State of Alaska Election Security Project Phase 2 Report

A laska’s election system is among the most secure in the country, and it has a number of safeguards other states are now adopting. But the technology Alaska uses to record and count votes could be improved— and the state’s huge size, limited road system, and scattered communities also create special challenges for insuring the integrity of the vote. In this second phase of an ongoing study of Alaska’s election security, we recommend ways of strengthening the system—not only the technology but also the election procedures. The lieutenant governor and the Division of Elections asked the University of Alaska Anchorage to do this evaluation, which began in September 2007.Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell. State of Alaska Division of Elections.List of Appendices / Glossary / Study Team / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Summary of Recommendations / Part 1 Defense in Depth / Part 2 Fortification of Systems / Part 3 Confidence in Outcomes / Conclusions / Proposed Statement of Work for Phase 3: Implementation / Reference

Security and Online learning: to protect or prohibit

The rapid development of online learning is opening up many new learning opportunities. Yet, with this increased potential come a myriad of risks. Usable security systems are essential as poor usability in security can result in excluding intended users while allowing sensitive data to be released to unacceptable recipients. This chapter presents findings concerned with usability for two security issues: authentication mechanisms and privacy. Usability issues such as memorability, feedback, guidance, context of use and concepts of information ownership are reviewed within various environments. This chapter also reviews the roots of these usability difficulties in the culture clash between the non-user-oriented perspective of security and the information exchange culture of the education domain. Finally an account is provided of how future systems can be developed which maintain security and yet are still usable

A Security Framework for JXTA-Overlay

En l'actualitat, la maduresa del camp de la investigació P2P empès a través de nous problemes, relacionats amb la seguretat. Per aquesta raó, la seguretat comença a convertir-se en una de les qüestions clau en l'avaluació d'un sistema P2P, i és important proporcionar mecanismes de seguretat per a sistemes P2P. El projecte JXTAOverlay fa un esforç per utilitzar la tecnologia JXTA per proporcionar un conjunt genèric de funcions que poden ser utilitzades pels desenvolupadors per desplegar aplicacions P2P. No obstant això, encara que el seu disseny es va centrar en qüestions com ara l'escalabilitat o el rendiment general, no va tenir en compte la seguretat. Aquest treball proposa un marc de seguretat, adaptat específicament a la idiosincràsia del JXTAOverlay.At present time, the maturity of P2P research field has pushed through new problems such us those related with security. For that reason, security starts to become one of the key issues when evaluating a P2P system and it is important to provide security mechanisms to P2P systems. The JXTAOverlay project is an effort to use JXTA technology to provide a generic set of functionalities that can be used by developers to deploy P2P applications. However, since its design focused on issues such as scalability or overall performance, it did not take security into account. This work proposes a security framework specifically suited to JXTAOverlay¿s idiosyncrasies.En la actualidad, la madurez del campo de la investigación P2P empujado a través de nuevos problemas, relacionados con la seguridad. Por esta razón, la seguridad comienza a convertirse en una de las cuestiones clave en la evaluación de un sistema P2P, y es importante proporcionar mecanismos de seguridad para sistemas P2P. El proyecto JXTAOverlay hace un esfuerzo por utilizar la tecnología JXTA para proporcionar un conjunto genérico de funciones que pueden ser utilizadas por los desarrolladores para desplegar aplicaciones P2P. Sin embargo, aunque su diseño se centró en cuestiones como la escalabilidad o el rendimiento general, no tuvo en cuenta la seguridad. Este trabajo propone un marco de seguridad, adaptado específicamente a la idiosincrasia del JXTAOverlay

Password Cracking and Countermeasures in Computer Security: A Survey

With the rapid development of internet technologies, social networks, and other related areas, user authentication becomes more and more important to protect the data of the users. Password authentication is one of the widely used methods to achieve authentication for legal users and defense against intruders. There have been many password cracking methods developed during the past years, and people have been designing the countermeasures against password cracking all the time. However, we find that the survey work on the password cracking research has not been done very much. This paper is mainly to give a brief review of the password cracking methods, import technologies of password cracking, and the countermeasures against password cracking that are usually designed at two stages including the password design stage (e.g. user education, dynamic password, use of tokens, computer generations) and after the design (e.g. reactive password checking, proactive password checking, password encryption, access control). The main objective of this work is offering the abecedarian IT security professionals and the common audiences with some knowledge about the computer security and password cracking, and promoting the development of this area.Comment: add copyright to the tables to the original authors, add acknowledgement to helpe

Enhancing the Computer Network Security in Data Centre Networks using QoS Metrics

The ever increasing demand for computer based data transfer has made it necessary that computer network users’ demand for optimal transfer of information from their desired customers. The most worried aspect of these demands is that most times unauthorized users tend to tamper with the transmitted data within the network. However, the importance of network security in computer network centre cannot be over emphasized in recent times. This work therefore deals with enhancing the computer network security and deployed a measure to checkmate the ever increasing hacking or attacking of data in the network thereby rendering the security system of the computer network to be vulnerable and inefficient. The Quality of Service (QoS) used in the work include, throughput, data delay and utilization factor. Here, the real-time system survey technique is deployed to actualise the analysis of the computer network. The result obtained shows that the deployment of the models developed enhanced security for Data Centre Networks (DCN). DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15065

An Android-based Image Steganography Approach to Data Communication Security using LSB and Password-based Encryption

The study's ultimate goal is to develop an Android app dedicated to Image Steganography, a technique for concealing sensitive information behind seemingly innocuous photographs. This information hiding technique is essential because of its many potential uses. Symmetric encryption, asymmetric encryption, and steganography are all brought together in this method. The initial picture is encrypted using a symmetric technique in this procedure. After that, the encrypted picture is quietly placed using a least significant bits Steganographic approach to conceal the secret key that was encrypted using an asymmetric algorithm. The steganography algorithm's simple but effective security mechanism is a major benefit. Integrating a secret message into a seemingly benign source makes it very difficult to detect the hidden message without prior knowledge of its existence and the appropriate decryption algorithm. The privacy of the concealed data is protected by this feature. The planned Android app would provide a user-friendly interface for using picture steganography methods, making it simple for anybody to choose commonplace photos and secret messages for obfuscation. Both the original picture and the concealed message will be kept secret thanks to the app's robust encryption methods. The hidden message will be seamlessly included into the regular picture using advanced steganographic methods like the least significant bits approach. The creation of this software is motivated by a desire to provide an easily accessible solution for people who want safe communication through hidden messages or encrypted photos. The robust encryption and steganographic technologies, paired with the straightforward interface, will enable users to effectively protect sensitive information. This work will strengthen the area of data security and highlight the need of sophisticated encryption and steganography in modern digital communication