Addressing the new generation of spam (Spam 2.0) through Web usage models

New Internet collaborative media introduce new ways of communicating that are not immune to abuse. A fake eye-catching profile in social networking websites, a promotional review, a response to a thread in online forums with unsolicited content or a manipulated Wiki page, are examples of new the generation of spam on the web, referred to as Web 2.0 Spam or Spam 2.0. Spam 2.0 is defined as the propagation of unsolicited, anonymous, mass content to infiltrate legitimate Web 2.0 applications.The current literature does not address Spam 2.0 in depth and the outcome of efforts to date are inadequate. The aim of this research is to formalise a definition for Spam 2.0 and provide Spam 2.0 filtering solutions. Early-detection, extendibility, robustness and adaptability are key factors in the design of the proposed method.This dissertation provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art web spam and Spam 2.0 filtering methods to highlight the unresolved issues and open problems, while at the same time effectively capturing the knowledge in the domain of spam filtering.This dissertation proposes three solutions in the area of Spam 2.0 filtering including: (1) characterising and profiling Spam 2.0, (2) Early-Detection based Spam 2.0 Filtering (EDSF) approach, and (3) On-the-Fly Spam 2.0 Filtering (OFSF) approach. All the proposed solutions are tested against real-world datasets and their performance is compared with that of existing Spam 2.0 filtering methods.This work has coined the term ‘Spam 2.0’, provided insight into the nature of Spam 2.0, and proposed filtering mechanisms to address this new and rapidly evolving problem

Selected Computing Research Papers Volume 1 June 2012

An Evaluation of Anti-phishing Solutions (Arinze Bona Umeaku) ..................................... 1 A Detailed Analysis of Current Biometric Research Aimed at Improving Online Authentication Systems (Daniel Brown) .............................................................................. 7 An Evaluation of Current Intrusion Detection Systems Research (Gavin Alexander Burns) .................................................................................................... 13 An Analysis of Current Research on Quantum Key Distribution (Mark Lorraine) ............ 19 A Critical Review of Current Distributed Denial of Service Prevention Methodologies (Paul Mains) ............................................................................................... 29 An Evaluation of Current Computing Methodologies Aimed at Improving the Prevention of SQL Injection Attacks in Web Based Applications (Niall Marsh) .............. 39 An Evaluation of Proposals to Detect Cheating in Multiplayer Online Games (Bradley Peacock) ............................................................................................................... 45 An Empirical Study of Security Techniques Used In Online Banking (Rajinder D G Singh) .......................................................................................................... 51 A Critical Study on Proposed Firewall Implementation Methods in Modern Networks (Loghin Tivig) .................................................................................................... 5

Authentication and Data Protection under Strong Adversarial Model

We are interested in addressing a series of existing and plausible threats to cybersecurity where the adversary possesses unconventional attack capabilities. Such unconventionality includes, in our exploration but not limited to, crowd-sourcing, physical/juridical coercion, substantial (but bounded) computational resources, malicious insiders, etc. Our studies show that unconventional adversaries can be counteracted with a special anchor of trust and/or a paradigm shift on a case-specific basis. Complementing cryptography, hardware security primitives are the last defense in the face of co-located (physical) and privileged (software) adversaries, hence serving as the special trust anchor. Examples of hardware primitives are architecture-shipped features (e.g., with CPU or chipsets), security chips or tokens, and certain features on peripheral/storage devices. We also propose changes of paradigm in conjunction with hardware primitives, such as containing attacks instead of counteracting, pretended compliance, and immunization instead of detection/prevention. In this thesis, we demonstrate how our philosophy is applied to cope with several exemplary scenarios of unconventional threats, and elaborate on the prototype systems we have implemented. Specifically, Gracewipe is designed for stealthy and verifiable secure deletion of on-disk user secrets under coercion; Hypnoguard protects in-RAM data when a computer is in sleep (ACPI S3) in case of various memory/guessing attacks; Uvauth mitigates large-scale human-assisted guessing attacks by receiving all login attempts in an indistinguishable manner, i.e., correct credentials in a legitimate session and incorrect ones in a plausible fake session; Inuksuk is proposed to protect user files against ransomware or other authorized tampering. It augments the hardware access control on self-encrypting drives with trusted execution to achieve data immunization. We have also extended the Gracewipe scenario to a network-based enterprise environment, aiming to address slightly different threats, e.g., malicious insiders. We believe the high-level methodology of these research topics can contribute to advancing the security research under strong adversarial assumptions, and the promotion of software-hardware orchestration in protecting execution integrity therein