Online Child Sex Solicitation: Exploring the Feasibility of a Research 'Sting'

A small scale test of the integrity of Internet Web 2.0 social network sites was undertaken over several weeks in 2007. The fictional identities of four female underage children where posted on three network sites and later introduced to relay chat forums in order to explore the impact of apparent vulnerability on potential selection of Internet victims. Only one of the three social network sites in the study recognised that the postings violated child protection policies and subsequently closed down the underage postings. Two basic identities were created: one that engendered a needy and vulnerable characterisation of a child while the other identity was created to represent a happy and attached child character. The number of contacts and suspicious contacts were monitored to test assumptions about child ‘vulnerability’ and risks of unwanted sexual solicitations. The characters created also included either an avatar and/or contact details. These variants of the experiment showed that the inclusion of an image or access details increased the likelihood of contacts, including suspicious contact regardless of ‘vulnerability’. This small experiment noted that although vulnerable children with additional cues maybe at more risk all children who posted details about themselves on social network sites faced the risk of contact by predators. The need for further research and better means of regulating such sites was suggested

Social engineering and crime prevention in cyberspace

This paper highlights methods of syntactic and semantic social engineering attacks (human-based and computer-based) that are currently prevalent in the cyber community. It will also present the emerging trends in high-tech crime; and, the likely future direction cyber-crime will take with respect to social engineering

Getting organised on Asian drug trade

The immense demand for amphetamine-type stimulants (or ATS, such as crystal methamphetamine and ecstasy), opiates and new psychoactive substances among the increasingly wealthy urban residents of East Asia — and beyond — has revitalised organised crime in the region. In turn, Asian crime entrepreneurs engage in an industrial global business exporting precursor chemicals and importing opiates from the golden triangle or Afghanistan and cocaine via Africa from South America, often for re-export to the US and valuable markets in Europe, and Australia

Towards a Feature Rich Model for Predicting Spam Emails containing Malicious Attachments and URLs

Malicious content in spam emails is increasing in the form of attachments and URLs. Malicious attachments and URLs attempt to deliver software that can compromise the security of a computer. These malicious attachments also try to disguise their content to avoid virus scanners used by most email services to screen for such risks. Malicious URLs add another layer of disguise, where the email content tries to entice the recipient to click on a URL that links to a malicious Web site or downloads a malicious attachment. In this paper, based on two real world data sets we present our preliminary research on predicting the kind of spam email most likely to contain these highly dangerous spam emails. We propose a rich set of features for the content of emails to capture regularities in emails containing malicious content. We show these features can predict malicious attachments within an area under the precious recall curve (AUC-PR) up to 95.2%, and up to 68.1% for URLs. Our work can help reduce reliance on virus scanners and URL blacklists, which often do not update as quickly as the malicious content it attempts to identify. Such methods could reduce the many different resources now needed to identify malicious content

Small potent doses of illegal drugs are evading authorities but having a huge impact

Small quantities of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are being smuggled past customs barriers and used to create recreational drugs, which are spreading at an alarming rate with the help of cryptocurrencies

Avaliação da Alteração da Finura e Composição do Cimento Portland Brasileiro nas Últimas Décadas: Estudo Exploratório

Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso apresentado ao Instituto Latino-Americano de Tecnologia, Infraestrutura e Território da Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana, como requisito parcial à obtenção do título de Bacharel em Engenharia Civil de Infraestrutura.A indústria cimenteira tem planejado e realizado diversas ações para redução dos níveis de emissão de gases do efeito estufa, especialmente dióxido de carbono (CO2) em seus processos produtivos. Uma das ações já implementadas foi a redução das proporções de clínquer contido no cimento, por meio do maior uso de materiais cimentícios suplementares (MCS), especialmente de materiais carbonáticos (fíler) e pozolanas (cinza volante e escória de alto forno). Porém para que o cimento Portland ofereça a resistência mecânica mínima aos 28 dias de idade preconizada na norma vigente (NBR 16659, ABNT 2018), uma das soluções industriais possíveis é a elevação da finura ou do teor de C3S do cimento. Contudo, cimentos com elevado teor de C3S e/ou elevada finura, se não empregados de forma correta, podem resultar em maior probabilidade de manifestações patológicas em materiais a base de cimento, como retração e microfissurações, tornando as estruturas e elementos cimentícios mais vulneráveis a agentes agressivos externos. Neste contexto, este estudo objetiva analisar a evolução da finura e composição química dos diferentes tipos de cimento Portland produzidos no Brasil nos últimos 50 anos (1970-2019). Assim como, avaliar a contribuição da mudança de norma para redução das emissões. Para tal, empregou-se estratégias de pesquisa múltiplas (levantamento de dados, revisão de literatura e survey). Primeiramente fez-se a revisão de literatura, seguida do levantamento e análise de dados com base em documentos técnico-científicos publicados no período, analisando o tipo de cimento, a finura Blaine, a composição química e o ano de publicação. A partir das informações destas pesquisas, fez-se uma survey com especialistas nacionais, a fim de propor soluções técnicas possíveis para o emprego dos cimentos com as variações de finura e composição na indústria da construção, sem prejuízos à durabilidade das construções à base de cimento. Os resultados indicam que a finura dos cimentos CP I, CP II F, CP IV e CP III apresentaram tendência de crescimento no tempo e para os cimentos CP V, CP II Z e CP II E notou-se tendência estável ou decrescente no tempo. Os resultados de composição do cimento mostram que o teor de C3A tende a diminuir no tempo e a relação C3S/C2S apresenta tendência de crescimento, sendo ambas para os cimentos CP I e CPV. A atualização da norma proporcionou redução de cerca de 6% nas emissões relacionadas a produção de cimento. Os resultados de perda ao fogo sugerem variação positiva para os cimentos CP I, CP V e CP IV e para teor de resíduo insolúvel os cimentos CP I, CP II F, CP V, CP II E e CP III. O survey com especialistas e revisão da literatura propõem a otimização de dosagem (empacotamento de partículas), redução de relação água/cimento e redução no consumo de cimento como soluções técnicas para estas mudanças de finura e composiçã

Organizations and cyber crime: An analysis of the nature of groups engaged in cyber crime

This paper explores the nature of groups engaged in cyber crime. It briefly outlines the definition and scope of cyber crime, theoretical and empirical challenges in addressing what is known about cyber offenders, and the likely role of organized crime groups. The paper gives examples of known cases that illustrate individual and group behaviour, and motivations of typical offenders, including state actors. Different types of cyber crime and different forms of criminal organization are described drawing on the typology suggested by McGuire (2012). It is apparent that a wide variety of organizational structures are involved in cyber crime. Enterprise or profit-oriented activities, and especially cyber crime committed by state actors, appear to require leadership, structure, and specialisation. By contrast, protest activity tends to be less organized, with weak (if any) chain of command

How much fentanyl is available on the darknet?

This bulletin provides a snapshot of the sale and distribution of fentanyl and its analogues across several popular illicit darknet markets. Data collected daily from six darknet markets between 2 January and 23 February 2019 reveal the amount, types and physical forms of fentanyl available. Of more than 123,000 unique drug listings identified, nearly 7,400 were opioids, of which 439 (0.347% of all drugs listed) were fentanyl products. Between 15 and 22 kilograms of fentanyl was available on any day and the average price per gram varied between A$30 and A$301, depending on the physical form. The data also reveal the shipping methods, crossmarket operations and product specialisation of the 102 active fentanyl vendors on these six darknet markets.This report was commisioned by Australian Institute of Criminolog

Phishing and Cybercrime Risks in a University Student Community

In an exploratory quasi-experimental observational study, 138 participants recruited during a university orientation week were exposed to social engineering directives in the form of fake email or phishing attacks over several months in 2017. These email attacks attempted to elicit personal information from participants or entice them into clicking links which may have been compromised in a real-world setting. The study aimed to determine the risks of cybercrime for students by observing their responses to social engineering and exploring attitudes to cybercrime risks before and after the phishing phase. Three types of scam emails were distributed that varied in the degree of individualization: generic, tailored, and targeted or ‘spear.’ To differentiate participants on the basis of cybercrime awareness, participants in a ‘Hunter’ condition were primed throughout the study to remain vigilant to all scams, while participants in a ‘Passive’ condition received no such instruction. The study explored the influence of scam type, cybercrime awareness, gender, IT competence, and perceived Internet safety on susceptibility to email scams. Contrary to the hypotheses, none of these factors were associated with scam susceptibility. Although, tailored and individually crafted email scams were more likely to induce engagement than generic scams. Analysis of all the variables showed that international students and first year students were deceived by significantly more scams than domestic students and later year students. A Generalized Linear Model (GLM) analysis was undertaken to further explore the role of all the variables of interest and the results were consistent with the descriptive findings showing that student status (domestic compared to international) and year of study (first year student compared to students in second, third and later years of study) had a higher association to the risk of scam deception. Implications and future research directions are discussed