Cyber Culture and Digital Age

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Annotated Bibliography:

Akhgar, Babak, and Simeon Yates. Strategic Intelligence Management: National Security Imperatives and Information and Communications Technologies. Boston: Elsevier, 2013.  Print.

Protection of access to information and protecting the economic interests of the United States are some of the imperatives of the government. The world is growing into a highly interconnected society providing numerous opportunities for prosperity through businesses yet at the same brining about the presence of numerous risks such as theft, abuse and fraud propagated through the internet. Collaboration between different parties such as the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector would provide an avenue towards minimization of occurrences of cyber crimes that take place on personal and corporate levels. Increased access to technology means that there is an increase in risks towards unauthorized access of the national, corporate and personal information.

Trend, David. Welcome to Cyberschool: Education at the Crossroads in the Information Age. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Print.

The book focuses on discussions that are present in our societies with respect to information technology in our institutions of education, homes and places of work. The author highlights the optimism provided by the growth of information technology and the variety of innovations that have improved the quality of life. On the other hand, the author highlights his pessimism, towards information technology as he claims it has brought about negative issues in our societies. The reliance placed by Americans and people around the world on modern technology increases their vulnerabilities towards cyber attacks that may take the form of phising, social media fraud and corporate security breaches. The author provides narratives on optimism in technology and pessimism in education. He provides an account of increased frequency of connection of institutions to the internet and ensuring that all children are literate in the use of computers. He notes that community leaders, political leaders and groups in schools are engaged in a fight for ensuring connectivity in institutions in the country as a means of “leaving no child behind” (Trend, 23).

Rykels, Sharon. “The Protection of Business on the Internet, Challenges to the Legislation”. Paper for MIT 6.805/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier. (Oct. 24, 1995): 1-9. Print.

The author in the introduction takes note of the growing trends towards use of computers by people from all lifestyles. Lack of regulation and the presence of freedom towards using computers through emails, remote computer applications and bulleting boards, mean that people approach the internet with a variety of expectations, motives and interests. The freedom present in cyberspace provides people from different backgrounds with different motives with avenues to hijack information with an aim of causing harm or gaining benefits, which are usually in monetary form. The author continues to note the particular interests among cyber criminals towards corporate affairs. They are particularly interested in issues and items such as business, governmental and personal transactions.

Hence, there is a need for adequate interventions to curb such growing trends and risks in the cyber space. This would be highly beneficial for business, governments and individual privacy. She makes a particular highlight that, “Assurances of system security for both business and their customers must be addressed. While ensuring protection for businesses, lawmakers must also protect the constitutional guarantees for privacy and freedom of expression.” (Rykels, 15). Such indicates the high levels of concern among people for the security of their identities, personal and financial information as well as national security given that the internet also serves as a an avenue for manipulation by terrorist groups.

Gianluca Stringhini, Christopher Kruegel, & Giovanni Vigna. “Detecting spammers on social networks”. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). (December 06 – 10, 2010). Print.

This is an informative source as it provides an in-depth analysis of detection of spammers in the various social networks used on the internet. Gianluca Stringhini, Christopher Kruegel, and Giovanni Vigna provide an account of the role of social networks towards providing spammers and other types of cyberspace criminals with avenues for identity theft and other fraudulent activities.
Wei Xu, Fangfang Zhang, and Sencun Zhu. Towards worm detection in online social networks. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). (December 06 – 10, 2010). Print.

The authors discuss the avenues used towards detection of malicious worms in online social networking sites. Worms in social networks have become significant threats towards users of websites and the owners of websites. Worms exhibit unique traits in their propagation vectors. Such makes worms difficult to detect on internet sites given that the existing mechanisms for detection of worms in internet sites re inadequate. The authors propose the development and use of early warning systems for detection of worms on online social networks. In addition, such would provide the leverage needed for the propagation mechanisms exhibited by worms and the respective topological traits of the online sites.

Zi Chu, Steven Gianvecchio, Haining Wang, Sushil Jajodia. Who is tweeting on Twitter: human, bot, or cyborg?. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). (December 06 – 10, 2010). Print.

Twitter assumes two roles to provide its users with avenues for micro-blogging and social networking. The users of this platform communicate with one another through published messages that appear as posts. The authors point out that legitimate bots have been used over the period this platform has been in existence to provide updated feeds, news whereas other malicious bots move malicious content and spam. In addition, they also note that there have emerged cyborg that may be termed as either human-assisted bot or bot-assisted human. They may assist humans in identification of other parties within their interactions. The paper provides accounts of bot and cyborg presence on twitter. They embark on evaluation of 500,000 accounts to prove their claims.
Konrad Rieck, Tammo Krueger, & Andreas Dewald. “Cujo: efficient detection and prevention of drive-by-download attacks”. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). (December 06 – 10, 2010). Print.

JavaScript is a component language used for dynamic web contents in today’s internet. This component language is termed as platform for what the authors define as “drive-by downloads”. Such attacks exploit the vulnerabilities of various web browsers and their respective extensions by downloading unnoticed malicious software. They point out that, “Due to the diversity and frequent use of obfuscation in these attacks, static code analysis is largely ineffective in practice.” They provide solutions for this problem by providing a system named cujo that automatically detects and prevents any form of drive-by download attacks. The proposed system inspects web pages and prohibits the movement and delivery of any malicious JavaScript codes.
Georgios Portokalidis, Angelos D. Keromytis. “Fast and practical instruction-set randomization for commodity systems”. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC). (December 06 – 10, 2010). Print.

Instruction-set randomization (ISR) is defined as a technique that is based on the randomization of languages that are understood by a system with an aim of preventing code injections and attacks. Such attacks were common with computer worms in earlier times. However, they still pose threats to security of systems as exhibited by a recent worm named Conficker worm outbreak that targeted Adobe’s recent products. In addition, they continue to provide the avenues for rapid and practical implementation of the ISR in existing software.

Project Proposal

Cyber culture is also termed as computer culture is defined as a culture that recently emerged with the increased use of computer networks for purposes such as communication, business activities and entertainment purposes. In addition, this has also been associated with the studies relative to social phenomena associated with computer culture and its growth around the world. This has brought about phenomena such as online communities, social gaming, social media, augmented reality, mobile applications, text messaging, privacy and cyber crime. With increased usage of computers and growth in literacy levels in use of computers around the world, new risks and threats towards privacy and security are emerging. Threats to privacy, security of information and possibilities of cyber espionage and sabotage are among some of the great concerns present in our society.

Computer crime is increasingly becoming a challenge to manage and eradicate given the growing number of criminals and individuals with the skills to proliferate networks from remote locations around the world. Cyber crime may come in the form of threats to an individual’s physical, mental spiritual and financial wellbeing, the security of an individual and a nation as well as the wellbeing of a corporation. Research conducted by the Australian government in the year 2006 noted that two out of three criminals who were convicted of cyber crime activities were aged between 15 years and 26 years. This indicates that the younger population around the world is responsible for a majority of cyber crimes around the world.

Hence, the continued efforts towards ensuring higher levels of computer literacy means that a higher number of young individuals are in preparation towards becoming sophisticated cyber criminals. Cyber crimes can be classified in any of the following groups namely:

1. Denial of service attacks
2. Computer viruses

• Malicious software

1. Cyber stalking
2. Frauds and identity thefts
3. Phising frauds

• Information warfare

The searches for information relative to this topic will mainly use peer reviewed and quality academic journals such that accurate and appropriate information be obtained for this paper. In addition, the sources identified for use have been highlighted within the annotated bibliography and provide insights into the world of cyber crime and the advanced forms of cyber crime taking place in our cyberspace. This will be an interesting topic to cover, given the different controversial areas such as the right to privacy and government involvement in ensuring security within our cyberspace and the rights to privacy and child pornography among other issues that will be evaluated within the final paper.