Software Conflicts and User Autonomy
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A Systematic Empirical Analysis of Unwanted Software Abuse, Prevalence, Distribution, and Economics
UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA´ DE MADRID ESCUELA TECNICA´ SUPERIOR DE INGENIEROS INFORMATICOS´ A Systematic Empirical Analysis of Unwanted Software Abuse, Prevalence, Distribution, and Economics PH.D THESIS Platon Pantelis Kotzias Copyright c 2019 by Platon Pantelis Kotzias iv DEPARTAMENTAMENTO DE LENGUAJES Y SISTEMAS INFORMATICOS´ E INGENIERIA DE SOFTWARE ESCUELA TECNICA´ SUPERIOR DE INGENIEROS INFORMATICOS´ A Systematic Empirical Analysis of Unwanted Software Abuse, Prevalence, Distribution, and Economics SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF: Doctor of Philosophy in Software, Systems and Computing Author: Platon Pantelis Kotzias Advisor: Dr. Juan Caballero April 2019 Chair/Presidente: Marc Dasier, Professor and Department Head, EURECOM, France Secretary/Secretario: Dario Fiore, Assistant Research Professor, IMDEA Software Institute, Spain Member/Vocal: Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, Assistant Research Professor, IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain Member/Vocal: Juan Tapiador, Associate Professor, Universidad Carlos III, Spain Member/Vocal: Igor Santos, Associate Research Professor, Universidad de Deusto, Spain Abstract of the Dissertation Potentially unwanted programs (PUP) are a category of undesirable software that, while not outright malicious, can pose significant risks to users’ security and privacy. There exist indications that PUP prominence has quickly increased over the last years, but the prevalence of PUP on both consumer and enterprise hosts remains unknown. Moreover, many important aspects of PUP such as distribution vectors, code signing abuse, and economics also remain unknown. In this thesis, we empirically and sys- tematically analyze in both breadth and depth PUP abuse, prevalence, distribution, and economics. We make the following four contributions. First, we perform a systematic study on the abuse of Windows Authenticode code signing by PUP and malware. -
USBESAFE: an End-Point Solution to Protect Against USB-Based Attacks
USBESAFE: An End-Point Solution to Protect Against USB-Based Attacks Amin Kharraz†‡ Brandon L. Daley ‡ Graham Z. Baker William Robertson‡ Engin Kirda‡ MIT Lincoln Laboratory †University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ‡Northeastern University Abstract automatically scans removable devices including USB sticks, memory cards, external hard drives, and even cameras after Targeted attacks via transient devices are not new. How- being plugged into a machine. Unfortunately, bypassing such ever, the introduction of BadUSB attacks has shifted the attack checks is often not very difficult as the firmware of USB de- paradigm tremendously. Such attacks embed malicious code vices cannot be scanned by the host. In fact, the introduction in device firmware and exploit the lack of access control in of BadUSB attacks has shifted the attack paradigm tremen- the USB protocol. In this paper, we propose USBESAFE as a dously as adversaries can easily hide their malicious code mediator of the USB communication mechanism. By lever- in the firmware, allowing the device to take covert actions aging the insights from millions of USB packets, we propose on the host [9]. A USB flash drive could register itself as techniques to generate a protection model that can identify both a storage device and a Human Interface Device (HID) covert USB attacks by distinguishing BadUSB devices as a such as a keyboard, enabling the ability to inject surreptitious set of novel observations. Our results show that USBESAFE keystrokes to carry out malice. works well in practice by achieving a true positive [TP] rate of 95.7% with 0.21% false positives [FP] with latency as low Existing defenses against malicious USB devices have re- as three malicious USB packets on USB traffic. -
Torward: DISCOVERY, BLOCKING, and TRACEBACK of MALICIOUS TRAFFIC OVER Tor 2517
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 10, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2015 2515 TorWard: Discovery, Blocking, and Traceback of Malicious Traffic Over Tor Zhen Ling, Junzhou Luo, Member, IEEE,KuiWu,Senior Member, IEEE, Wei Yu, and Xinwen Fu Abstract— Tor is a popular low-latency anonymous communi- I. INTRODUCTION cation system. It is, however, currently abused in various ways. OR IS a popular overlay network that provides Tor exit routers are frequently troubled by administrative and legal complaints. To gain an insight into such abuse, we designed Tanonymous communication over the Internet for and implemented a novel system, TorWard, for the discovery and TCP applications and helps fight against various Internet the systematic study of malicious traffic over Tor. The system censorship [1]. It serves hundreds of thousands of users and can avoid legal and administrative complaints, and allows the carries terabyte of traffic daily. Unfortunately, Tor has been investigation to be performed in a sensitive environment such abused in various ways. Copyrighted materials are shared as a university campus. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is used to discover and classify malicious traffic. We performed through Tor. The black markets (e.g., Silk Road [2], an comprehensive analysis and extensive real-world experiments to online market selling goods such as pornography, narcotics validate the feasibility and the effectiveness of TorWard. Our or weapons1) can be deployed through Tor hidden service. results show that around 10% Tor traffic can trigger IDS alerts. Attackers also run botnet Command and Control (C&C) Malicious traffic includes P2P traffic, malware traffic (e.g., botnet servers and send spam over Tor. -
Spyware and Adware Continue to Present Substantial Harms to Internet Users and to the Internet As a Whole
Testimony of Benjamin Edelman before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation June 11, 2008 Benjamin Edelman Baker Library 445 Assistant Professor 1 Soldier’s Field Rd Harvard Business School Boston, MA 02163 Chairman Inouye, Senator Pryor, Members of the Committee: My name is Benjamin Edelman. I am an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, where my research focuses on the design of electronic marketplaces, including designing online marketplaces to assure safety, reliability, and efficiency. My full biography and publication list are at http://www.benedelman.org/bio and http://www.benedelman.org/publications . Today the committee considers the important problems of Internet spyware and deceptive adware – scourges that threaten the reliability, trustworthiness, and overall utility of many users’ Internet’s access. My bottom line: Despite some recent progress, spyware and adware continue to present substantial harms to Internet users and to the Internet as a whole. Many improper practices are already prohibited under existing statutes including the FTC Act, state consumer protection statutes, and state anti-spyware legislation. These statutes have given rise to a series of cases, both public and private, that have somewhat reined in the problems of spyware and adware. Tough Federal legislation could assist in bringing spyware and adware purveyors to justice, and in further deterring creation and support of this noxious software. But the bill at hand addresses only a portion of the problem, while in some ways reducing the effectiveness of existing efforts. By prohibiting specific individual practices, the bill invites perpetrators to comply with the letter of the law while continuing to harm and deceive consumers. -
America Exposed Who’S Watching You Through Your Computer’S
America Exposed Who’s Watching You Through Your Computer’s Camera? May 2017 By: James Scott, Senior Fellow, The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology 1 America Exposed Who’s Watching You Through Your Computer’s Camera May 2017 Authored by: James Scott, Sr. Fellow, ICIT Except for (1) brief quotations used in media coverage of this publication, (2) links to the www.icitech.org website, and (3) certain other noncommercial uses permitted as fair use under United States copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, contact the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology. Copyright © 2017 Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology – All Rights Reserved ` 2 Support ICIT & Increase Webcam Privacy CamPatch®, the world’s leading manufacturer of webcam covers, is proud to donate 100% of net proceeds to ICIT. Custom Branded Webcam Covers are a powerful tool for security training initiatives, and are a valuable and impactful promotional giveaway item. Visit www.CamPatch.com or contact [email protected] to learn more. Upcoming Events The Annual ICIT Forum June 7, 2017, The Four Seasons Washington D.C. www.icitforum.org ` 3 Contents Are You Being Watched? .............................................................................................................................. 4 Computing Devices -
Downloadable Libraries That Need to Be Installed in Order to Enable Complete Functionality in Terms of Placing a Proper 3G-H324M Call Over the ISDN Network
Advances in Networks, Computing and Communications 6 Proceedings of the MSc/MRes Programmes from the School of Computing, Communications and Electronics 2007 - 2008 Editors Dr Paul S Dowland Prof Steven M Furnell School of Computing, Communications & Electronics University of Plymouth ISBN: 978-1-84102-258-1 © 2009 University of Plymouth All rights reserved Printed in the United Kingdom No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or distributor. Preface This book is the sixth in a series presenting research papers arising from MSc/MRes research projects undertaken by students of the School of Computing, Communications and Electronics at the University of Plymouth. These one year masters courses include a significant period of full-time project activity, and students are assessed on the basis of an MSc or MRes thesis, plus an accompanying research paper. The publications in this volume are based upon research projects that were undertaken during the 2007/08 academic year. A total of 35 papers are presented, covering many aspects of modern networking and communication technology, including security, mobility, coding schemes and quality measurement. The expanded topic coverage compared to earlier volumes in this series reflects the broadening of our range of MSc programmes. Specifically contributing programmes are: Network Systems Engineering, Information Systems Security, Web Technologies and Security, Communications Engineering and Signal Processing, Computer Applications, Computing, Robotics, and Interactive Intelligent Systems The authorship of the papers is credited to the MSc/MRes student in each case (appearing as the first named author), with other authors being the academic supervisors that had significant input into the projects. -
Conference Reports
ConferenceREPORTS Reports 23rd USENIX Security Symposium AT&T was a US government regulated monopoly, with over August 20–22, 2014, San Diego 90% of the telephone market in the US. They owned everything, Summarized by David Adrian, Qi Alfred Chen, Andrei Costin, Lucas Davi, including the phones on desktops and in homes, and, as a monop- Kevin P. Dyer, Rik Farrow, Grant Ho, Shouling Ji, Alexandros Kapravelos, oly, could and did charge as much as $5 per minute (in 1950) for a Zhigong Li, Brendan Saltaformaggio, Ben Stock, Janos Szurdi, Johanna cross-country call. In 2014 dollars, that’s nearly $50 per minute. Ullrich, Venkatanathan Varadarajan, and Michael Zohner In the beginning, the system relied on women, sitting in front Opening Remarks of switchboards with patch cables in hand, to connect calls. Summarized by Rik Farrow ([email protected]) Just like Google today, AT&T realized that this model, relying on human labor, cannot scale with the growth in the use of the Kevin Fu, chair of the symposium, started off with the numbers: telephone: They would have needed one million operators by a 26% increase in the number of submissions for a total of 350, 1970. Faced with this issue, company researchers and engineers and 67 papers accepted, a rate of 19%. The large PC was perhaps developed electro-mechanical switches to replace operators. not large enough, even with over 70 members, and included out- side reviewers as well. There were 1340 paper reviews, with 1627 The crossbar switch, first used only for local calls, used the pulse follow-up comments, and Fu had over 8,269 emails involving the of the old rotary telephone to manipulate a Strowger switch, symposium. -
Liability of Computer Security Software Providers in the European Union
TILBURG UNIVERSITY Liability of Computer Security Software Providers in the European Union Master Thesis Ivana Lackova ANR: 591 867 June, 21st 2013 Supervisor: C.M.K.C. Cuijpers Table of contents Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................. 2 Chapter 2 - The situation in the USA ......................................................................................... 4 2.1 Short excurse to legislative history of §230 CDA and the related case law .................... 4 2.2 Zango v. Kaspersky .......................................................................................................... 6 2.2.1 Background of the case ............................................................................................. 6 2.2.2 Drawbacks of Zango v. Kaspersky ........................................................................... 9 2.3 Zango v. PC Tools .......................................................................................................... 10 2.4 The end user and immunity of CSSPs according to §230 CDA. ................................... 11 Chapter 3 - CSSP’s outputs and product liability in the EU .................................................... 13 3.1 Nature of CSSPs outputs ................................................................................................ 14 3.1.1 Software in general - mere product or service? ....................................................... 16 3.1.2 Are updates part of the software -
How to Navigate Privacy & Data Security Issues
ACCS 2007 ANNUAL MEETING ENJOYING THE RIDE ON THE TRACK TO SUCCESS 410 - Is Privacy the Next Superfund? How to Navigate Privacy & Data Security Issues Jon Leibowitz Commissioner Federal Trade Commission Nuala O'Connor Kelly Chief Privacy Leader & Senior Counsel General Electric Company Christine Varney Partner Hogan & Hartson LLP This material is protected by copyright. Copyright © 2007 various authors and the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC). Materials may not be reproduced without the consent of ACC. Reproduction permission requests should be directed to the Legal Resources Department at ACC: 202/293-4103, ext. 342; [email protected] ACC's 2007 ANNUAL MEETING Enjoying the Ride on the Track to Success Faculty Biographies Jon Leibowitz Jon Leibowitz is a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, DC. Christine Varney In joining the Commission, Mr. Leibowitz resumed a long career of public service. In the past he Partner was the Democratic chief counsel and staff director for the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee, where he focused on competition policy and telecommunications matters. He served as chief counsel and staff director for the Senate subcommittee on terrorism and technology and the Senate subcommittee on juvenile justice. In addition, he served as chief counsel to Senator Herb Kohl. Mr. Leibowitz also worked for Senator Paul Simon. In the private sector, Mr. Leibowitz served most recently as vice president for congressional affairs for the Motion Picture Association of America and worked as an attorney in private practice in Washington. He has co-authored amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court on issues ranging from gun control to the census. -
Weafer Spyware Testimony
Testimony of Vincent Weafer Vice President, Security Response Symantec Corporation On behalf of Symantec Corporation & the Business Software Alliance (BSA) On IMPACT AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF SPYWARE ON CONSUMERS AND BUSINESSES & S. 1625 – THE COUNTER SPY ACT Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Washington, D.C. June 11, 2008 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, members of the Committee, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify here today. My name is Vincent Weafer and I am Vice President of Security Response at Symantec Corporation. I will be testifying today on behalf of the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Symantec is one of the world’s leading software companies. We are headquartered in Cupertino, California, operate in 40 countries worldwide and have more than 17,500 employees. Symantec’s mission is to help individuals and enterprises assure the security, availability, and integrity of their electronic information. As the global leader in information security, we protect more people from online threats than anyone in the world. Symantec offers our customers products that detect and remove spyware and harmful adware, and our Norton brand of products is the worldwide leader in consumer security and problem-solving solutions. The Business Software Alliance (www.bsa.org)1 is the foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world. BSA is the voice of the world's commercial software industry and its hardware partners before governments and in the international marketplace. Its members represent one of the fastest growing industries in the world. BSA programs foster technology innovation through education and policy initiatives that promote copyright protection, cyber security, trade and e-commerce. -
Sok: “Plug & Pray” Today – Understanding USB Insecurity In
SoK: “Plug & Pray” Today – Understanding USB Insecurity in Versions 1 through C Dave (Jing) Tian∗, Nolen Scaife∗, Deepak Kumary, Michael Baileyy, Adam Batesy, Kevin R. B. Butler∗ ∗University of Florida fdaveti, scaife, butlerg@ufl.edu yUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign fdkumar11, mdbailey, [email protected] Abstract—USB-based attacks have increased in complexity in systematizing the defenses present in the USB ecosystem, we recent years. Modern attacks now incorporate a wide range of find that most defenses often focus on protecting a single layer, attack vectors, from social engineering to signal injection. To which proves ineffective against a suite of attacks that appear address these challenges, the security community has responded with a growing set of fragmented defenses. In this work, at many communication layers. In addition, misaligned goals we survey and categorize USB attacks and defenses, unifying between industry and academia further fragment the defense observations from both peer-reviewed research and industry. space. Commercial solutions focus on the prevention of data Our systematization extracts offensive and defensive primitives loss and anti-malware without regard for emerging attack that operate across layers of communication within the USB vectors, while research prototypes vary and are hamstrung by ecosystem. Based on our taxonomy, we discover that USB attacks often abuse the trust-by-default nature of the ecosystem, and the lack of built-in security building blocks in the existing transcend different layers within a software stack; none of USB specifications. As a result, research solutions often rely the existing defenses provide a complete solution, and solutions on new host and peripheral architectures that are unlikely to expanding multiple layers are most effective. -
FDA Sets Stage to Authorize Moderna's Covid-19 Vaccine
P2JW351000-5-A00100-17FFFF5178F ***** WEDNESDAY,DECEMBER 16,2020~VOL. CCLXXVI NO.142 WSJ.com HHHH $4.00 DJIA 30199.31 À 337.76 1.1% NASDAQ 12595.06 À 1.2% STOXX 600 392.84 À 0.3% 10-YR. TREAS. g 9/32 , yield 0.921% OIL $47.62 À $0.63 GOLD $1,852.30 À $23.60 EURO $1.2155 YEN 103.66 Holiday Lockdown Looms in London as Cases Surge EU Seeks What’s News Tougher Oversight Business&Finance Of Tech uropean officials want Enewpowers to oversee in- ternal workingsatlarge tech Firms companies,backed by threats of multibillion-dollarfines,as they seek to expand their role Proposals aim to boost as global tech enforcers. A1 Twitterwas fined under social-media policing, the EU’scurrent privacylaw, levy huge fines for afirst foraU.S.tech firm in a cross-border case sincethe competitive abuses rules went into effect. B4 BY SAM SCHECHNER Mnuchin suggested he was unlikely to support a European officials want new consent order to end the gov- powers to oversee internal ernment conservatorships GES workingsatlarge technology of Fannie and Freddie be- IMA companies such as Facebook fore Trump leavesoffice. A2 Inc., backed by threatsofmulti- ETTY U.S. stocks rallied, with /G billion-dollar fines,asthey seek the S&P 500, Nasdaq and to expand their role as global Dow advancing 1.3%, 1.2% tech enforcers. and 1.1%, respectively. B12 SUMMERS TheEuropean Union’sexecu- tivearm proposed two bills on High-frequency traders PETER IN LIGHTS: LondoN taverns like the Churchill Arms prepared for new restrictions that will take effect Wednesday, limiting Tuesday—one focused on illegal are using an experimental restaurants and pubs to takeaway and delivery.