Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Mississippi State University. Department of Computer Science and Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Educational institutions are known to be at the heart of complex computing systems in any region in which they exist, especially in Africa. The existence of high end computing power, often connected to the Internet and to research network grids, makes educational institutions soft targets for attackers. Attackers of such networks are normally either looking to exploit the large computing resources available for use in secondary attacks or to steal Intellectual Property (IP) from the research networks to which the institutions belong. Universities also store a lot of information about their current students and staff population as well as alumni ranging from personal to financial information. Unauthorized access to such information violates statutory requirement of the law and could grossly tarnish the institutions name not to mention cost the institution a lot of money during post-incident activities. The purpose of this study was to investigate the information security practices that have been put in place by Research and Education Network of Uganda (RENU) member institutions to safeguard institutional data and systems from both internal and external security threats. The study was conducted on six member institutions in three phases, between the months of May and July 2011 in Uganda. Phase One involved the use of a customised quantitative questionnaire tool. The tool - originally developed by information security governance task-force of EDUCAUSE - was customised for use in Uganda. Phase Two involved the use of a qualitative interview guide in a sessions between the investigator and respondents. Results show that institutions rely heavily on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems and services and that all institutions had already acquired more than three information systems and had acquired and implemented some of the cutting edge equipment and systems in their data centres. Further results show that institutions have established ICT departments although staff have not been trained in information security. All institutions interviewed have ICT policies although only a few have carried out policy sensitization and awareness campaigns for their staff and students. / TeX

The capacity to engage in web services transactions on smartphones is growing as these devices become increasingly powerful and sophisticated. This capacity for mobile web services is being realised through mobile applications that consume web services hosted on larger computing devices. This thesis investigates the effect that end-to-end web services security has on the interoperability between mobile web services requesters and traditional web services providers. SOAP web services are the preferred web services approach for this investigation. Although WS-Security is recognised as demanding on mobile hardware and network resources, the selection of appropriate WS-Security mechanisms lessens this burden. An attempt to implement such mechanisms on smartphones is carried out via an experiment. Smartphones are selected as the mobile device type used in the experiment. The experiment is conducted on the Java Micro Edition (Java ME) and the .NET Compact Framework (.NET CF) smartphone platforms. The experiment shows that the implementation of interoperable, end-to-end, mobile web services security on both platforms is reliant on third-party libraries. This reliance on third-party libraries results in poor developer support and exposes developers to the complexity of cryptography. The experiment also shows that there are no standard message size optimisation libraries available for both platforms. The implementation carried out on the .NET CF is also shown to rely on the underlying operating system. It is concluded that standard WS-Security APIs must be provided on smartphone platforms to avoid the problems of poor developer support and the additional complexity of cryptography. It is recommended that these APIs include a message optimisation technique. It is further recommended that WS-Security APIs be completely operating system independent when they are implemented in managed code. This thesis contributes by: providing a snapshot of mobile web services security; identifying the smartphone platform state of readiness for end-to-end secure web services; and providing a set of recommendations that may improve this state of readiness. These contributions are of increasing importance as mobile web services evolve from a simple point-to-point environment to the more complex enterprise environment.

Traditionally, real-time communication, such as voice calls, has run on separate, closed networks. Of all the limitations that these networks had, the ability of malicious attacks to cripple communication was not a crucial one. This situation has changed radically now that real-time communication and data have merged to share the same network. The objective of this project is to investigate the securing of softswitches with functionality similar to Private Branch Exchanges (PBX) from malicious attacks. The focus of the project will be a practical investigation of how to secure ILANGA, an ASTERISK-based system under development at Rhodes University. The practical investigation that focuses on ILANGA is based on performing six varied experiments on the different components of ILANGA. Before the six experiments are performed, basic preliminary security measures and the restrictions placed on the access to the database are discussed. The outcomes of these experiments are discussed and the precise reasons why these attacks were either successful or unsuccessful are given. Suggestions of a theoretical nature on how to defend against the successful attacks are also presented.

The use of technology for competitive advantage has become a necessity, not only for corporate organisations, but for higher education institutions (HEIs) as well. Consequently, corporate organisations and HEIs alike must be equipped to protect against the pervasive nature of technology. To do this, they implement controls and undergo audits to ensure these controls are implemented correctly. Although HEIs are a different kind of entity to corporate organisations, HEI information technology (IT) audits are based on the same criteria as those for corporate organisations. The primary aim of this research, therefore, was to develop a set of IT control criteria that are relevant to be tested in IT audits for South African HEIs. The research method used was the Delphi technique. Data was collected, analysed, and used as feedback on which to progress to the next round of data collection. Two lists were obtained: a list of the top IT controls relevant to be tested at any organisation, and a list of the top IT controls relevant to be tested at a South African HEI. Comparison of the two lists shows that although there are some differences in the ranking of criteria used to audit corporate organisations as opposed to HEIs, the final two lists of criteria do not differ significantly. Therefore, it was shown that the same broad IT controls are required to be tested in an IT audit for a South African HEI. However, this research suggests that the risk weighting put on particular IT controls should possibly differ for HEIs, as HEIs face differing IT risks. If further studies can be established which cater for more specific controls, then the combined effect of this study and future ones will be a valuable contribution to knowledge for IT audits in a South African higher education context.

Millions of users world-wide are sharing content using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks, such as Skype and Bit Torrent. While such new innovations undoubtedly bring benefits, there are nevertheless some associated threats. One of the main hazards is that P2P worms can penetrate the network, even from a single node and then spread rapidly. Understanding the propagation process of such worms has always been a challenge for researchers. Different techniques, such as simulations and analytical models, have been adopted in the literature. While simulations provide results for specific input parameter values, analytical models are rather more general and potentially cover the whole spectrum of given parameter values. Many attempts have been made to model the worm propagation process in P2P networks. However, the reported analytical models to-date have failed to cover the whole spectrum of all relevant parameters and have therefore resulted in high false-positives. This consequently affects the immunization and mitigation strategies that are adopted to cope with an outbreak of worms. The first key contribution of this thesis is the development of a susceptible, exposed, infectious, and Recovered (SEIR) analytical model for the worm propagation process in a P2P network, taking into account different factors such as the configuration diversity of nodes, user behaviour and the infection time-lag. These factors have not been considered in an integrated form previously and have been either ignored or partially addressed in state-of-the-art analytical models. Our proposed SEIR analytical model holistically integrates, for the first time, these key factors in order to capture a more realistic representation of the whole worm propagation process. The second key contribution is the extension of the proposed SEIR model to the mobile M-SEIR model by investigating and incorporating the role of node mobility, the size of the worm and the bandwidth of wireless links in the worm propagation process in mobile P2P networks. The model was designed to be flexible and applicable to both wired and wireless nodes. The third contribution is the exploitation of a promising modelling paradigm, Agent-based Modelling (ABM), in the P2P worm modelling context. Specifically, to exploit the synergies between ABM and P2P, an integrated ABM-Based worm propagation model has been built and trialled in this research for the first time. The introduced model combines the implementation of common, complex P2P protocols, such as Gnutella and GIA, along with the aforementioned analytical models. Moreover, a comparative evaluation between ABM and conventional modelling tools has been carried out, to demonstrate the key benefits of ease of real-time analysis and visualisation. As a fourth contribution, the research was further extended by utilizing the proposed SEIR model to examine and evaluate a real-world data set on one of the most recent worms, namely, the Conficker worm. Verification of the model was achieved using ABM and conventional tools and by then comparing the results on the same data set with those derived from developed benchmark models. Finally, the research concludes that the worm propagation process is to a great extent affected by different factors such as configuration diversity, user-behaviour, the infection time lag and the mobility of nodes. It was found that the infection propagation values derived from state-of-the-art mathematical models are hypothetical and do not actually reflect real-world values. In summary, our comparative research study has shown that infection propagation can be reduced due to the natural immunity against worms that can be provided by a holistic exploitation of the range of factors proposed in this work.

The use of Network Telescope systems has become increasingly popular amongst security researchers in recent years. This study provides a framework for the utilisation of this data. The research is based on a primary dataset of 40 million events spanning 50 months collected using a small (/24) passive network telescope located in African IP space. This research presents a number of differing ways in which the data can be analysed ranging from low level protocol based analysis to higher level analysis at the geopolitical and network topology level. Anomalous traffic and illustrative anecdotes are explored in detail and highlighted. A discussion relating to bogon traffic observed is also presented. Two novel visualisation tools are presented, which were developed to aid in the analysis of large network telescope datasets. The first is a three-dimensional visualisation tool which allows for live, near-realtime analysis, and the second is a two-dimensional fractal based plotting scheme which allows for plots of the entire IPv4 address space to be produced, and manipulated. Using the techniques and tools developed for the analysis of this dataset, a detailed analysis of traffic recorded as destined for port 445/tcp is presented. This includes the evaluation of traffic surrounding the outbreak of the Conficker worm in November 2008. A number of metrics relating to the description and quantification of network telescope configuration and the resultant traffic captures are described, the use of which it is hoped will facilitate greater and easier collaboration among researchers utilising this network security technology. The research concludes with suggestions relating to other applications of the data and intelligence that can be extracted from network telescopes, and their use as part of an organisation’s integrated network security systems

Location-sharing services have become increasingly popular with the proliferation of smartphones and online social networks. People share their locations with each other to record their daily lives or satisfy their social needs. At the same time, inappropriate disclosure of location information poses threats to people's privacy. One of the reasons why people fail to protect their location privacy is the difficulty of using the current mechanisms to manually configure location-privacy settings. Since people's location-privacy preferences are context-aware, manual configuration is cumbersome. People's incapability and unwillingness to do so lead to unexpected location disclosures that violate their location privacy. In this thesis, we investigate the feasibility of using recommender systems to help people protect their location privacy. We examine the performance of location-privacy recommender systems and compare it with the state-of-the-art. We also conduct online user studies to understand people's acceptance of such recommender systems and their concerns. We revise our design of the systems according to the results of the user studies. We find that user-based collaborative filtering can accurately recommend location-privacy preferences and outperform the state-of-the-art when training data are insufficient. From users' perspective, their acceptance of location-privacy recommender systems is affected by the openness and the context of recommendations and their privacy concerns about the systems. It is feasible to use data obfuscation or decentralisation to alleviate people's concerns and meanwhile keep the systems robust against malicious data attacks.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / The aim of this research is to identify and explore the factors affecting information security compliance of information security policies and regulations, in a financial services organisation. The organisation has to comply with information security regulations and legislations by righteousness of its operations in light of the fact that any wrong doing together with misuse of data, are continually expanding. Corporate embarrassments comes about due to rupture of security, results in expanded thoughtfulness regarding corporate consistency. Legislature and policies have been set up to counter information security issues. This legislature and policies are not adequately addressing the compliance issues that arise, but are needed within organisations. Compliance targets are not met due to inconsistent guidelines that turns out to be significant in diminishing the financial position, reputation and security of information. This research further aims to explore whether employees comply with laws and regulations regarding information in an organisation. This is done in order to confirm whether governance and human factors play any significant part in compliance. The research is an exploratory study and specifically analyses the governance function and which stakeholders influence its operations in information compliance. The research investigates certain questions on organisational culture and the human factor, do influence employee’s compliance to laws and regulations. The objectives of the research are to investigate which factors, and how such factors influence compliance of information security policies and compliance with the goal of designing an integrated framework to assist in counteracting these findings. The research is underpinned by the Neo-institutional theory, Agency Theory and Rational choice theory. The Denison organisational cultural model and a framework proposed by von Solms are used as lenses to interpret the data of the research.

Orientador: Paulo Lício de Geus / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T05:27:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cavalcante_GabrielDieterich_M.pdf: 3073328 bytes, checksum: aeb145421a7f9c0c3d3ac872eb9ac054 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Existe uma grande quantidade de configurações presentes em sistemas atuais e gerir essas configurações é um trabalho árduo para qualquer administrador de sistema. Inúmeras configurações podem ser definidas para uma só máquina e as combinações entre elas implicam de forma significativa no seu desempenho. A partir do momento que um sistema em pleno funcionamento pára de funcionar, algo em sua estrutura pode ter mudado. Este cenário é comum no processo de desenvolvimento de software onde o código fonte pode deixar de compilar ou ainda uma funcionalidade pode se perder. Controladores de versão são usados para reverter o estado do código para uma data anterior, solucionando o problema. Verificadores de Integridade são utilizados para detectar estas mudanças, porém não possuem mecanismos específicos para recuperação. Este estudo propõe e implementa uma arquitetura integrada que combina verificação de integridade e mecanismos de recuperação. Foram executados testes para determinar a sobrecarga total deste método, além de estudos de caso para verificar a sua eficiência de recuperação / Abstract: Current computer systems have a huge number of configurations that are hard to manage. The combinations of system configurations can impact on performance and behavior. From the moment that a system stops working correctly it is remarkable that something has changed. That is in common in software development, where changes made by the programmer may result in some features no longer working or the project not compiling anymore. Revision control systems can recover a previous state of the source code through revision mechanisms. Integrity checking is used to catch file modifications, however this technique does nothing toward recovering those files. This study proposes and implements an integrated architecture that combines integrity checking and restoring mechanisms. Tests were executed in order to measure the load imposed by the solution. In addition, analysis of three case studies shows the efficiency of the adopted solution / Mestrado / Segurança de Computadores