Toward a More Structured Crime Scripting Method

Scripts have been used in different disciplines to characterize how individuals conceptualize the conduct of goal-oriented tasks. Cornish introduced this modelling approach to the field of environmental criminology as a more systematic way to identify offenders' decisions during the commission of crime. Despite the growing number of articles about crime scripts, there is limited information about the scripting process itself. In particular, there is no publication describing all of the activities involved in the scripting of crime in a comprehensive manner. As a result, the procedural aspects of physical and cyber crimes are predominantly modelled using intuitive rather than structured methods. To fill in this gap, the current study introduces the concept of crime script lifecycle and examines the stages involved in crime scripting process. Following a bottom-up approach, the research involved searching for information relevant to the production of crime scripts and synthesizing the results to improve crime scripting practice and create a roadmap for future work in this field

Crime scripting: A systematic review

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.More than two decades after the publication of Cornish’s seminal work about the script-theoretic approach to crime analysis, this article examines how the concept has been applied in our community. The study provides evidence confirming that the approach is increasingly popular; and takes stock of crime scripting practices through a systematic review of over one hundred scripts published between 1994 and 2018. The results offer the first comprehensive picture of this approach, and highlights new directions for those interested in using data from cyber-systems and the Internet of Things to develop effective situational crime prevention measures

Goal-driven Elaboration of Crime Scripts

This research investigates a crime modelling technique known as crime scripting. Crime scripts are generated by crime analysts to improve the understanding of security incidents, and in particularly, the criminal modus operandi (i.e., how crimes occur) to help identify cost-effective crime prevention measures. This thesis makes four contributions in this area. First, a systematic review of the crime scripting literature that provides a comprehensive and up-to-date understanding of crime scripting practice, and identifies potential issues with current crime scripting methods. Second, a comparative analysis of crime scripts which reveals differences and similarities between the scripts generated by different analysts, and confirms the limitations of intuitive approaches to crime scripting. Third, an experimental study, which shows that the content of crime scripts is influenced by what scripters know about the future use of their scripts. And fourth, a novel crime scripting framework inspired from business process modelling and goal-based modelling techniques. This framework aims to help researchers and practitioners better understand the activities involved in the development of crime scripts, and guide them in the creation of scripts and facilitate the identification of suitable crime prevention measures

The effects of security protocols on cybercrime at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) within the educational sector is increasing rapidly. University systems are becoming increasingly dependent on computerized information systems (CIS) in order to carry out their daily routine. Moreover, CIS no longer process staff records and financial data only, as they once did. Nowadays, universities use CIS to assist in automating the overall system. This automation includes the use of multiple databases, data detail periodicity (i.e. gender, race/ethnicity, enrollment, degrees granted, and program major), record identification (e.g. social security number ‘SSN’), linking to other databases (i.e. linking unit record data with external databases such as university and employment data). The increasing demand and exposure to Internet resources and infrastructure by individuals and universities have made IT infrastructure easy targets for cybercriminals who employ sophisticated attacks such as Advanced Persistent Threats, Distributed Denial of Service attacks and Botnets in order to steal confidential data, identities of individuals and money. Hence, in order to stay in business, universities realise that it is imperative to secure vital Information Systems from easily being exploited by emerging and existing forms of cybercrimes. This study was conducted to determine and evaluate the various forms of cybercrimes and their consequences on the university network at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The study was also aimed at proposing means of mitigating cybercrimes and their effects on the university network. Hence, an exploratory research design supported by qualitative research approach was used in this study. Staff of the Institute of Computing, Information and Communication technology (ICICT) were interviewed. The findings of the study present different security measures, and security tools that can be used to effectively mitigate cybercrimes. It was found that social engineering, denial of service attacks, website defacement were among the types of cybercrimes occurring on the university network. It is therefore recommended that behavioural approach in a form of motivation of staff behaviour, salary increases, and cash incentive to reduce cybercrime perpetrated by these staff

Educating the effective digital forensics practitioner: academic, professional, graduate and student perspectives

Over the years, digital forensics has become an important and sought-after profession where the gateway of training and education has developed vastly over the past decade. Many UK higher education (HE) institutions now deliver courses that prepare students for careers in digital forensics and, in most recent advances, cyber security. Skills shortages and external influences attributed within the field of cyber security, and its relationship as a discipline with digital forensics, has shifted the dynamic of UK higher education provisions. The implications of this now sees the route to becoming a digital forensic practitioner, be it in law enforcement or business, transform from on-the-job training to university educated, trained analysts. This thesis examined courses within HE and discovered that the delivery of these courses often overlooked areas such as mobile forensics, live data forensics, Linux and Mac knowledge. This research also considered current standards available across HE to understand whether educational programmes are delivering what is documented as relevant curriculum. Cyber security was found to be the central focus of these standards within inclusion of digital forensics, adding further to the debate and lack of distinctive nature of digital forensics as its own discipline. Few standards demonstrated how the topics, knowledge, skills and competences drawn were identified as relevant and effective for producing digital forensic practitioners. Additionally, this thesis analyses and discusses results from 201 participants across five stakeholder groups: graduates, professionals, academics, students and the public. These areas were selected due to being underdeveloped in existing literature and the crucial role they play in the cycle of producing effective practitioners. Analysis on stakeholder views, experiences and thoughts surrounding education and training offer unique insight, theoretical underpinnings and original contributions not seen in existing literature. For example, challenges, costs and initial issues with introducing graduates to employment for the employers and/or supervising practitioners, the lack of awareness and contextualisation on behalf of students and graduates towards what knowledge and skills they have learned and acquired on a course and its practical application on-the-job which often lead to suggestions of a lack of fundamental knowledge and skills. This is evidenced throughout the thesis, but examples include graduates: for their reflections on education based on their new on-the-job experiences and practices; professionals: for their job experiences and requirements, academics: for their educational practices and challenges; students: their initial expectations and views; and, the public: for their general understanding. This research uniquely captures these perspectives, bolstering the development of digital forensics as an academic discipline, along with the importance these diverse views play in the overall approach to delivering skilled practitioners. While the main contribution to knowledge within this thesis is its narrative focusing on the education of effective digital forensic practitioners and its major stakeholders, this thesis also makes additional contributions both academically and professionally; including the discussion, analysis and reflection of: - improvements for education and digital forensics topics for research and curriculum development; - where course offerings can be improved for institutions offering digital forensic degree programmes; - the need for further collaboration between industry and academia to provide students and graduates with greater understanding of the real-life role of a digital forensic practitioner and the expectations in employment; - continuous and unique challenges within both academia and the industry which digital forensics possess and the need for improved facilities and tool development to curate and share problem and scenario-based learning studies

Comparative Analysis of Crime Scripts: One CCTV Footage—Twenty-One Scripts

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the modelling of crime commission processes, in particular crime scripting, in physical and cyber spaces. This article aims to demonstrate the limits of unstructured scripting approaches, and advocates the development of more systematic techniques. For this, we examined he differences and similarities between various scripts. Twenty-one participants were trained in crime scripting, and tasked to produce individual scripts based on the same video footage of a shop robbery. Content analysis was applied to the scripts, which involved classifying the different steps of the crime commission process and analyzing their distributions. A scoring system was then developed to assess the relative degree of completeness of each script, and linear regression computed using the number of activities included as the predictor variable. This research provides the first evidence of the limits of creating scripts using an intuitive approach, and the need for applying semi-structured goal-based methods