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Joint BCS DevSecOps/Cybercrime Forensics SGs and OWASP Cambridge “Social Media & Faux News Forensics” Mini Conference

Wednesday 11^th October 2017 13:00 – 18:30, Lord Ashcroft Building (LAB003), Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

Hosted by the Cyber Security & Networking Research Group, Anglia Ruskin University, British Computer Society (BCS) DevSecOps & Cybercrime Forensics Special Internet Group’s and OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project) Cambridge Chapter

As the digital world we knew continues to endlessly evolve, we must continue to adapt how we conduct cyber investigations. Evidence sources continue to grow rapidly.  If we fail to keep up, the collection and validation of evidence during a cyber investigation will become a much more fraught task. For those investigators with a thorough understanding of how to leverage improvements in technology combined with the growing wealth of information available online,  the evidence extracted during a digital forensic investigation ultimately created a more solid case.

Cyber investigations involving social media and social networks are becoming the norm. With new applications, links, techniques, and roadblocks discovered daily, social networks are rapidly progressing. Common platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are becoming a smaller part of an ever growing and changing landscape. There are also many other evolving and changing social networks like Google Plus, Quora, Instagram, Groupon, Pinterest, and LoveIt and that’s not even counting the thousands of blogs and special interest forums that exist

With so much relevant evidence available on social media. there are also many new issues which are different from what investigators have traditionally dealt with in traditional digital forensics. In the past digital forensics investigators understood the terms and conditions for extracting digital evidence from a piece of hardware in the possession of the investigator, such as a computer hard drive or the flash memory on a smartphone.  The evidence obtained could easily be corroborated by a third party  if someone challenged how investigators had carried their work, a third party could easily corroborate the findings by reviewing the same hard drive which the investigator kept in an evidence store however this is certainly not the case with social media...

An alarming phenomenon of this rise in social media use is the growth of “faux or fake news” issue.  While this concept has many synonyms - disinformation campaigns, cyber propaganda,  cognitive  hacking, and  information  warfare - it’s  just one  facet  of  a much larger  problem:  the manipulation of public opinion to affect the real world.  Due to global digital connectivity and platforms making it possible to share and spread information, traditional challenges such as physical borders and time/distance constraints no longer exist.

Even Mark Zuckerberg (CEO, Facebook) posted on his blog on Facebook on 21st September https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104052907253171?comment_id=356886588097117 about the large scale alleged fake news stories being published during last year’s US presidential election and the importance of  this issue to protecting the security of the democratic process ....

Fake news is the promotion and propagation of news  articles  via social  media. These articles  are promoted  in  such  a  way that  they  appear to  be  spread by other users, as opposed to being paid-for advertising. The news stories distributed are designed to influence or manipulate users’ opinions on a certain topic towards certain objectives.  For example, by manipulating the balance of how a particular topic is reported (whether that concerns politics, foreign affairs or something  more commercial),  the views  on  that  topic can  be  changed. This can be done either with inaccurate facts or with accurate ones twisted to favour a particular view or side.

Background

BCS DevSecOps Group fosters the awareness of tools and technologies regarding the acceleration and automation of code development to deployment, known as DevOps.  It is both a work culture and complex, rapidly evolving toolchains both difficult to introduce and use effectively. It covers cultural, technical, management and security aspects.

The British Computer Society (BCS) Cybercrime Forensics Special Interest Group (SIG) promotes Cybercrime Forensics and the use of Cybercrime Forensics; of relevance to computing professionals, lawyers, law enforcement officers, academics and those interested in the use of Cybercrime Forensics and the need to address cybercrime for the benefit of those groups and of the wider public.

OWASP (Open Web Application Security Project is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. Their mission is to make application security visible, so that people and organizations can make informed decisions about true application security risks.

The Cyber Security and Networking (CSN) Research Group at Anglia Ruskin University has close working strategic relationships with industry, professional bodies, law enforcement, government agencies and academia in the delivery of operationally focused applied information and application security research.  We have strong international links with professional organisations such as OWASP, BCS, ISC2, IISP & the UK Cyber Security Forum amongst others.  The primary aims of CSNRG are to help the UK and partner nations to tackle cybercrime, be more resilient to cyber attacks and educate its users for a more secure cyberspace and operational business environment. These will be achieved through the investigation of threats posed to information systems and understanding the impact of attacks and creation of cyber-based warning systems which gathering threat intelligence, automate threat detection, alert users and neutralising attacks.  For network security we are researching securing the next generation of software defined infrastructures from the application API and control/data plane attacks. Other key work includes Computer forensic analysis, digital evidence crime scenes and evidence visualisation as well as Cyber educational approaches such as developing Capture the Flag (CTF) resources and application security programs.

Speaker Abstracts & Biographies

Dr Char Sample – Data Infidelity and Fake News: Software Security’s Soft Underbelly?

Biography - Dr Char Sample

Dr Char Sample is cyber security researcher and fellow at ICF International, in Maryland, U.S. Her prior work includes as security solutions engineer with CERT, Carnegie-Mellon; and International Fellow at Warwick University.

Dr Sample is an academically and professionally experienced cyber security professional with over 19 years of experience in network security and software engineering. Her internet security experiences include threat intelligence research, cloud computing, security metrics, expertise with firewalls, IDS, IPS, Anomaly Detection, DNS, DNSSEC, Mail, routing, authentication, encryption, secure network architectures, cloud computing (IaaS, PaaS) and Unix internals.   Dr Sample is internationally recognized as the leading expert in quantitative cultural cyber threat intelligence. Her publications include both academic and industry conferences and journals.

Abstract

Bad data can create more than just 'fake news.' Expert Dr Char Sample explains how cognitive hacking and weaponized information can undermine enterprise security.

One of the major security stories from the 2016 US Presidential election was not the breach of voter databases, the suspected hacking of the voting machines or even the vote counting. The biggest security story was the use of weaponized information in support of cognitive hacking, defined in a 2002 Dartmouth College research paper as a cyberattack designed to change human users' perceptions and corresponding behaviors.

Disregarding the political dimensions of  elections, the real reason for this interest is that security software is vulnerable to the same problem. That is, the data entered into security products, whether by a human or a machine, is trusted to be a faithful representation of reality.

Dennis Ivory and Dr Diane Gan - Your Personal Information Stolen In Under 2 Minutes

Biography – Dennis Ivory

Dennis Ivory recently graduated with a first class degree in BSc Computer Security and Digital Forensics from the University of Greenwich. He is currently employed as a post-graduate researcher within the Department of Computing and Information Systems, where he is undertaking research with the Cyber-SAFE security research team into security issues in the Internet of Everything.

Abstract

One of the single biggest threats to personal security is a targeted social engineering attack. Attackers are becoming more sophisticated at tricking people into giving away their personal details by using these types of attacks gained from information harvested from social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.). More people than ever have an online presence, with 2.34bn people (37% of the world population) now using some form of social media [Statista. 2017]. Many of these users are either new to these platforms or are unaware of the seriousness of adding a lot of personal information about themselves on, for example, their Facebook page. This research set out to determine how people perceive their own online privacy and how this relates to what is actually available to anyone searching about them online who had no connection with them via their social media sites.

A survey was conducted to identify how individuals perceived their own online security and to determine what they had knowingly published online. There were 252 volunteer responders. The vast majority of these volunteers were students at the University of Greenwich but only 43% were studying computing degrees. The split of female (58%) to male (42%) participants was reasonably balanced and the largest age range was 18 to 23, as expected in a university population. The second phase of this work was to investigate what information could actually be found online about each of these participants. Searches were conducted on each person using Facebook, Twitter and the Google search engine. The fastest search found the subject’s full name, picture and the places that they had visited in the last few days in 14 seconds. The vast majority of these investigations (166) took less than 2 minutes to gain access to a significant amount of the subject’s personal information, including details which they did not think could be found online. This presentation presents the results of this experiment.

Stuart Clarke – Nuix - Relationship Centric Data Analysis using Social Media and Other Forensic Sources

Biography – Stuart Clarke

Stuart is an internationally respected information security expert who is responsible for the overall security and intelligence strategy and delivery at Nuix. During his time at the company, Stuart has advised the United Nations’ peak cybersecurity body ITU and provided cybersecurity training for over 60 computer emergency response teams. He led the development of Nuix Investigation & Response, an innovative investigative tool used to delve into the causes and scope of data breaches. He also currently leads the development of Nuix Insight Analytics & Intelligence, a powerful security intelligence platform.

Stuart has a deep understanding of the Nuix technology and capabilities. Prior to joining Nuix, he used Nuix offerings extensively in breach response. He brings that understanding together with a vision for the cybersecurity needs of Nuix’s current and prospective clients. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in Computer Forensics and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration. He has developed and delivered training for a Master of Science program in Computer Security and Forensics, has contributed to a book covering evidence preservation as well as published several industry-recognized white papers.

Abstract

The traditional item centric and linear approach to digital evidence is effective, however is straining under the ever-increasing volume and variety of data that individuals generate. Social media and mobile data is now overtaking traditional computer based sources of evidence and it is becoming key for forensic investigators to correlate disparate pieces of information that reveal a bigger picture.

This session will explore how relationship centric analysis can accelerate investigations and provide a deeper level of visibility and understanding of various investigative scenarios. We will see how analysts can use advanced technologies to find hidden connections from something as simple as an account handle or alias and turn what’s outwardly disparate into a clear picture. 

Dominic Connor – The Register Columnist - Fake News in the Press

Biography -  Dominic Connor

Dominic is a regular contributor to The Register, vice Chairman of the Conservative Science & Technology Forum and President of the Real Time Club.

At some point he has done nearly every job in IT including reviewing Microsoft operating system code, directing the secure wide area network for HM Treasury, writing questionable Excel macros for major banks, teaching C++ and Python, building PCs, selling technology, AI, printing Teflon circuit boards, compiler development and expert witness in cases of rogue code in financial markets.

Provisional Agenda

13:00 – 14:00 Registration & Refreshments (LAB006)

14:00 – 14:05 Welcome from the OWASP Cambridge Chapter Leader, Adrian Winckles, Director of Cyber Security & Networking Research Group, Anglia Ruskin University

14:05 – 14:55 Dr Char Sample - Data Infidelity and Fake News: Software Security’s Soft Underbelly?

14:55 – 15:45 Dr Diane Gan & Dennis Ivory – Your Personal Information Exposed in under 2 Minutes

15:45 – 16:15 Refreshments, Networking & Industry Demo’s

16:15 - 17:00 Dominic Connor – Fake News in the Press

17:00 – 17:45 Stuart Clarke – Nuix - Relationship Centric Data Analysis using Social Media and Other Forensic Sources

17:45 – Round up 

Registration & Arrival

Please register online using the following URL:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bcs-devsecopscybercrime-forensics-owasp-cambridge-social-media-faux-news-forensics-conference-tickets-37915130175

The meeting will be held in the Lord Ashcroft Building, Room LAB003 (Breakout Room LAB006 for networking & refreshments).

Please enter through the Helmore Building and ask at reception.

Anglia Ruskin University

Cambridge Campus

East Road

Cambridge

CB1 1PT

Please note that there is no parking on campus.
Get further information on travelling to the university.

http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/your_university/anglia_ruskin_campuses/ca mbridge_campus/find_cambridge.html

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