -lehtien argumentit sosiaaliturvauudistuksesta 2008-2010

Pro gradu -tutkielmani tavoitteena on selvittää, miten uusliberalistiset ja sosiaalityön arvot sekä periaatteet näkyivät sosiaaliturvauudistuksen retoriikassa vuosina 2008-2010. Sosiaaliturvan uudistaminen käynnistyi vuonna 2007 Matti Vanhasen II hallituksen asettaessa sosiaaliturvan uudistamisen hallituksen tavoitteeksi. Sosiaaliturvan uudistamisehdotuksen laatimista varten koottiin työryhmä, niin sanottu Sata-komitea. Aineistona tutkielmassa on Sata-komitean mietintö Sosiaaliturvan uudistamiskomitean (SATA) esitys sosiaaliturvan kokonaisuudistuksen keskeisistä linjauksista ja sosiaaliturvauudistusta käsittelevät artikkelit Sosiaalitieto ja Talentia -lehdistä vuosilta 2008-2010. Teoreettisena viitekehyksenä tutkielmassa on uusliberalismin sekä sosiaalityön arvot ja periaatteet. Esioletuksena on, että sosiaalityön arvot ja periaatteet ovat ainakin osittain ristiriidassa uusliberalististen arvojen ja periaatteiden kanssa ja tuottavat siten erilaista argumentointia sosiaaliturvan uudistamisesta. Tutkielma on retorinen analyysi ja käytän analyysissa apuna Cháim Perelmanin argumentaatioteoriaa. Tutkielmassa keskitytään tällöin sosiaaliturvasta käytyyn argumentointiin, ja siihen oliko argumentoinnissa uusliberalismin tai sosiaalityön arvoihin ja periaatteisiin pohjautuvia argumentteja. Lisäksi argumentoinnin rakentuminen on tutkimuskohteena. Retorisessa analyysissa Sata-komitean mietinnöstä löytyi kolme pääargumenttia, joilla sosiaaliturvauudistuksia perusteltiin. Kyseiset argumentit ovat: 1. Sosiaaliturvan tulee olla köyhyyttä ja eriarvoisuutta vähentävää 2. Sosiaaliturvan tulee olla aktivoivaa ja tehokasta 3. Nykyisen sosiaaliturvan rakenteelliset ongelmat ja rahoituspohjan haasteet ovat merkittäviä. Sosiaalitieto ja Talentia -lehdistä löytyi myös kolme pääargumenttia, joilla sosiaaliturvan uudistamisesta keskusteltiin: 1. Sosiaaliturvan uudistamisehdotus on riittävän hyvä 2. Sosiaalityön arvot ja periaatteet eivät tule kuulluiksi uudistuksissa 3. Asiakkaan kohtaaminen ja sosiaalityö ovat tärkeitä toimeentulotukea myönnettäessä. Sosiaalityöntekijät osallistuivat sosiaaliturvan uudistamisesta käytyyn keskusteluun sosiaalialan ammattilehdissä laimeasti. Sosiaalialan ammattilehdissä keskusteluun osallistuneiden argumentointi pohjautui kuitenkin pääsääntöisesti sosiaalityön arvoihin ja periaatteisiin. Sata-komitean mietinnön argumentointi pohjautui köyhyydestä ja eriarvoisuudesta kirjoitettaessa osittain samoihin arvoihin ja periaatteisiin kuin sosiaalityössä. Mietinnön argumentoinnissa oli kuitenkin myös uusliberalistisia piirteitä. Tällöin sosiaaliturvaan haluttiin tehokkuutta, ihmisten aktivointi ja sen haluttiin olevan rakenteelta selkeä ja rahoituspohjaltaan kansantaloudellisesti kestävän. ________________________________________________________________________________ The Rhetoric of a Social Security Reform. The Arguments of the SATA Committee and the Sosiaalitieto and Talentia journals on the Finnish social security reform, 2008–2010 Abstract: The purpose of this Master's thesis was to determine how neo-liberal and social work values and principles manifested in the rhetoric of the Finnish social security reform in 2008-2010. The social security reform was launched in 2007, as Matti Vanhanen's II Government set the reform of social security as one of the Government's objectives. A working group, the so-called SATA Committee, was set up for preparing a proposal for the reform. The research material consisted of the Committee's report, Proposal of the Committee for reforming social protection (SATA Committee) for the main policy lines in the total reform of social protection, as well as articles concerned with reform published in the Sosiaalitieto and Talentia journals between 2008 and 2010. The theoretical framework of this study consists of the values and principles of neo-liberalism and social work. The presumption was that there would be at least partial conflict between the values and principles of social work and those of neo-liberalism, and this would thus produce varying argumentation in the context of the reform of social security. This study is a rhetorical analysis. Cháim Perelman's theory of argumentation was utilised in the analysis. The focus of the thesis was thus on the argumentation used in relation to social security and whether the argumentation contained arguments based on the values and principles of neo-liberalism or social work. The construction of argumentation was a further research focus. The rhetorical analysis of the report of the SATA Committee revealed three main arguments used to promote the reform. These were as follows: 1. Social security must reduce poverty and inequality 2. Social security must be effective and support activity 3. The current social security has significant structural problems and challenges related to its the financial basis. Three main arguments were also found in the Sosiaalitieto and Talentia journals in relation to the discussion on the reform: 1.The proposal for the reform of social security is sufficiently good 2. The values and principles of social work are not heard in the reforms 3. Customer encounters and social work are important in granting social assistance. In the journals, the participation of social workers in the discussion on the reform was low. Nevertheless, the argumentation of those involved in the discussions in the journals was primarily founded on the values and principles of social work. When concerned with poverty and inequality, the argumentation of the report by the SATA Committee was partly based on the same values and principles as social work. However, the argumentation in the report also contained neo-liberal characteristics; there were calls for social security to be effective and activate people, and its structures were expected to be clear and its financial basis economically sustainable

Human-Agent Decision-making: Combining Theory and Practice

Extensive work has been conducted both in game theory and logic to model strategic interaction. An important question is whether we can use these theories to design agents for interacting with people? On the one hand, they provide a formal design specification for agent strategies. On the other hand, people do not necessarily adhere to playing in accordance with these strategies, and their behavior is affected by a multitude of social and psychological factors. In this paper we will consider the question of whether strategies implied by theories of strategic behavior can be used by automated agents that interact proficiently with people. We will focus on automated agents that we built that need to interact with people in two negotiation settings: bargaining and deliberation. For bargaining we will study game-theory based equilibrium agents and for argumentation we will discuss logic-based argumentation theory. We will also consider security games and persuasion games and will discuss the benefits of using equilibrium based agents.Comment: In Proceedings TARK 2015, arXiv:1606.0729

The false promise of the better argument

Effective argumentation in international politics is widely conceived as a matter of persuasion. In particular, the ‘logic of arguing’ ascribes explanatory power to the ‘better argument’ and promises to illuminate the conditions of legitimate normative change. This article exposes the self-defeating implications of the Habermasian symbiosis between the normative and the empirical force of arguments. Since genuine persuasion is neither observable nor knowable, its analysis critically depends on what scholars consider to be the better argument. Seemingly, objective criteria such as universality only camouflage such moral reification. The paradoxical consequence of an explanatory concept of arguing is that moral discourse is no longer conceptualized as an open-ended process of contestation and normative change, but has recently been recast as a governance mechanism ensuring the compliance of international actors with pre-defined norms. This dilemma can be avoided through a positivist reification of valid norms, as in socialization research, or by adopting a critical and emancipatory focus on the obstacles to true persuasion. Still, both solutions remain dependent on the ‘persuasion vs. coercion’ problem that forestalls an insight into successful justificatory practices other than rational communication. The conclusion therefore pleas for a pragmatic abstention from better arguments and points to the insights to be gained from pragmatist norms research in sociology

Practical reasoning in political discourse: The UK government's response to the economic crisis in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report

This article focuses on practical reasoning in political discourse and argues for a better integration of argumentation theory with critical discourse analysis (CDA). Political discourse and its specific genres (for example, deliberation) primarily involve forms of practical reasoning, typically oriented towards finding solutions to problems and deciding on future courses of action. Practical reasoning is a form of inference from cognitive and motivational premises: from what we believe (about the situation or about means—end relations) and what we want or desire (our goals and values), leading to a normative judgement (and often a decision) concerning action. We offer an analysis of the main argument in the UK government’s 2008 Pre-Budget Report (HM Treasury, 2008) and suggest how a critical evaluation of the argument from the perspective of a normative theory of argumentation (particularly the informal logic developed by Douglas Walton) can provide the basis for an evaluation in terms of characteristic CDA concerns. We are advancing this analysis as a contribution to CDA, aimed at increasing the rigour and systematicity of its analyses of political discourse, and as a contribution to the normative concerns of critical social science

Disruptive Innovations and Disruptive Assurance: Assuring Machine Learning and Autonomy

Autonomous and machine learning-based systems are disruptive innovations and thus require a corresponding disruptive assurance strategy. We offer an overview of a framework based on claims, arguments, and evidence aimed at addressing these systems and use it to identify specific gaps, challenges, and potential solutions

The non-use and influence of UK energy sector indicators

This paper presents the results from a case study on the role in policymaking of UK Energy Sector Indicators (ESIs), introduced by the government in 2003. The findings show that the ESIs constituted a very minor element within the broader evidence-base used by policymakers, and that this indicator set and its objectives were poorly known even to central players in the sector. The findings of this research provide further evidence for the observation that scientific knowledge (including evaluations, assessments and indicators) seldom play an instrumental role in policymaking, and are more likely to produce indirect, conceptual and political impacts. The analysis provides a number of tentative conclusions concerning such potential indirect impacts that accrue mainly through processes of dialogue and argumentation both during the preparation of the indicators and after their publication as part of the annual reporting by the UK energy department. The ESIs have played various conceptual and political roles, yet the concrete outcomes in terms of policy change remain to be explored. The conclusions highlight the limitations of rationalist notions of direct, instrumental use in the efforts to understand the role of indicators in policymaking. The paper concludes by three tentative propositions concerning the explanations to the absence of instrumental role of the ESIs, which could be usefully explored in future research: the characteristics of the energy sector; the characteristics of the UK policy culture; and the exceptionality of the ESIs in the general evidence-base of UK energy sector

Improving argumentation-based recommender systems through context-adaptable selection criteria

Recommender Systems based on argumentation represent an important proposal where the recommendation is supported by qualitative information. In these systems, the role of the comparison criterion used to decide between competing arguments is paramount and the possibility of using the most appropriate for a given domain becomes a central issue; therefore, an argumentative recommender system that offers an interchangeable argument comparison criterion provides a significant ability that can be exploited by the user. However, in most of current recommender systems, the argument comparison criterion is either fixed, or codified within the arguments. In this work we propose a formalization of context-adaptable selection criteria that enhances the argumentative reasoning mechanism. Thus, we do not propose of a new type of recommender system; instead we present a mechanism that expand the capabilities of existing argumentation-based recommender systems. More precisely, our proposal is to provide a way of specifying how to select and use the most appropriate argument comparison criterion effecting the selection on the user´s preferences, giving the possibility of programming, by the use of conditional expressions, which argument preference criterion has to be used in each particular situation.Fil: Teze, Juan Carlos Lionel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos; ArgentinaFil: Gottifredi, Sebastián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: García, Alejandro Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: Simari, Guillermo Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Bahía Blanca; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ciencias e Ingeniería de la Computación; Argentin