Cybernetic Attacks Research Articles

Romanian media and public's safety during information warfare

Nowadays, wars are no longer fought exclusively on the front, but often, even more effectively, behind the front line, in a hybrid way, in the information environment. The Romanian mass media, like the international media, is recently more and more frequently assaulted by examples of disinformation, propaganda, cybernetic attacks. Is there information security for the Romanian reader during the international war? How sure is the reader that the data he has read is correct, credible, or truthful information? We will try to see the answer reflected in the case study regarding the media in current Romania, comparing a national newspaper, Adevarul, and a local one, Jurnal bihorean, on the use and definition of the chimera-phrase “hybrid war”.

Secure access microcontroller system based on fingerprint template with hyperchaotic encryption

Authentication systems based on biometric and microcontroller systems are used around the world to control the access of users in restricted sites such as in offices, banks, or hospitals. Moderns authentication systems use cloud connectivity using the Internet. Nevertheless, biometric data are considered confidential, which is susceptible to hacker attacks with the aim of fraud, extortion or identity theft. In this work, we propose a low-cost secure control access microcontroller system that uses the Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1) and hyperchaotic encryption of fingerprint template to increase the security against cybernetic attacks. The main findings can be briefly described as (1) chaotic encryption of the fingerprint template provides strong security by using the hyperchaotic 2D Lotka–Volterra map with just one round of diffusion–confusion; (2) the fingerprint template injected to SHA-1 increases the robustness against differential attack by combining a unique 160-bit hash key with the personal key; (3) the authentication system implemented in a low-cost embedded system based on 32-bit microcontroller provides high security at low cost; (4) several security analysis of data generated in the embedded authentication system validates the effectiveness of proposed scheme. Based on the high security level achieved in proposed authentication scheme, the system provides double padlock in secure access biometric systems providing robustness against malicious attacks, avoid identity theft and the unauthorized access in highly restricted areas.

Development of an Open-Source Testbed Based on the Modbus Protocol for Cybersecurity Analysis of Nuclear Power Plants

The possibility of cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure, and in particular nuclear power plants, has prompted several efforts by academia. Many of these works aim to capture the vulnerabilities of the industrial control systems used in these plants through computer simulations and hardware in the loop configurations. However, general results in this area are limited by the cost and diversity of existing commercial equipment and protocols, as well as by the inherent complexity of the nuclear plants. In this context, this work introduces a testbed for the study of cyber-attacks against a realistic simulation of a nuclear power plant. Our approach consists in surveying issues regarding realistic simulations of nuclear power plants and to design and experimentally validate a software testbed for the controlled analysis of cyberattacks against the simulated nuclear plant. The proposal integrates a simulated Modbus/TCP network environment containing basic industrial control elements implemented with open-source software components. We validate the proposed testbed architecture by performing and analyzing a representative cyberattack in the developed environment, thus showing the principles for the analysis of other possible cybernetic attacks.

Design and analysis of efficient neural intrusion detection for wireless sensor networks

SummaryWireless sensor networks (WSNs) are important building blocks of the communication infrastructure in smart cities, intelligent transportation systems, Industry, Energy, and Agriculture 4.0, the Internet of Things, and other areas quickly adopting the concepts of fog and edge computing. Their cybernetic security is a major issue and efficient methods to improve their safety and reliability are required. Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are complex systems that discover cybernetic attacks, detect malicious network traffic, and, in general, protect computer systems. Artificial neural networks are used by a variety of advanced intrusion detection systems with outstanding results. Their successful use in the specific conditions of WSNs requires efficient learning, adaptation, and inference. In this work, the acceleration of a neural intrusion detection model, developed specifically for wireless sensor networks, is proposed and studied, especially from the learning and classification accuracy and energy consumption points of view.

Legal services today and in the future: how is changing the job of a lawyer?

This article is analyzing law and information technologies scientists works, were law technologies and their realization in lawyer work implies also its benefits and disadvantages through the following future. To rely on the linguistic and analysis method in this article explains the way legal technologies work in different fields, modifying individual legal services actions. Analyzing innovative technology tools and showing their practical integration and applicability trough examples. An analysis of the relationship between law technology and a lawyer today has shown what the technology gaps are and what features a lawyer will need in the future. Technologies being an innovative creations of a human and working in virtual field can‘t function without humans, so it could emerge cybernetic attacks risks. To that point helping tools would be automatic, yet it will remain an aid tool. Laws and decision making would be left for human being, however, lawyers should maintain abilities that would let them successfully integrate with modern technology changes.

Review of Modeling Methodologies for Managing Water Distribution Security.

Water distribution systems are vulnerable to hazards that threaten water delivery, water quality, and physical and cybernetic infrastructure. Water utilities and managers are responsible for assessing and preparing for these hazards, and researchers have developed a range of computational frameworks to explore and identify strategies for what-if scenarios. This manuscript conducts a review of the literature to report on the state of the art in modeling methodologies that have been developed to support the security of water distribution systems. First, the major activities outlined in the emergency management framework are reviewed; the activities include risk assessment, mitigation, emergency preparedness, response, and recovery. Simulation approaches and prototype software tools are reviewed that have been developed by government agencies and researchers for assessing and mitigating four threat modes, including contamination events, physical destruction, interconnected infrastructure cascading failures, and cybernetic attacks. Modeling tools are mapped to emergency management activities, and an analysis of the research is conducted to group studies based on methodologies that are used and developed to support emergency management activities. Recommendations are made for research needs that will contribute to the enhancement of the security of water distribution systems.

Кібербезпека: сучасні виклики перед Україною

У статті розглянуто питання інформаційної безпеки України за останні кілька років, заходи здійснені урядом України і спрямовані на поліпшення її стану. Мета статті – висвітлити питання кіберзахисту України в світлі російської агресії проти України. Відсутність ґрунтовного законодавчого забезпечення кібербезпеки в Україні в умовах гібридної війни значно підвищує ризики руйнування національної системи. Проблема погіршується ще й тим фактом, що, сьогодні, в Україні відсутній єдиний центр координації роботи щодо законодавчого та нормативно-правового забезпечення ефективної системи кібербезпеки, яка б базувалась на комплексному реальному аналізі стану в зазначеній сфері, існуючих викликів, наявних і потенційних загроз, інтегрувалась в європейську та глобальну систему кібернетичної безпеки, мала б достатнє фінансове, організаційне, технічне та кадрове забезпечення. Автор розглядає основні документи, пов’язані з кібербезпекою в Україні, їхні сильні та слабкі сторони. Орієнтиром для створення законодавчої концептуальної основи у боротьбі з кіберзагрозами слугують документи прийняті СЄ та НАТО, які мають значно більше досвіду у кібернетичному протистоянні. Долучення України, її цивільних і військових органів до європейських і євроатлантичних ініціатив створює підґрунтя для цілеспрямованого процесу розвитку кібернетичної стратегії на державному та приватному рівнях.

Управління функціональною стійкістю інформаційних систем на основі оптимізації видатків на захист

The resources of the protection systems are usually directed at external causes of dysfunctional states, so the specific danger from internal causes may suddenly become much greater, since the information system (IC) is completely open to them. Up to 40% of the hacks of banking IP were due to the actions of insiders, that is, employees who acted consciously or unconsciously. On the other hand, more than 300 mobile applications distributed through official stores contain malicious code. 71% of attacks remain undetected. Cybernetic attacks on the IP of the security agencies ofUkraine, in particular the Ministry of Defense ofUkraine, the IP of state bodies and objects of critical infrastructure, are constantly goingThis makes it urgent to develop means to counter dysfunctional states of IP, regardless of the reasons for the origin of these states. While ensuring the functional stability of the information system, it is relevant to extend the concept of countering cyber attacks (IS incidents) of external origin to the concept of countering dysfunctional states of IP of both external and internal origin. For dysfunctional states of internal and external origin, in most cases the mathematical formalization is similar.The purpose of the article is to increase the level of protection of network information systems from dysfunctional states due to the development of a method for managing the functional stability of information systems based on optimization of protection costs.When solving problems of increasing the level of security of network information systems, it is advisable to expand the concept of computer attacks to the concept of dysfunctional states, including malicious and unintended causes of incidents.It is advisable to replace the basic exponential dependence of losses on dysfunctional states depending on the amount of protection costs by a more adequate S-shaped logistic one.The level of losses essentially depends on the degree of criticality of information resources for a certain type of organization, which is expedient to measure by the amount of net losses directly from dysfunctional states without taking into account losses from consequences and the costs of eliminating consequences.

Cyber-security for Mobile Service Robots – Challenges for Cyber-physical System Safety

A review of the known and an indication of the new threats for cyber-physical robotic systems, caused by cybernetic attacks, serves, in this paper, as a basis for the analysis of the known methods relied upon to detect and mitigate consequences of such attacks. A particular emphasis is placed on threats specific for cyber-physical systems, as they are a feature distinguishing these systems from their traditional Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) counterparts. Based on the review of literature and own analyses, unresolved issues regarding the cyber-security of robot systems are presented and discussed.

Technical Mapping of the Grooming Anatomy Using Machine Learning Paradigms: An Information Security Approach

In the field of information security, there are several areas of study that are under development. Social engineering is one of them that addresses the multidisciplinary challenges of cyber security. Nowadays, the attacks associated with social engineering are diverse, including the so-called Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). These have been the subject of numerous investigations; however, cybernetic attacks of similar nature as grooming have been excluded from these studies. In the last decade, various efforts have been made to understand the structure and approach of grooming from the field of computer science with the use of computational learning algorithms. Nevertheless, these studies are not aligned with information security. In this work, the study of grooming is formalized as a social engineering attack, contrasting its stages or phases with life cycles associated with APTs. To achieve this goal, we use a database of real cyber-pedophile chats; this information was refined and the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling was applied to determine the stages of the attack. Once the number of stages was determined, we proceed to give them a linguistic context, and with the use of machine learning, a linear model was trained to obtain 97.6% of training accuracy. With these results, it was determined that the study of grooming could support research associated with social engineering and contribute to new fields of information security.

Smart beer production as a possibility for cyber-attack within the industrial process in automatic control

The production of a food product is a major challenge for any industry, taking the responsibility of guaranteeing a product as high as possible. The advancement of today’s technology has created very suitable conditions for product management by creating very clever process monitoring systems, as in our case, such as the brewing process. Beer industries do not possess a high technological complication compared to those of the chemical industry, but the possibility to create technological complications in the beer industry is very easy, one of which is cyberattack in the automatic process control. In this scientific research it is scientifically proven that the points for cybernetic attack in the beer process are in the bioreactors and the fermenters, the reason is that in the two strong points in the process during the work contain high pressures. Cybernetics with non-trace viruses can hit powerful computer weapons in control of the brewing process, possibly causing an explosion, and the released heat will be approximately 270°C from the biomass of bioreactors and fermenters in the industry. This study is realized as a necessity to have as much security as possible from incidents that can happen from cyber-attacks and we have our very powerful points in preventing the destruction of the industry, which is followed by large economic damages for an industry.

Peculiarities of the cybersecurity of Ukraine formation in the conditions of hybrid war

In the article, the problem of information security of Ukraine at the present stage of development in the context of the information society evolution was analysed. The theoretical approaches to the definition of the essence of the concept of “cybersecurity”, “cyberspace” by Ukrainian and foreign scientists were discovered. It is determined that these concepts are widely used in modern science, but there is still no their clearly defined meaning, which, accordingly, complicates scientific comprehension and practical overcoming of problems and threats in the information space of Ukraine and harms the national interests of the state. The legal framework of Ukraine, which regulates the sphere of information security, in particular, legal acts adopted since 2014, were described. It has been proved, that cybernetic attacks on state information resources have become an integral part of the hybrid war, unleashed by Russia. It is indicated that with the onset of Russian military aggression, the transformation of national information legislation, including the one on cybersecurity, took place. The priority directions of the state policy in the field of ensuring the cybernetic security of Ukraine in the conditions of hybrid war were researched.

Model of cybernetic attacks intensity calculation in the electronic trading system on the stock market

Model of cybernetic attacks intensity calculation in the electronic trading system on the stock market

THE ROLE OF INTERDEPENDENCIES BETWEEN CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT

In the general context, the phenomenon of globalization causes an increase in risks to critical infrastructures. In order to order this set, the criteria of dependence and interdependence were imposed. Thus, was proposed a model with seven levels, the first being sector analysis and the second one the study of interdependencies.The first level is organized in critical sectors and dependencies between them. This division, which engendered the public-private partnership, is show on the EU and NATO documents. The second level of the interdependence study aims to determine the vital elements and essential components of a system. In this paper we show some considerations on the dimensionality of interdependencies between critical infrastructures, interdependence between critical infrastructures from the energy sector and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). After a breakdown of SCADA systems, we presented at the end of the paper few examples of cybernetic attack against energy infrastructures

INTERNET: UNA HERRAMIENTA PARA LAS GUERRAS EN EL SIGLO XXI

La enorme dependencia de las sociedades occidentales respecto de los sistemas informáticos y electrónicos está haciendo que estas sean más vulnerables a los posibles ataques cibernéticos. Es más, en un mundo tan hiperconectado, un impacto en el corazón de los Networks de información y tecnología podría generar pérdidas millonarias a cualquier país o institución, por no hablar de las fuertes consecuencias psicológicas que podría ocasionar un ataque de estas características. De ahí que un gran número de países estén desarrollando herramientas para atacar los sistemas gubernamentales de otros Estados al mismo tiempo que intentan reforzar sus medidas de seguridad. Pero no solo los Estados han descubierto las ventajas que les proporciona la red, sino también lo están haciendo los grupos terroristas. Y es precisamente en estos puntos donde hemos centrado todo nuestro artículo, es decir, en averiguar qué usos están realizando unos y otros en función de una estrategia defensiva y ofensiva.

Model of detecting cybernetic attacks on information-telecommunication systems based on description of anomalies in their work by weighed fuzzy rules

The article is devoted to the actual task of protecting information-telecommunication systems and networks from cyber attacks in the conditions of their constant development and polymorphizm of malicious software. The analysis is carried out and a conclusion is made about the expediency of using models of anomaly identification that simultaneously operate with qualitative and quantitative data and are based on the mathematical theory of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logical inference. Specifically, an improved model for the detection of anomalies in the work of information and telecommunication systems and networks is presented, which is a further development of the previously proposed anomaly detection model based on fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic inference. The essence of the improvement is the introduction of weight coefficients for fuzzy rules that describe the anomalies that may arise during the operation of information and telecommunication systems and networks as a result of unauthorized cybernetic interference in their work and, after introduction of which, the problem of fuzzy anomaly identification in the work of the information and telecommunication system reduces to finding a solution of an analytic expression connecting a set of parameters of the state of the system on the basis of Its anomalous behavior is determined by the expert decision corresponding to them, taking into account the introduced weight coefficients for the rules. This improvement ensures that the importance of rules is displayed in a fuzzy inference system, which is based on the expert's confidence in each decision taken to identify anomalies. The expediency of using the proposed model is confirmed by the results of her studies on the adequacy of her process of identifying anomalies in the work of information and telecommunication systems and networks, as well as the accuracy of the results that she demonstrates.

Analysis of existing solutions for preventing invasion in information and telecommunication networks

The article presents an overview of the current state of cybernetic space in the context of the growth of cybercrime (large-scale cyber attacks, which have received wide publicity in Ukraine and the world). A comparative analysis of the main existing software solutions for the prevention of intrusions into information and telecommunications networks, based on public licenses. The characteristics of the main methods for detecting attacks (intrusions) are given. There is identified its main shortcomings: lack of adaptability, persistence and verification, high level of erroneous attacks, those misses of cyber attacks, weak opportunities to identify new attacks, lack of ability to determine the attack in its initial stages, practical lack of identification of the attacker and the purpose of the attack, in real time, a significant load of the system and a weak interpretation of the current situation. Prospective ways of their elimination based on the use of hybrid intelligent intrusion prevention systems based on the methods of knowledge engineering, the mathematical apparatus of fuzzy sets theory and fuzzy inference, as well as methods and technologies for data mining are proposed. Obtained results can be considered as a basis for the implementation of new mechanisms for identifying cybernetic attacks and their application during the implementation of intrusion detection systems of the next generation in order to respond to previously unknown types of cybernetic attacks. This will increase the efficiency and validity of the decisions taken by the security administrator of information and telecommunication systems and networks in real time during the detection and prevention of cybernetic attacks.

Violent extremist group ecologies under stress

Violent extremist groups are currently making intensive use of Internet fora for recruitment to terrorism. These fora are under constant scrutiny by security agencies, private vigilante groups, and hackers, who sometimes shut them down with cybernetic attacks. However, there is a lack of experimental and formal understanding of the recruitment dynamics of online extremist fora and the effect of strategies to control them. Here, we utilize data on ten extremist fora that we collected for four years to develop a data-driven mathematical model that is the first attempt to measure whether (and how) these external attacks induce extremist fora to self-regulate. The results suggest that an increase in the number of groups targeted for attack causes an exponential increase in the cost of enforcement and an exponential decrease in its effectiveness. Thus, a policy to occasionally attack large groups can be very efficient for limiting violent output from these fora.

Wild-Inspired Intrusion Detection System Framework for High Speed Networks (f|p) IDS Framework

While the rise of the Internet and the high speed networks made information easier to acquire, faster to exchange and more flexible to share, it also made the cybernetic attacks and crimes easier to perform, more accurate to hit the target victim and more flexible to conceal the crime evidences. Although people are in an unsafe digital environment, they often feel safe. Being aware of this fact and this fiction, the authors draw in this paper a security framework aiming to build real-time security solutions in the very narrow context of high speed networks. This framework is called (f|p) since it is inspired by the elefant self-defense behavior which yields p (22 security tasks for 7 security targets).

RETHINKING CYBER WAR

ABSTRACT Cybernetic attacks have been wrongly perceived as weapons of physical destruction rather than of disruption. Because modern, post‐industrial societies have become critically dependent on computer networks to function on a day‐to‐day basis, disruption of those networks could have serious social and economic consequences. In order to better protect society, policymakers will have to re‐orient their approach toward cyber security so as to emphasize the genuine cybernetic threat, which is network disruption rather than physical destruction.