KACST Arabic Text Classification Project: Overview and Preliminary Results

Electronically formatted Arabic free-texts can be found in abundance these days on the World Wide Web, often linked to commercial enterprises and/or government organizations. Vast tracts of knowledge and relations lie hidden within these texts, knowledge that can be exploited once the correct intelligent tools have been identified and applied. For example, text mining may help with text classification and categorization. Text classification aims to automatically assign text to a predefined category based on identifiable linguistic features. Such a process has different useful applications including, but not restricted to, E-Mail spam detection, web pages content filtering, and automatic message routing. In this paper an overview of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) Arabic Text Classification Project will be illustrated along with some preliminary results. This project will contribute to the better understanding and elaboration of Arabic text classification techniques

Curvature of Co-Links Uncovers Hidden Thematic Layers in the World Wide Web

Beyond the information stored in pages of the World Wide Web, novel types of ``meta-information'' are created when they connect to each other. This information is a collective effect of independent users writing and linking pages, hidden from the casual user. Accessing it and understanding the inter-relation of connectivity and content in the WWW is a challenging problem. We demonstrate here how thematic relationships can be located precisely by looking only at the graph of hyperlinks, gleaning content and context from the Web without having to read what is in the pages. We begin by noting that reciprocal links (co-links) between pages signal a mutual recognition of authors, and then focus on triangles containing such links, since triangles indicate a transitive relation. The importance of triangles is quantified by the clustering coefficient (Watts) which we interpret as a curvature (Gromov,Bridson-Haefliger). This defines a Web-landscape whose connected regions of high curvature characterize a common topic. We show experimentally that reciprocity and curvature, when combined, accurately capture this meta-information for a wide variety of topics. As an example of future directions we analyze the neural network of C. elegans (White, Wood), using the same methods.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, expanded version of earlier submission with more example

Email Babel: Does Language Affect Criminal Activity in Compromised Webmail Accounts?

We set out to understand the effects of differing language on the ability of cybercriminals to navigate webmail accounts and locate sensitive information in them. To this end, we configured thirty Gmail honeypot accounts with English, Romanian, and Greek language settings. We populated the accounts with email messages in those languages by subscribing them to selected online newsletters. We hid email messages about fake bank accounts in fifteen of the accounts to mimic real-world webmail users that sometimes store sensitive information in their accounts. We then leaked credentials to the honey accounts via paste sites on the Surface Web and the Dark Web, and collected data for fifteen days. Our statistical analyses on the data show that cybercriminals are more likely to discover sensitive information (bank account information) in the Greek accounts than the remaining accounts, contrary to the expectation that Greek ought to constitute a barrier to the understanding of non-Greek visitors to the Greek accounts. We also extracted the important words among the emails that cybercriminals accessed (as an approximation of the keywords that they searched for within the honey accounts), and found that financial terms featured among the top words. In summary, we show that language plays a significant role in the ability of cybercriminals to access sensitive information hidden in compromised webmail accounts

Enhancing Learning Management Systems Utility for Blind Students: A Task-oriented, User-Centered, Multi-Method Evaluation Technique

This paper presents a novel task-oriented, user-centered, multi-method evaluation (TUME) tech-nique and shows how it is useful in providing a more complete, practical and solution-oriented assessment of the accessibility and usability of Learning Management Systems (LMS) for blind and visually impaired (BVI) students. Novel components of TUME include a purposeful integra-tion of a multi-theoretic foundation and multiple methods to accurately identify users’ accessibil-ity and usability problems in Web interaction and identify design problems and solutions to en-sure technical feasibility of recommendations. The problems identified by TUME remain hidden from extant evaluation methods - therefore, these problems remain in Web-based applications. As a result, evaluation of Web-based applications remains confounded by users’ Web interaction challenges; their utility for specific user types remains unclear. Without appropriate evaluation of users’ problems and challenges in using Web-based applications, we cannot begin to solve these problems and challenges. This paper demonstrates how TUME can be used to identify the unique problems and challenges of specific user types in using Web-based applications and suggests po-tential solutions. The outcome is an accurate understanding of specific design elements that pre-sent roadblocks and challenges for the user in interacting with the Web-based application and feasible design modifications to potentially improve the utility of these applications for specific user types

Under and over the surface: a comparison of the use of leaked account credentials in the Dark and Surface Web

The world has seen a dramatic increase in cybercrime, in both the Surface Web, which is the portion of content on the World Wide Web that may be indexed by popular engines, and lately in the Dark Web, a portion that is not indexed by conventional search engines and is accessed through network overlays such as the Tor network. For instance, theft of online service credentials is an emerging problem, especially in the Dark Web, where the average price for someone\u2019s online identity is \ua3820. Previous research studied the modus operandi of criminals that obtain stolen account credentials through Surface Web outlets. As part of an effort to understand how the same crime unfolds in the Surface Web and the Dark Web, this study seeks to compare the modus operandi of criminals acting on both by leaking Gmail honey accounts in Dark Web outlets. The results are compared to a previous similar experiment performed in the Surface Web. Simulating operating activity of criminals, we posted 100 Gmail account credentials on hidden services on the Dark Web and monitored the activity that they attracted using a honeypot infrastructure. More specifically, we analysed the data generated by the two experiments to find differences in the activity observed with the aim of understanding how leaked credentials are used in both Web environments. We observed that different types of malicious activity happen on honey accounts depending on the Web environment they are released on. Our results can provide the research community with insights into how stolen accounts are being manipulated in the wild for different Web environments

Local agency, adaptation and the shadow system: The institutional architecture of social learning in rural areas of the UK and India

Rural communities across the world face at times a range of environmental, social and economic pressures that threaten their viability in their current form. The ability of local actors to exercise agency in response to potential and emerging threats is of key interest in understanding their capacity to adapt. This paper argues that top-down narratives which focus on canonical organisations and formal institutions are at best a partial account of rural adaptation. More attention needs to be paid to the shadow system, the web of informal and often hidden relationships that permeate public and private life. In the organisational and institutional literature, shadow systems have been discounted as either too complex to be tractable or an inevitable source of corruption and nepotism. Two case studies are presented to establish that neither claim is inexorably true: (i) the adaptation of dairy farmers to market and climate change in Carmarthenshire, South Wales and (ii) NGO mediation of community/state interaction in Tamilnadu, South India. In conclusion, some theoretical and methodological themes are highlighted for further research. These hold the potential to enable a better understanding of the shadow system, and its potential and pitfalls as a site of local agency in rural adaptation. Acnowledgements: This paper draws on learning from two research projects: (i) 'Rapid climate change in the UK: towards an institutional theory of adaptation', funded by the UK Economic and Social Science Research Council's Environment and Human Behaviour Programme, and (ii) 'Thaan Vuzha Nilam Tharisu: The land without a farmer becomes barren', carried out by SPEECH, a Tamil NGO, as part of a larger International Institute for Environment and Development research programme – 'Policies that Work for Sustainable Agriculture and Regenerating Rural Economies.� The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial and institutional assistance that made this research possible

Relationship problems and money: women talk about financial abuse

Examines the barriers women face to building their financial independence and long-term security post-separation. Summary Women’s financial hardship and insecurity, caused by financial abuse in the context of family violence, is a serious concern, particularly considering the increasing feminisation of poverty in Australia. Financial abuse in intimate relationships is widespread and common, but because this form of abuse is deeply embedded in a complex web of social, gendered and personal beliefs and norms, it is often hidden and unrecognised, even by women who experience it. Financial abuse involves behaviours that ‘control a woman’s ability to acquire, use and maintain economic resources, threatening her economic security and potential for self-sufficiency’. This project is driven by the need to better understand and address the serious and ongoing consequences of financial abuse in the lives of women and their children. In particular, it examines the barriers women face to building their financial independence and long-term security post-separation. More than two hundred women from across the social, cultural and income spectrum shared their stories in focus groups, interviews and an online survey for this project. They have provided rich and detailed insights into the nature and impacts of financial abuse, within their relationship and after separation. The report draws extensively on their direct accounts. The research literature shows that the majority of women (80–90 per cent) seeking support from domestic violence services have experienced financial abuse. Unlike previous research, this project intentionally included women who had not accessed these services and did not necessarily identify as experiencing family violence. This research further adds to our understanding about this issue through the inclusion of women whose household income was in a high bracket prior to their separation. This has resulted in insights into the hidden nature and diverse impacts of financial abuse on women’s lives