Leveraging on Digital Footprints to Identify Potential Security Threats

The growing pervasiveness of the internet and the rise of social media have revolutionised how individuals communicate and interact with one another. Serving as an effective conduit for communication, these technological advancements have also been exploited by individuals with malicious intent (e.g., criminals, violent extremists). As the world witnesses an upward trend of such crime and security concerns in the online sphere, it places the ‘responsibility' on intelligence and law enforcement agencies to respond with the appropriate technological interventions. Thus, this article will discuss how digital footprints can be leveraged to identify potential security threats, particularly for crime and security issues that will result in negative repercussion at the national level, such as acts of violent extremism and hate crimes.

E-Banking Security

The online banking industry has overgrown in recent years and will continue to grow as economic organizations remain to encourage customers to handle online banking transactions such as money transfers, access to account information, or payment of monthly bills. During this period, internet criminals and fraudsters attempting to steal personal customer information hijacked online banking. This article proposes reviewing the ways by which fraudulent activities are performed and what banks are doing to prevent such activities, as well as the new security measures that banks are using to increase customer confidence. Therefore, the authors present the threats, challenges to address such threats, some trends, and future landscapes regarding online banking security.

Classification of Spamming Attacks to Blogging Websites and Their Security Techniques

With the explosive expansion of information on the world wide web, search engines are becoming more significant in the day-to-day lives of humans. Even though a search engine generally gives huge number of results for certain query, the majority of the search engine users simply view the first few web pages in result lists. Consequently, the ranking position has become a most important concern of internet service providers. This article addresses the vulnerabilities, spamming attacks, and countermeasures in blogging sites. In the first part, the article explores the spamming types and detailed section on vulnerabilities. In the next part, an attack scenario of form spamming is presented, and defense approach is presented. Consequently, the aim of this article is to provide review of vulnerabilities, threats of spamming associated with blogging websites, and effective measures to counter them.

Online Hate Crimes Against Women (CYBER VAWG)

In this article, a review of Cyber VAWG is provided with its meaning, potential impacts, the state of legislation to address Cyber VAWG, and recommendations to improve processes and systems to tackle Cyber VAWG. A literature review of academic and nonacademic literature has been undertaken. It is found that legislation and enforcement are still in infancy and there are currently complexities and barriers that are discouraging the reporting of Cyber VAWG. The article serves as a starting point for further research which should address the actual implementation of legislative and system changes to avoid and punish (in cases where it does occur) Cyber VAWG.

Identifying Victims of Human Sex Trafficking in Online Ads

Social media and the interactive web have enabled human traffickers to lure victims and then sell them faster and in greater safety than ever before. However, these same tools have also enabled investigators in their search for victims and criminals. A prototype was designed to identify victims of human sex trafficking by analyzing online ads. The prototype used a knowledge management to generate actionable intelligence by applying a set of strong filters based on an ontology to identify potential victims. The prototype was used to analyze data sets generated from online ads. An unexpected outcome of the second data set was the discovery of the use of emojis in an expanded ontology. The final prototype used the expanded ontology to identify potential victims. The results of applying the prototypes suggest a viable approach to identifying victims of human sex trafficking in online ads.

Game Console Protection and Breaking It

This article surveys protection and attacks on various game consoles. Game consoles are a special kind of embedded system that are used primarily for entertainment. Virtually all game consoles include means for digital rights management (DRM) and virtually all have been attacked. The chapter describes the various motivations behind these attacks, the way the console manufacturer acted, and the way the hacking community reacted. This article is designed based on lectures published by the actual hackers of the machine describing their efforts. The article summarizes the hackers' activities on multiple consoles over the last 20 years and does not focus on specific bug or exploit.

International Cooperation and Legal Response to Cybercrime in Pakistan

According to Internet World Stats (IWS), the total number of internet users in in Pakistan during October 2018 was 44,608,065, which is 22.2% of the total population. More than 30 million of Pakistan's 212 million people use the internet via mobile devices. The literacy rate of the country is quite low as compared to other countries (i.e., 58%). This research focuses on the common patterns of cyber criminals and the required legislation and enforcement of existing laws along with the need of international cooperation to counter global cyber threat.

Online Activism to Cybercrime

This article defines hacktivism and provides an overview and background on the development, challenges, and activities associated with the term. It further discusses hacktivism involving political elections, financial records, and dangers to society posed by hacktivists. Coverage was assigned to solutions which involved a multi-country response, addressing infrastructure weaknesses in those countries, technological challenges such as phreaking, and target hardening involving modern day institutions. Solutions, recommendations, and implications for future research are provided.

Grey Zone Conflicts in Cyber Domain

In recent years, controversial concepts like post-truth, truth decay, political technology, and blurred nature of reality have become more complex around the world. Perhaps, a most important manifestation of these concepts could be discerned in grey zone conflicts. Confrontations in the grey zone are regarded neither peace nor war by the major powers. Russia, China, and Iran constantly use grey zone tools, notably disinformation campaigns, influence operations in social media through troll farms, information warfare, and cyber-attacks to sustain the balance of power/threat with Western countries. What makes these conflicts very significant is that they are cheaper and less risky for aggressor states given the disastrous consequences of the total wars. Furthermore, these malicious activities have unique impacts on political realities thanks to the common usage of social media and cyberspace. Thereby, this article argues the cyber frontier of grey zone conflicts and its possible effects to reality through the concept/analogy of hyperobjectivity and nonlocality.

The Globalization of Hybrid Warfare and the Need for Plausible Deniability

Nuclear powers battle indirectly through competitive interference within the political systems of third actors in addition to targeting not only each other, but also their own national public opinion. Postwar global human rights norms developed to include national self-determination for all. Covert intervention became politically preferable domestically to avoid negative domestic political reactions to perceived imperialism. Covert intervention decreases political resistance and costs to the intervenor. The nature of social media content distribution makes propaganda and disinformation distribution very extensive at relatively very low cost. These trends and advantages furthered the stress on covert intervention and the formation of national security bureaucracies for engaging in it. Russian state agency internet-based covert intervention via social media in the 2016 US national elections demonstrated that the US is part of the politically globalizing postmodern world that it helped create after 1945. The surveillance capabilities of the national security state will be strengthened.