Security Logs Research Articles

The Economy–Security Nexus: Risk, Strategic Autonomy and the Regulation of the Semiconductor Supply Chain

Abstract The EU’s policies in the field of technology broadly defined are increasingly marked by a concern over strategic autonomy, and Europe’s place in the world. Regulatory interventions are framed in terms of “digital sovereignty,” with the Commission seeking to ensure that external dependencies are reduced with the aim of increasing the EU’s resilience to geopolitical instability and external shocks. Using the case study of semiconductors, the chips that power modern electronic devices, this article explores how technology policy in the EU sits at the economy–security nexus, in which economic goals and security goals are interdependent and inseparable. Focusing on the life cycle of the semiconductor supply chain from the control over natural resources through to the cybersecurity requirements placed on the finished products, this article demonstrates the increasing security logic embedded within a burgeoning industrial technology policy.

WEBSITE SECURITY ANALYSIS CURUG VILLAGE GOVERNMENT USING OPEN WEB APPLICATION SECURITY PROJECT (OWASP)

Cybersecurity has become a crucial issue in the current digital era, especially for government websites that are often targeted by attacks. According to the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN), government websites are vulnerable to hacking. This study aims to analyze the security of the Curug Village Government website using the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). The analysis was conducted on the ten main categories of web application security vulnerabilities listed in OWASP Top 10 2021, including Broken Access Control, Cryptographic Failures, Injection, Insecure Design, Security Misconfiguration, Vulnerable and Outdated Components, Identification and Authentication Failures, Software and Data Integrity Failures, Security Logging and Monitoring Failures, and Server-side Request Forgery. The results of the testing showed that 4 out of 8 vulnerabilities fall into the OWASP TOP 10 for 2021, particularly in the categories of Injection and Security Misconfiguration. Recommendations for improvements are provided based on these findings, which are expected to help the Curug Village Government strengthen their cybersecurity.

Enhancing Syslog Message Security and Reliability over Unidirectional Fiber Optics

Standard log transmission protocols do not offer a robust way of segregating the log network from potential threats. A secure log transmission system and the realization of a data diode using affordable components are proposed. Unidirectional data flow prevents unauthorized access and eavesdropping, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive log data. The system uses an encryption protocol that requires that the upstream and the downstream of the data diode are perfectly synchronized, mitigating replay attacks. It has been shown that message amplification can mitigate UDP packet loss, but this is only required when the data diode traffic is congested. The implementation of the encryption algorithm is suitable for resource-constrained devices and it has been shown to produce random-looking output even on a reduced number of rounds when compared to the parent cipher. Several improvements have been made to the original encryption algorithm for which an actual implementation was missing. Free software and datasets have been made available to reproduce the results. The complete solution is easy to reproduce in order to secure the segregation of a log network inside any scenario where logging is required by the law and log tampering must be prevented.

The Shortest Nuclear Route to Climate Tipping Points to Great Power Competition: Tracing Arctic Security from the Cold War to Now

<p>Arctic security has been growing in popularity across academia, policymaking, and news media. However, this popularity has come with a notable question: what does Arctic security mean and what knowledge underpins it? This study traces the discourse on Arctic security from the Cold War to present examining the emergence of different types of security which range from more traditional variants to wider and deeper readings such as environmental and comprehensive security. I identify key strands of Arctic security discourse, trace their interaction over time, and periodize the region. While the Cold War era was dominated by nuclear and traditional security logics, there have been three main shifts since then including 2) 1990s-2007, 3) 2007-2019, and 4) 2019-present. This research finds that Arctic security knowledge clearly follows global security trends. Thus, as security has widened and deepened globally, so too have the potential meanings of Arctic security expanded. However, there is a clear hierarchy in today’s general discourse regarding what issues take center stage for the Arctic such as great power competition and climate change. This is in contrast to the Arctic Council, which takes into account all but military security definitions for Arctic security and integrates them in a relatively balanced way. This has implications for ocean governance institutions and the degree to which traditional military security concerns should be left out of broader ocean governance.</p>

The Geoeconomic Turn in International Trade, Investment, and Technology

This thematic issue brings together a set of articles that empirically map the state of the ongoing geoeconomic turn in the global political economy from an international political economy (IPE) perspective. Changes in the modus operandi of the global political economy urge the development of new conceptual and theoretical tools to grasp the new geoeconomic reality of world affairs. At the same time, the contemporary study of geoeconomics remains theory-centred and focused on its security dimension, thereby underplaying the empirical nuances and variegated aspects of these developments. We therefore make the case for an empirically grounded study of concrete cases and instances of the geoeconomic turn, which can then deliver insights for further theory-building. Likewise, many aspects of the geoeconomic turn cannot be explained by security logics only, but have political economy roots that need to be brought to the foreground. Our thematic issue excavates these dynamics across four key challenges for the global economy: the role of states and firms in a geoeconomic world; global technological competition; the green transition; and implications of the geoeconomic turn for the non-Western world. Collectively, the contributions demonstrate that the geoeconomic turn is only starting to concretely (and partially) materialize and that these transformations, in many cases, tend to replicate existing power structures that prioritize capital(ist) interests related to profit-maximisation over societal interests, ecological sustainability, or social equity. We close by delineating prospects for further IPE research into the ongoing geoeconomic turn in the global political economy.

An Ideological Divide? Political Parties’ Discourse in Italy’s Migration Cooperation with Libya and Albania

ABSTRACT Italy’s migration agreements with Libya in 2017 and Albania in 2023 serve as crucial cases for investigating how political parties in Europe position themselves on immigration policy. By comparing parties across the Italian political spectrum, this research assesses whether they have articulated distinct stances on the externalisation of migration in the two selected cases. A qualitative analysis of parliamentary debates reveals two dominant logics in party discourse: a security logic and a rights-oriented logic. These two logics can cut across party lines, particularly in times of crisis, with frequent references to the European Union (EU) as both an arena for Italy’s influence and a source of legitimacy.

Pobrecitos: Determinations of deservingness in the Costa Rican asylum process

AbstractThis article examines how Costa Rica's asylum process enacts bureaucratic bordering, shaping refugee deservingness through intertwined logics of security and humanitarianism. Based on fieldwork from 2016 to 2022, the analysis focuses on two areas: daily interactions between asylum officials and applicants, and the bureaucratic practices in humanitarian aid distribution. The first case analyzes a form of micro‐level bureaucratic bordering in the ways officials draw on racialized understandings of cultural, social, and economic differences to categorize asylum seekers as deserving or undeserving. The second explores how a restructured aid system, with NGOs as filters, erects bureaucratic barriers that complicate access to services for asylum seekers. Both cases demonstrate how deservingness is determined through the interplay of institutions, actors, and procedures, reflecting broader trends of the intersection of security and humanitarianism in migration management, ultimately marginalizing those least equipped to navigate the bureaucratic complexities of the asylum system.

The discourse of terror: carceralism, border politics, and security in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT The discursive construction of terrorism in the media allows and limits possible policy responses. These constructions help set the precedent for modes of intervention and regularisation by the state by locating potential terrorists within the logic of security. Such a logic was a trademark of the so-called War on Terror and continues to be deployed around the world. This article examines the normative carceral discourse at play in the construction of terrorist perpetrators in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using the 2021 LynnMall terror attack as a case study, it investigates the limits of the New Zealand security dispositif that worked to construct the LynnMall attacker as a lost cause, incapable of intervention or rehabilitation. Drawing on insights from discourse theory, and critical discourse/dispositif analysis, it examines the resonant force between media discourses and the state’s security practices. Through an examination of national media coverage, court proceedings, and policy documents, it assesses the discursive conditions within which terrorist subjects are constructed for the public and regulated by the state. In doing so, it sheds light on the mutually reinforcing yet contradictory discourses of carceralism and border politics that inform contemporary security practices.

European Unions Western Balkans Policy Adjustments and Strategic Metaphors in the Context of Geopolitical Crisis

The European Union has been in a period of enlargement fatigue for a long time since its explosive eastward enlargement, with a corresponding deceleration in its enlargement policy for the Western Balkans. But since 2018, and especially after the Ukrainian crisis in 2022, the European Union has begun to try to adjust its policies in the Western Balkans and try to change the deceleration of its enlargement. On the basis of constructivism theory, this paper analyses the reasons for the adjustments mainly using comparative and textual analysis. On the one hand, the European Union constructs its own perceptions on the basis of environmental feedback. On the other hand, the European Union has a normative basis for its next expansion, and the Western Balkans have also developed a certain degree of normative internalization through a number of subregional cooperation mechanisms. The European Union recognized the process of gradual convergence between the two sides, which promoted policy adjustments. The current strategic logic of the European Union presents a predominantly security logic, with a prominent geopolitical discourse. There are still challenges in the accession process of the Western Balkans, and the European Union still needs to further explore the optimal path for the development of relations between the two sides.

Technocracy without society: a critique of nudging as an approach to managing risk

ABSTRACT This article considers the evolution of public risk management over the past half century in the United States, focusing on ‘nudging’ as a technique to manage a variety of risks – environmental, health, and financial – through shifts in individual behaviour. I argue that nudging operates according to a privatised, market-based logic of security that displaces more democratic approaches. I further show how nudging aims to go beyond the political – which is to say beyond the realm of democratic contestation over the assessment and mitigation of risk, thereby reinforcing an unsustainable view of risk management as an apolitical set of ‘best practices’. I further argue that this technocratic approach to risk has become particularly problematic amid a populist backlash against scientific expertise and elite institutions, and may even leave advanced democracies less able to manage the risks they face: the erosion of public trust in experts and government undermines both the attempt to nudge individuals towards ‘prudential’ choices and government mandates to manage risks through more aggressive regulatory means.

A “Question of National Honour” – Status Concerns in Tanzania’s Response to the Invasion by Uganda in 1978

Abstract Tanzania’s response to the invasion by Uganda in 1978 reveals a puzzle that previous scholars of the subject have overlooked. The country resorted to a full-scale war against Uganda, even after recovering its territory, and chose such a costly option when its economy was in a dire situation. Previous scholars emphasised security and revenge as the key motives underpinning the response. This paper, which is based on key informant interviews and archival research, argues that the counterintuitive nature of the response can only be sufficiently understood by factoring in the country’s sensitivity to status transgressions in its first two decades of independence. The invasion by Uganda took place against the backdrop of a state increasingly sensitive to its standing. This paper uses the status-dissatisfaction theory to argue that the response was informed not only by the national security logic, but also the need to defend the country’s status.

CORE: Counteracting overwhelming requests effectively—A method for interest flooding attack mitigation in NDNoT

<p>The<strong> </strong>Named Data Network (NDN) is a promising architecture for the near future. NDN communicates by naming data, unlike IP-based Internet architecture. Architectural understandability, ease of use, security, content presentation, and simplicity of data exchange logic make this architecture preferable. The NDNoT approach, which recently combines IoT and NDN, enables Internet of Things applications using NDN naming conventions and basic data structure. However, increasing technological applications bring security vulnerabilities. In this study, we propose a new method called CORE that will secure the intended data transfer. The presented CORE mechanism was developed as a countermeasure against the Interest Flooding attack, one of the NDN security attacks. Tests were carried out in the Cooja simulation environment using three different topology scenarios. CORE’s performance metrics were evaluated based on success rate, average delay, and interest traffic. The results showed that when the CORE mechanism was active, there was an improvement in the success rate and average delay. In terms of interest traffic, at least a 70% success rate was achieved compared to scenarios in which the CORE mechanism was not operated.</p>

Nonviolent Knowledge(s) and Unarmed Civilian Protection

Abstract In its claim to take the human, and in particular the civilian, as the referent object of security, human security seeks to build not only physical but ontological security for those who live and work in conflict-affected communities; those who shape conflict and are shaped by it. Unarmed civilian protection (ucp), a method of civilian-to-civilian and civilian self-protection, is led by the civilians who make up conflict-affected communities. Rather than ‘including’ local actors in their protection or seeking to extract information about conflict from them, ucp is a practice in which local and international actors work together to co-create and build spaces of protection. This protection is based on conflict knowledge which enables nonviolent protection methods to be practiced effectively. This knowledge comes not from armed actors nor state delegates, but rather from and with conflict-affected communities. Embracing civilian experiential knowledge of armed and violent conflict, ucp instrumentalises civilians, their knowledge(s) of and relationships to armed conflict in the creation of protection networks. Taking ucp as a case study of nonviolent protection, and ucp practitioners as conflict knowledge producers, this article argues that civilian experiential knowledge of armed conflict is essential to the pursuit of civilian protection. Rather than being a prescriptive set of aims, the human security agenda must take seriously the experiences of civilians affected by conflict, centring their experiential knowledge(s) and agency in order to move beyond the unintentional yet harmful (re)production of binary security logics.

Preservation of Christian dignity and identity in the oppressive context of the communist confinement regime. Young Nicolae Rădulescu’s carceral periplus

The present paper examines the modifications that occur to human beings amidst the deplorable conditions of Romania’s communist confinement system, using Nicolae Rădulescu’s story as a case study. After being imprisoned, the individual endured a horrifying system that elevated horror and treason to new heights. His stigma as a political and counter-revolutionary prisoner naturally drew dramatic consequences, both inside and outside of prison. From the Security people’s point of view, he was a pariah, a peripsema mundi who only needed to be forced in order to satisfy the demands of the new Soviet man. The uniqueness and, respectively, the originality of our research approach are supported by the consultation of primary resources, the main source of information being the Archive document, the tabs in the file from the Informative Fund drawn up in the name of our subject, ensuring the originality of this approach. At the same time, in order to eliminate the danger of slipping into the logic of the former Security, we used the data obtained from the memorial literature and specialized works that dealt with the issue of the concentration space under communist totalitarianism, in general, and of our subject, in particular. Simultaneously, we employed the information gleaned from the memorial literature and specialised works that addressed the problem of the concentration space under communist totalitarianism, in general, and of our subject, in particular, in order to eliminate the risk of falling back on the logic of the previous State Security. Furthermore, of the 16 individuals that the Security’s goals and mindset brought together in the famous Burning Altar group in 1958, Nicolae Rădulescu is the only one who remains alive today to respond to inquiries concerning the oppression of the communist concentration system against them. The main argument of the paper is that we need to examine the structural mechanisms that shaped the Romanian Gulag in accordance with the demands of the political police’s ideology in order to comprehend the scope of the struggle waged by those who fought to preserve their religious identity and dignity in the communist prisons.

The Practice of Post-Handover Party Interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan

Abstract This article applies a three-level framework based on the logic of ontological security to the case of party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan in the post-handover years. Rather than through domestication and subversion, as the literature suggests, this article argues that liminal actors enhance their ontological security through interacting with like-minded partners. Establishing the case of liminality for Hong Kong and Taiwan, this article also finds that both conventional and movement parties in the two political units interacted to strengthen their stable sense of self. However, their practices differed based on their political positions within the political systems and their available resources. This article provides the first empirical mapping of the conventional party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan. It seeks to contribute a theoretical framework explaining the close links between political units and their movements.

Comparative Analysis of Anomaly Detection Approaches in Firewall Logs: Integrating Light-Weight Synthesis of Security Logs and Artificially Generated Attack Detection.

Detecting anomalies in large networks is a major challenge. Nowadays, many studies rely on machine learning techniques to solve this problem. However, much of this research depends on synthetic or limited datasets and tends to use specialized machine learning methods to achieve good detection results. This study focuses on analyzing firewall logs from a large industrial control network and presents a novel method for generating anomalies that simulate real attacker actions within the network without the need for a dedicated testbed or installed security controls. To demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible and that the constructed logs behave as one would expect real-world logs to behave, different supervised and unsupervised learning models were compared using different feature subsets, feature construction methods, scaling methods, and aggregation levels. The experimental results show that unsupervised learning methods have difficulty in detecting the injected anomalies, suggesting that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing firewall logs. Conversely, the use of supervised learning methods showed significantly better performance compared to unsupervised approaches and a better suitability for use in real systems.

J-MISFET Hybrid Dual-Gate Switching Device for Multifunctional Optoelectronic Logic Gate Applications.

High-performance and low operating voltage are becoming increasingly significant device parameters to meet the needs of future integrated circuit (IC) processors and ensure their energy-efficient use in upcoming mobile devices. In this study, we suggest a hybrid dual-gate switching device consisting of the vertically stacked junction and metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) gate structure, named J-MISFET. It shows excellent device performances of low operating voltage (<0.5 V), drain current ON/OFF ratio (∼4.7 × 105), negligible hysteresis window (<0.5 mV), and near-ideal subthreshold slope (SS) (60 mV/dec), making it suitable for low-power switching operation. Furthermore, we investigated the switchable NAND/NOR logic gate operations and the photoresponse characteristics of the J-MISFET under the small supply voltage (0.5 V). To advance the applications further, we successfully demonstrated an integrated optoelectronic security logic system comprising 2-electric inputs (for encrypted data) and 1-photonic input signal (for password key) as a hardware security device for data protection. Thus, we believe that our J-MISFET, with its heterogeneous hybrid gate structures, will illuminate the path toward future device configurations for next-generation low-power electronics and multifunctional security logic systems in a data-driven society.

A logging maturity and decision model for the selection of intrusion detection cyber security solutions

Many modern cyber attack techniques cannot be prevented. Logging and monitoring, however, offer a means to at least detect these techniques early, and therefore become increasingly important for defense. Many companies are unfortunately reluctant to invest more in cyber security logging and monitoring or hire additional security staff to operate detective solutions. There is a need for a methodology to pick appropriate cyber security solutions from the vast pool of available products. Our model takes requirements mandated by common standards from ISO, NIST, BSI and the like into account. While standards and guidelines remain at a high abstraction level and are applicable to different organizations over a long period of time, guidance on implementation becomes outdated comparatively quickly. We propose a novel logging maturity and decision model for the selection of the best fitting cyber security solutions for an organization. The novelty is that this model accounts for constraints in the selection process, such as cost, complexity, compliance, and relevance to the organization's assets. We validate the model with MITRE ATT&CK framework data and apply it to illustrative use cases based on our survey.

LogPrécis: Unleashing language models for automated malicious log analysis: Précis: A concise summary of essential points, statements, or facts

Security logs are the key to understanding attacks and diagnosing vulnerabilities. Often coming in the form of text logs, their analysis remains a daunting challenge. Language Models (LMs) have demonstrated unmatched potential in understanding natural and programming languages. The question arises as to whether and how LMs could be also used to automatise the analysis of security logs. We here systematically study how to benefit from the state-of-the-art LM to support the analysis of text-like Unix shell attack logs automatically. For this, we thoroughly designed LogPrécis. LogPrécis receives as input malicious shell sessions. It then automatically identifies and assigns the attacker tactic to each portion of the session, i.e., unveiling the sequence of the attacker's goals. This creates a unique attack fingerprint. We demonstrate LogPrécis capability to support the analysis of two large datasets containing about 400,000 unique Unix shell attacks recorded in a 2-year-long honeypot deployment. LogPrécis reduces the analysis to about 3,000 unique fingerprints. Such abstraction lets us better understand attacks, extract attack prototypes, detect novelties, and track families and mutations. Overall, LogPrécis, released as open source, demonstrates the potential of adopting LMs for security analysis and paves the way for better and more responsive defence against cyberattacks.

Towards theorizing from the Arab non-periphery: Hyphenated identities and the boundless security field

Across the Middle East, military professionals, private militias, and other security actors often play a central role in the management of urban planning, public administration, and other state affairs. However, security studies scholarship offers few theoretical tools for understanding this deep and overt inter-twinement of security and governance, framing it as an outcome of authoritarian practices of coup-proofing or a symptom of ‘weak’ states. This article analyzes spatial planning and land management practices in Egypt and Lebanon to propose two concepts, ‘hyphenated identities’ and the ‘boundless security field’, as alternative theoretical tools for thinking about security. I argue that security logics are deeply enmeshed with the identity of the nation, its histories of conflict, and its experiences of state formation, creating a security field that is boundless and non-discrete. Within this field are a set of ‘hyphenated identities’, or categories of actors who perform dual roles as managers of security and managers of other governance matters. The influence of these actors on governance practices illustrates the extent to which security logics can be imbedded in the structures of the state and its modus operandi, thereby reinforcing the boundlessness of the security field.