La révolution numérique a favorisé l’apparition d’une nouvelle forme de criminalité : la cybercriminalité. Celle-ci recouvre un grand nombre de faits dont la plupart sont commis à l’aide de stratégies d’ingénierie sociale. Il s’agit d’un vieux phénomène, pourtant mal connu qui, encouragé par l’accroissement de données circulant sur Internet et par le développement de barrières techniques de sécurité, s’est adapté aux caractéristiques de l’univers virtuel pour une exploitation combinée des vulnérabilités « humaines » avec des outils numériques. L’ingénierie sociale transforme les utilisateurs qui deviennent, inconsciemment, facilitateurs des cyberattaques, au point d’être perçus comme le « maillon faible » de la cybersécurité. Les particuliers, les entreprises et les Etats sont tous confrontés au défi de trouver une réponse à ces atteintes. Cependant, les moyens juridiques, techniques, économiques et culturels mis en place semblent encore insuffisants. Loin d’être éradiquée, l’utilisation de l’ingénierie sociale à des fins illicites poursuit son essor. Face au manque d’efficacité de la politique criminelle actuelle, le travail en amont nous apparaît comme une piste à explorer. Savoir anticiper, détecter précocement et réagir promptement face à la délinquance informatique sont alors des questions prioritaires nécessitant une approche plus humaniste, axée sur la prévention et la coopération. Si nous sommes d’accord sur ce qu’il reste à faire, le défi est de trouver le« comment ». / The digital revolution has encouraged the emergence of a new type of criminal activity : cyber-crime. This includes a vast array of activities and offences that often use social engineering techniques. These techniques are old and not widely understood, yet benefit from the increase of data available online and the use of firewalls and other security systems. They have been adapted to work with the Internet and digital technologies in order to exploit the “vulnerabilities” of human psychology. Social engineering targets the user, who often unconsciously, allows access to systems or data, making the user the weakest link in the cyber-security chain. Individuals, companies and governments are all facing the same challenge in trying to solve these issues, utilising current legal, financial, technological and social resources which seem to be insufficient. Far from being eradicated, fraudulent activities that use social engineering continue to increase in prevalence. The inefficiency of current judicial polices forces us to consider alternative strategies upstream. Being proactive, predicting early and reacting quickly to computer related crimes should be the priority of a more humanistic approach which is focused on prevention and cooperation. Although one can agree on the approach ; the challenge is to find out how to implement it.

<p>Social engineering attacks, especially trust exploitation, have become a focus of attention</p> <p>for cybercriminals attempting to manipulate or deceive users to take actions that further</p> <p>expose their vulnerabilities. This has also become a budding field for researchers as these</p> <p>interactions are based on complex social equations that are constantly taken advantage of.</p> <p>Identifying the "weakest link" is a popular method of identifying how these exploits take</p> <p>place, generally by observing when individuals fall for a social engineering attack. However,</p> <p>valuable insights may be used to harden security by observing patterns in users resistant</p> <p>or vigilant to these attacks. Primarily, this trend may be discovered in resistant users’</p> <p>personality traits. This has been found to be a more accurate indicator of behavior than</p> <p>self-reported intentions. Survey responses (n=120) indicate correlations between high test</p> <p>scores in trust exploitation exercises and Conscientiousness in the Big 5 Personality Model</p> <p>(p<0.001). No significant correlation was seen between self-reported cybersecurity habits</p> <p>and actual security behavior.</p>

<p>  </p> <p>The following study is a research thesis on the subject matter of Social Engineering (SE) or Social Engineering Information Security Incidents (SEISI). The research evaluates the common features that can be used to cover a social engineering scenario from the perspectives of all stakeholders, at the individual and organizational level in terms of social engineering Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP). The research utilizes extensive secondary literary sources for understanding the topic of Social Engineering, highlights the issue of inconsistencies in the existing frameworks on social engineering and, addresses the research gap of availability of reliable dataset on past social engineering incidents by information gathered on the common themes of data reported on these. The study annotates salient features which have been identified in several studies in the past to develop a comprehensive dataset of various social engineering attacks which could be used by both computational and social scientists. The resulting codebook or the features of a social engineering are coded and defined based on Pretext Design Maps as well as industry standards and frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, MITRE CVE, NIST, etc.  Lastly, Psychological Theories of Persuasion like Dr. Cialdini’s principles of persuasion, Elaboration Likelihood Model, and Scherer’s Typology of Affective Emotional States guides the psychological TTPs of social engineering evaluated in this study. </p>

Kommunikationsvägar i business-to-business-kommunikation (B2B-kommunikation), så som e-post och telefoni, är idag utsatta för ett ökande hot från cyberattacker. Tidigare forskning har visat att många vanliga kommunikationsvägar är sårbara för hot, inklusive social manipulation och ransomware.  Studien undersökte hur IT-leverantörer arbetar för att säkerställa att deras B2Bkommunikationsvägar är säkrade, vilka sårbarheter de ser i sin befintliga miljö och vilka metoder de använder för att förhindra attacker. För att besvara frågorna genomfördes en kvalitativ fallstudie med en IT-leverantör. Semi-strukturerade intervjuer genomfördes för att ta reda på respondenternas åsikter och erfarenheter i relation till kommunikationsvägarna. Totalt 19 frågor inom olika kategorier ställdes till respondenterna.  Resultaten och analysen av intervjuerna indikerar att e-post och telefoni är de primära kommunikationssätten hos den IT-leverantör som deltog i fallstudien. Det skiljer sig också åt hur olika avdelningar föredrar att kommunicera. Resultaten visar även en oro över den växande hotbilden inom IT-sektorn. Som en följd är respondenterna medvetna om relevanta cyberattacker, så som ransomware eller andra attacker som involverar social manipulation. Respondenterna delar också hur de arbetar för att skydda sina kommunikationsvägar, samt identifierar områden för förbättring i en nära framtid. Slutligen kräver lagar och regler att IT-leverantören förbättrar och stärker sin IT-säkerhet, med framträdande exempel som GDPR och NIS-2-direktiven. / Communication paths in business-to-business communication (B2B-communication), such as email and telephony, are today exposed by an increasing threat of cyber attacks. Previous research has demonstrated that many common communication paths are vulnerable to threats, including social engineering and ransomware.  The study examined how IT-suppliers work to ensure that their B2B-communication paths are secured, what vulnerabilities in their existing environment do they see and what mitigation techniques they are using to prevent attacks. To answer the questions a qualitative case study was conducted with an IT-supplier. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to find out the respondents’ opinions and experiences in relation to the communication paths. A total of 19 questions across various categories were posed to the respondents.  The results and analysis of the interviews indicate that email and telephony are the primary modes of communication at the IT-supplier involved in the case study. It also differs in how different departments prefer to communicate. The results also indicate a concern about the growing threat landscape in the IT sector. As a result, the respondents are aware of relevant cyber attacks, such as ransomware or other attacks involving social engineering. The respondents also share how they work to protect their communication paths, as well as identify areas for improvement in the near future. Finally, laws and regulations requiere the IT-supplier to enhance and improve their IT-security, with prominent examples being GDPR and the NIS-2 directives.

In my dissertation Theory of Petrified Worlds on the Example of Anti-Utopian and Dystopian Literature, I deal with anti-utopian and dystopian literature, which has been largely neglected by Czech scholarship. After the introduction to the issue I deal with the detailed analysis of the novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, after which I devote my attention to the theoretical definition of terms, including the historical mapping of previous research. I focus on the historical context of the emergence of the genres, including a deeper analysis of its beginnings, i.e. the development of utopian literature from Plato to William Morris and Herbert George Wells, and in detail describe the emergence of anti-utopian literature primarily as an opposition to utopian tendencies and its evolution into dystopia. A major part of the work deals with a specific semiotic analysis of the characteristic and constitutive features of the genres of anti-utopian and dystopian literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. This includes, among other things, the closed and petrified world of the novels, which gave the name to the presented theory, the strict division of society, the existence of newspeak, the characteristics of the main and secondary characters, as well as the social and political context of the analysed works. In...

Cette thèse présente l’ingénierie sociale de l’économiste, sociologue et philosophe autrichien Otto Neurath (1882-1945). Une première partie s’intéresse aux aspects biographiques qui éclairent sa volonté d’une intervention ciblée et planifiée dans l’ordre social. La technique de l’histoire conceptuelle permet ensuite de mettre à jours les représentations mentales à l’œuvre dans l’ingénierie sociale : le topos de la « modernité » – avec une nouvelle conception de la société, du temps et du rôle potentiel de la société civile – suggère la possible gestion du groupe social selon les principes d’une rationalisation de la vie. La Gesellschaftstechnik de Neurath est enfin reconstruite par la méthode de l’histoire intellectuelle, qui révèle l’importance du contexte viennois, des dynamiques à l’œuvre dans la Révolution de Novembre et des questionnements économiques du moment dans l’élaboration de sa pensée et de son eudémonisme social. / This thesis presents the social engineering as devised by Otto Neurath (1882-1945), an Austrian economist, sociologist, and philosopher. The introductory first part highlights certain issues of his biography which turned out significant in his subsequent idea of the necessity of a targeted and planned intervention in the social order. In part two, the technique of conceptual history reveals the mental representations at work in social engineering : the topos of "modernity" – built on a new concept of society, of time, and of the potential role of civil society – suggests the feasibility of managing a social group according to principles of rationalization of life.Neurath’s Gesellschaftstechnik is then reconstructed by the method of intellectual history, which shows the Viennese context, the dynamics involved in the 1918-19 German Revolution, and the economic concerns of the time as being essential for the development of his thought and his programme of social eudaimonism.

This master's thesis deals with design of security infrastructure for electronic archive. In theoretical part is disscus about technical resources which are based on security services and protocols and methods which are used for protection. On basics of theoretical part is designed model of security infrastructure and it is built in laboratory. Model of security infrastructure is based on Open Source Software and as safety storages for private user authentication data are used cryptographic USB tokens. This master's thesis includes design and construction of real infrastructure of secured electronic archive. In each part of master's thesis is put main emphases on security and clear explanation from the beginning of desing of model of security infrastructure for electronic archive to finish of construction.

Many, if not all people have online social accounts (OSAs) on an online community (OC) such as Facebook (Meta), Twitter (X), Instagram (Meta), Mastodon, Nostr. OCs enable quick and easy interaction with friends, family, and even online communities to share information about. There is also a dark side to Ocs, where users with malicious intent join OC platforms with the purpose of criminal activities such as spreading fake news/information, cyberbullying, propaganda, phishing, stealing, and unjust enrichment. These criminal activities are especially concerning when harming minors. Detection and mitigation are needed to protect and help OCs and stop these criminals from harming others. Many solutions exist; however, they are typically focused on a single category of malicious intent detection rather than an all-encompassing solution. To answer this challenge, we propose the first steps of a framework for analyzing and identifying malicious intent in OCs that we refer to as malicious mntent detection framework (MIDF). MIDF is an extensible proof-of-concept that uses machine learning techniques to enable detection and mitigation. The framework will first be used to detect malicious users using solely relationships and then can be leveraged to create a suite of malicious intent vector detection models, including phishing, propaganda, scams, cyberbullying, racism, spam, and bots for open-source online social networks, such as Mastodon, and Nostr.

In post-conflict settings real and imagined boundaries do a great deal to determine who is inside and who is outside of state-based narratives of peace and prosperity. Based on case studies in Rwanda and Northern Ireland, I provide an analysis of the post-conflict periods and the impact of neoliberal-styled governance on the dynamics of power. I argue that as power shifted, ‘peace’ also entailed a general social pacification, and prosperity equated to greater private profit. However, top-down social engineering has not contained the entire field of social struggle. I examine micro-level interventions taking place on the margins of mainstream discourse that trouble the moralizing state-narratives that seek to legitimate structural violence. Such spaces facilitate alternative values and practices that contribute to sustained social and cultural resilience, as well as forms of resistance. Post-conflict Rwanda and Northern Ireland have been impacted by both coercive and consensual forms of social engineering. In Rwanda, state-based framework laws and forceful regimes of local implementation rely on stark contingencies of reward and punishment to shape and control behaviour in the public sphere. In Northern Ireland, the power-sharing structure of the Belfast Agreement has reinforced ethnic politics, while depoliticizing and instrumentalizing civil society in support of its neoliberal policies. I present ethnographic research and interviews conducted with community organizations in Northern Ireland (Ikon) and Rwanda (Student Association of Genocide Survivors - AERG) that demonstrates how alternative discourses and practices are emerging in the cracks of these top-down systems. I explore Ikon’s use of creative performances and radical theology to create socially resonant cultural spaces that function as temporary autonomous zones. These TAZs unsettle aspects of individual identity while intentionally seeking to destabilize mainstream power dynamics. Unlike Ikon, AERG faces greater public scrutiny and higher political stakes. They demonstrate an adherence to the dominant social script in the public sphere, while exhibiting micro- level agency through trauma healing, and material support in private day-to-day practices. AERG’s performance in the public sphere creates temporary spaces of encounter that exceed the boundaries of official discourse, making their alternative presence felt while remaining illegible to the dominant surveillance frameworks. / Thesis (Ph.D, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2014-06-02 11:02:09.033