Annotated Bibliography

new advances in the electronic technologies during the past decades have administered a new wealth of criminal activity. Software like Computer viruses, malware, software privacy, spam and etc. Technologically savvy artist replicate websites, so when a person's online activities occurs in a virtual world it can be compromised.Many times Cyber intrusions rely on human interaction and it often involves tricking people into breaking security procedures.

The internet has brought upon a new revolution of global interconnection where contacting someone on the other side of the world is just a click away, but with this international phenomenon comes an increased susceptibility with unfamiliar technology. Internet crime is compiled of all non-physical crime with the aid of a computer. Although broad in definition internet crimes are largely composed of acts such as cyber fraud, ‘phishing’ (username and password hacking), cyber stalking and hacking. Internet crime does not pose an overwhelming issue in society in terms of its

Spam and Phishing are the two major types of email attacks. Organizations need to clearly understand what these terms mean in order to assess their impact and minimize their spread. Spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail. Phishing, on the other hand, uses legitimately looking emails that trick the receiver into giving out sensitive information (Boyle & Panko, 2015). Spam is the annoying email promising the reader to get rich, skinny, prettier etc. Most people are familiar with the Nigerian scam where a prince or oil tycoon wants to give up his fortune to the lucky

Intend Audience: For this presentation, my intended audience consists of people with personal and or job related email account. This topic would also be beneficial to everyone with an email account. The topic is also appropriate for those on social media and anyone concerned about being a victim of social engineering attacks and the hacking of personal account.

One of the most pressing threats to Information Security Officers and everyone involved in the security field is the exploitation of ones’ email system. Since almost everyone on a network utilizes this service and a lot of the vulnerability comes from the individual end user, the threat is quite expansive. One of the main ways email systems are compromised and lead to data leakages are user’s susceptibility to falling victim to phishing attacks which then introduce malware to a system. According to APWG’s report, “’Business email compromise’ (or BEC) scams became a major problem in 2015” and sites associated with phishing have risen to as high as 88,976 as of August 2015.[1] In addition, in a survey of hundreds of information security professionals, 85% reported being the victim of a phishing attack, where emails personalized with first names, or last names, had 19% and 17% higher click rates, respectively, than those without personalization.[5] To get a better picture of just how vulnerable companies are to this threat, back in December of 2015, JPMorgan, after recently falling victim to a breach of their own, was able to convince 20% of its own staff to open a fake phishing email as part of an internal security vulnerability assessment.[2] Predicted annual costs of phishing have been estimated to range from $208,174 when malware is contained in an email, $1,020,705 when credential compromises are not contained

Phishing has become one of the most successful methods cyber attackers use for hacking an organization. It has become effective because it targets the weakest link, people. Cyber attackers understand that the easiest way to hack into an organization, infecting someone’s computer or gain someone’s password is to simply ask. Phishing works by sending an email to millions of people pretending to be something they know or trust, such as a well-known bank, online store, or government organization. The attackers do not have a specific target in mind nor do they now exactly who will fall victim, they simply know the more phishing emails they send out, the more people they can fool. Their goal is to trick people into providing the phishers with their private information. 2015 saw an increase of 23% of users opening phishing messages and 11% of users click on the attachment (Verizon, 2015). Further, phishing still remains as one of the top two concerns that organizations have and the numbers are growing. Since 2014 phishing concerns by the organizations have been increasing every year (Cyber Edge, 2016) and more money is put invested in technological means. Many organizations use technical means such as filtering messages, detection of fraudulent websites, and developing anti-phishing warning systems (Egelman et al. 2008). However technical means are incapable of removing the threat of phishing (Abbasi et al. 2012; Dhamija et al. 2006) because an organizations weakest link, the

As one of the methods of hackers abuse of E-mails and spamming were also used. An E-mails of Georgian politicians were targets of the attack. This is one more coincidence with Estonian case, where comment and an email spam constituted a notable load on both private and governmental web pages and e-mails

For the drive-by download attack vector, we create a system called the security Posture, Integration, and Correlation Engine (SPICE). SPICE takes a feed of real time junk mail, sends a vulnerable virtual machine to each link within the e-mail, sends a vulnerable virtual machine to every link within the e mail, detects an infection on the virtual system, and logs all the information involved across layers into a database associated with that attack. inside mins of being logged to the database, SPICE immediately begins testing the new attack data against security controls from numerous layers together with a junk mail filter, network intrusion detection system, domain reputation systems, and antivirus.

Phishing is a social engineering luring technique, in which an attacker aims to steal sensitive information such as online banking passwords and credit card information from users. Phishing is generally carried over electronic communications such as email or instant messaging. A replica of the legitimate site is created and the users are directed to the phishing pages where it required for the personal information. In the past few years we have seen an increase in semantic attacks. The statistics of the anti-phishing working group confirm that finance, insurance, & real estate lead the top ten industries targeted, followed by manufacturing industries. As per the survey done by RSA Fraud Surveyor[14] it is identified that

Business Email Compromise is a dangerous Fraud case where fraudsters spend the least and can obtain a hefty reward through manipulating companies into making payments. Cyber thieves have stolen $2 billion from 12,000 businesses using a scam that starts when business executives’ or employees’ email accounts are compromised or spoofed. The fraudster is able to steal money with the help of an unwitting accomplice, an employee who is fooled into submitting a wire request. From the perspective of the company’s financial institution, the transaction appears completely legitimate. Even confirmation calls or other out of band authentication will reach the employee who did indeed submit the request.

Compromised machines are one of the key security threats on the internet , project focus on the detection of the compromised machines in the network that are involved in the spamming activities, commonly known as spam zombies. To detect these compromised machines We develop an flourishing spam zombie detection system named SPOT, this can monitor the outgoing messages of a network. This successful SPOT is designed based on a powerful statistical tool called Sequential Probability Ratio Test, which has reduced false positive and false negative error rates.

Towards the completion of this lab, I will be examining the content of an email that according to the header was sent from Mr. Bill James, a special agent from the FBI. I will be using the skills I have gained in prior labs to discover whether this email came from a trustful source or from a phishing attack. Also, I will determine information based on research that I will be performing, by using different methods, such as but not limited to, translating the sender’s email address into an IP address to figure out where the physical location is, tracing the sample email source from this lab’s instructions to uncover the real place where this email came prom and the email provider, and determining what details on the email will be signs of

One limitation is that there is no message encryption at the sender end and/or an integrity check for the recipient to identify if the sender is trustworthy. The second limitation is that Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) does not have source authentication and header metadata can be easily modified to hide who is sending the e-mail. For these reasons forensic analysts need a tool that can identify people who are sending e-mails when messages may be anonymously sent and contain malicious intent. Cyber forensic investigation with respect to e-mails is the collection of credible evidence through analyzing e-mail collections to prosecute criminals. Analytics should include keyword searches, authorship attribution, and computing statistics. The writers of the article have combined social network analysis with these analytics to create a tool that can track who might be accomplices to malicious e-mailing. Their framework is titled Integrated E-mail Forensic Analysis Framework (IEFAF).

Fortunately, many solutions have been implemented to mitigate the negative repercussions of phishing, hacking, and piracy. For example, Anti-phishing software provides safety to consumers online by warning and preventing them from entering phishing websites. To consumer 's conveniences, anti-phishing software have been installed into most web browsers and email clients. Extensions and toolbars such as Netcraft can also augment the efficacy of successfully identifying phishing attempts. (***)

Abstract: One of the key security threats on the Internet are compromised machines which are often used to launch various security attacks such as spamming and spreading malware, DDoS, and identity theft. Spamming provides a key economic incentive for attackers to recruit a large number of compromised machines hence we focus on the detection of the compromised machines in a network that are involved in the spamming activities. These are commonly known as spam zombies. We have developed an effective detection system named SPOT which detects spam zombties by monitoring outgoing messages of a network. SPOT is designed based on a powerful statistical tool called Sequential Probability Ratio Test, which bounds false positive and false negative error rates.