Open Access

Though the basic concept of a ledger that anyone can view and verify has been around for quite some time, today’s blockchains bring much more to the table including a way to incentivize users. The coins given to the miner or validator were the first source of such incentive to make sure they fulfilled their duties. This thesis draws inspiration from other peer efforts and uses this same incentive to achieve certain goals. Primarily one where users are incentivised to discuss their opinions and find scientific or logical backing for their standpoint. While traditional chains form a consensus on a version of financial "truth", the same can be applied to ideological truths too. To achieve this, creating a modified or scaled proof of stake consensus mechanism is explored in this work. This new consensus mechanism is a Reputation Scaled - Proof of Stake. This reputation can be built over time by voting for the winning side consistently or by sticking to one’s beliefs strongly. The thesis hopes to bridge the gap in current consensus algorithms and incentivize critical reasoning.

The progress in machine learning has led to advanced deep neural networks. These networks are widely used in computer vision tasks and safety-critical applications. The automotive industry, in particular, has experienced a significant transformation with the integration of deep learning techniques and neural networks. This integration contributes to the realization of autonomous driving systems. Object detection is a crucial element in autonomous driving. It contributes to vehicular safety and operational efficiency. This technology allows vehicles to perceive and identify their surroundings. It detects objects like pedestrians, vehicles, road signs, and obstacles. Object detection has evolved from being a conceptual necessity to an integral part of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and the foundation of autonomous driving technologies. These advancements enable vehicles to make real-time decisions based on their understanding of the environment, improving safety and driving experiences. However, the increasing reliance on deep neural networks for object detection and autonomous driving has brought attention to potential vulnerabilities within these systems. Recent research has highlighted the susceptibility of these systems to adversarial attacks. Adversarial attacks are well-designed inputs that exploit weaknesses in the deep learning models underlying object detection. Successful attacks can cause misclassifications and critical errors, posing a significant threat to the functionality and safety of autonomous vehicles. With the rapid development of object detection systems, the vulnerability to adversarial attacks has become a major concern. These attacks manipulate inputs to deceive the target system, significantly compromising the reliability and safety of autonomous vehicles. In this study, we focus on analyzing adversarial attacks on state-of-the-art object detection models. We create adversarial examples to test the models’ robustness. We also check if the attacks work on a different object detection model meant for similar tasks. Additionally, we extensively evaluate recent defense mechanisms to see how effective they are in protecting deep neural networks (DNNs) from adversarial attacks and provide a comprehensive overview of the most commonly used defense strategies against adversarial attacks, highlighting how they can be implemented practically in real-world situations.

Linux and Linux-based operating systems have been gaining more popularity among the general users and among developers. Many big enterprises and large companies are using Linux for servers that host their websites, some even require their developers to have knowledge about Linux OS. Even in embedded systems one can find many Linux-based OS that run them. With its increasing popularity, one can deduce the need to secure such a system that many personnel rely on, be it to protect the data that it stores or to protect the integrity of the system itself, or even to protect the availability of the services it offers. Many researchers and Linux enthusiasts have been coming up with various ways to secure Linux OS, however new vulnerabilities and new bugs are always found, by malicious attackers, with every update or change, which calls for the need of more ways to secure these systems. This Thesis explores the possibility and feasibility of another way to secure Linux OS, specifically securing the terminal of such OS, by altering the commands of the terminal, getting in the way of attackers that have gained terminal access and delaying, giving more time for the response teams and for forensics to stop the attack, minimize the damage, restore operations, and to identify collect and store evidence of the cyber-attack. This research will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various security measures and compare and contrast with the method suggested in this research. This research is significant because it paints a better picture of what the state of the art of Linux and Linux-based operating systems security looks like, and it addresses the concerns of security enthusiasts, while exploring new uncharted area of security that have been looked at as a not so significant part of protecting the OSes out of concern of the various limitations and problems it entails. This research will address these concerns while exploring few ways to solve them, as well as addressing the ideal areas and situations in which the proposed method can be used, and when would such method be more of a burden than help if used.

Truth is the first causality of war”, is a very often used statement. What rather intrigues the mind is what causes the causality of truth. If one dives deeper, one may also wonder why is this so-called truth the first target in a war. Who all see the truth before it dies. These questions rarely get answered as the media and general public tends to focus more on the human and economic losses in a war or war like situation. What many fail to realize is that these truthful pieces of information are critical to how a situation further develops. One correct information may change the course of the whole war saving millions and one mis-information may do the opposite. Since its inception, some studies have been conducted to propose and develop new applications for OSINT in various fields. In addition to OSINT, Artificial Intelligence is a worldwide trend that is being used in conjunction witThe question here is, what is this information. Who transmits this and how? What is the source. Although, there has been an extensive use of the information provided by the secret services of any nation, which have come handy to many, another kind of information system is using the one that is publicly available, but in different pieces. This kind of information may come from people posting on social media, some publicly available records and much more. The key part in this publicly available information is that these are just pieces of information available across the globe from various different sources. This could be seen as small pieces of a puzzle that need to be put together to see the bigger picture. This is where OSINT comes in place. h other areas (AI). AI is the branch of computer science that is in charge of developing intelligent systems. In terms of contribution, this work presents a 9-step systematic literature review as well as consolidated data to support future OSINT studies. It was possible to understand where the greatest concentration of publications was, which countries and continents developed the most research, and the characteristics of these publications using this information. What are the trends for the next OSINT with AI studies? What AI subfields are used with OSINT? What are the most popular keywords, and how do they relate to others over time?A timeline describing the application of OSINT is also provided. It was also clear how OSINT was used in conjunction with AI to solve problems in various areas with varying objectives. Private investigators and journalists are no longer the primary users of open-source intelligence gathering and analysis (OSINT) techniques. Approximately 80-90 percent of data analysed by intelligence agencies is now derived from publicly available sources. Furthermore, the massive expansion of the internet, particularly social media platforms, has made OSINT more accessible to civilians who simply want to trawl the Web for information on a specific individual, organisation, or product. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union was implemented in the United Kingdom in May 2018 through the new Data Protection Act, with the goal of protecting personal data from unauthorised collection, storage, and exploitation. This document presents a preliminary review of the literature on GDPR-related work. The reviewed literature is divided into six sections: ’What is OSINT?’, ’What are the risks?’ and benefits of OSINT?’, ’What is the rationale for data protection legislation?’, ’What are the current legislative frameworks in the UK and Europe?’, ’What is the potential impact of the GDPR on OSINT?’, and ’Have the views of civilian and commercial stakeholders been sought and why is this important?’. Because OSINT tools and techniques are available to anyone, they have the unique ability to be used to hold power accountable. As a result, it is critical that new data protection legislation does not impede civilian OSINT capabilities. In this paper we see how OSINT has played an important role in the wars across the globe in the past. We also see how OSINT is used in our everyday life. We also gain insights on how OSINT is playing a role in the current war going on between Russia and Ukraine. Furthermore, we look into some of these OSINT tools and how they work. We also consider a use case where OSINT is used as an anti terrorism tool. At the end, we also see how OSINT has evolved over the years, and what we can expect in the future as to what OSINT may look like.

As e-commerce platforms have grown in popularity, new difficulties have emerged, such as the growing use of bots—automated programs—to engage with e-commerce websites. Even though some algorithms are helpful, others are malicious and can seriously hurt e-commerce platforms by making fictitious purchases, posting fictitious evaluations, and gaining control of user accounts. Therefore, the development of more effective and precise bot identification systems is urgently needed to stop such actions. This thesis proposes a methodology for detecting bots in E-commerce using machine learning algorithms such as K-nearest neighbors, Decision Tree, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Neural Network. The purpose of the research is to assess and contrast the output of these machine learning methods. The suggested approach will be based on data that is readily accessible to the public, and the study’s focus will be on the research of bots in e-commerce. The purpose of the study is to provide an overview of bots in e-commerce, as well as information on the different kinds and traits of bots, as well as current research on bots in e-commerce and associated work on bot detection in e-commerce. The research also seeks to create a more precise and effective bot detection system as well as find critical factors in detecting bots in e-commerce. This research is significant because it sheds light on the increasing issue of bots in e-commerce and the requirement for more effective bot detection systems. The suggested approach for using machine learning algorithms to identify bots in ecommerce can give e-commerce platforms a more precise and effective bot detection system to stop malicious bot activities. The study’s results can also be used to create a more effective bot detection system and pinpoint key elements in detecting bots in e-commerce.

As cyber threats continue to evolve, it is becoming increasingly important for organizations to have a Security Operations Center (SOC) in place to effectively defend against them. However, building and maintaining a SOC can be a daunting task without clear guidelines, policies, and procedures in place. Additionally, most current SOC solutions used by organizations are outdated, lack key features and integrations, and are expensive to maintain and upgrade. Moreover, proprietary solutions can lead to vendor lock-in, making it difficult to switch to a different solution in the future. To address these challenges, this thesis proposes a comprehensive SOC framework and an open-source SOC solution that provides organizations with a flexible and cost-effective way to defend against modern cyber threats. The research methodology involved conducting a thorough literature review of existing literature and research on building and maintaining a SOC, including using SOC as a service. The data collected from the literature review was analyzed to identify common themes, challenges, and best practices for building and maintaining a SOC. Based on the data collected, a comprehensive framework for building and maintaining a SOC was developed. The framework addresses essential areas such as the scope and purpose of the SOC, governance and leadership, staffing and skills, technologies and tools, processes and procedures, service level agreements (SLAs), and evaluation and measurement. This framework provides organizations with the necessary guidance and resources to establish and effectively operate a SOC, as well as a reference for evaluating the service provided by SOC service providers. In addition to the SOC framework, a modern open-source SOC solution was developed, which emphasizes several key measures to help organizations defend against modern cyber threats. These measures include real-time, actionable threat intelligence, rapid and effective incident response, continuous security monitoring and alerting, automation, integration, and customization. The use of open-source technologies and a modular architecture makes the solution cost-effective, allowing organizations to scale it up or down as needed. Overall, the proposed SOC framework and open-source SOC solution provide organizations with a comprehensive and systematic approach for building and maintaining a SOC that is aligned with the needs and objectives of the organization. The open-source SOC solution provides a flexible and cost-effective way to defend against modern cyber threats, helping organizations to effectively operate their SOC and reduce their risk of security incidents and breaches.

Even though the internet has only been there for a short period, it has grown tremendously. To- day, a significant portion of commerce is conducted entirely online because of increased inter- net users and technological advancements in web construction. Additionally, cyberattacks and threats have expanded significantly, leading to financial losses, privacy breaches, identity theft, a decrease in customers’ confidence in online banking and e-commerce, and a decrease in brand reputation and trust. When an attacker pretends to be a genuine and trustworthy institution, they can steal private and confidential information from a victim. Aside from that, phishing has been an ongoing issue for a long time. Billions of dollars have been shed on the global economy. In recent years, there has been significant progress in the development of phishing detection and identification systems to protect against phishing attacks. Phishing detection technologies frequently produce binary results, i.e., whether a phishing attempt was made or not, with no explanation. On the other hand, phishing identification methodologies identify phishing web- pages by visually comparing webpages with predetermined authentic references and reporting phishing together with its target brand, resulting in findings that are understandable. However, technical difficulties in the field of visual analysis limit the applicability of currently available solutions, preventing them from being both effective (with high accuracy) and efficient (with little runtime overhead). Here, we evaluate existed framework called Phishpedia. This hybrid deep learning system can recognize identity logos from webpage screenshots and match logo variants of the same brand with high precision. Phishpedia provides high accuracy with low run- time. Lastly, unlike other methods, Phishpedia does not require training on any phishing sam- ples whatsoever. Phishpedia exceeds baseline identification techniques (EMD, PhishZoo, and LogoSENSE), inaccurately detecting phishing pages in lengthy testing using accurate phishing data. The effectiveness of Phishpedia was tested and compared against other standard machine learning algorithms and some state-of-the-art algorithms. The given solutions performed better than different algorithms in the given dataset, which is impressive.

Encryption techniques allow storing and transferring of sensitive information securely by using encryption at rest and encryption in transit, respectively. However, when computation is performed on these sensitive data, the data needs to be decrypted first and encrypted again after performing the computations. During the computations, the sensitive data becomes vulnerable to attackers as it's in decrypted form. Homomorphic encryption, a special type of encryption technique that allows computation on encrypted data can be used to solve the above-mentioned problem. The best way to achieve maximum security with homomorphic encryption is to perform at least the homomorphic encryption and decryption on the client side (browser) of a web application by not trusting the server. At present time there are many libraries with different homomorphic schemes available for homomorphic encryption. However, there are very few to no JavaScript libraries available to perform homomorphic encryption on the client side of any web application. This thesis mainly focuses on the JavaScript implementation of client-side homomorphic encryption. The fully homomorphic encryption scheme BFV is selected for the implementation. After implementing the fully homomorphic encryption scheme based on the “py-fhe” library, tests are also carried out in order to determine the applicability (in terms of time consumption, security and correctness) of this implementation in a web application by comparing the performance and security for different test cases and different settings.

It is generally agreed that the development and deployment of an important amount of IoT devices throughout the world has revolutionized our lives in a way that we can rely on these devices to complete certain tasks that may have not been possible just years ago which also brought a new level of convenience and value to our lives. This technology is allowing us in a smart home environment to remotely control doors, windows, and fridges, purchase online, stream music easily with the use of voice assistants such as Amazon Echo Alexa, also close a garage door from anywhere in the world to cite some examples as this technology has added value to several domains ranging from household environments, cites, industries by exchanging and transferring data between these devices and customers. Many of these devices’ sensors, collect and share information in real-time which enables us to make important business decisions. However, these devices pose some risks and also some security and privacy challenges that need to be addressed to reach their full potential or be considered to be secure. That is why, comprehensive risk analysis techniques are essential to enhance the security posture of IoT devices as they can help evaluate the robustness and reliability towards potential susceptibility to risks, and vulnerabilities that IoT devices in a smart home setting might possess. This approach relies on the basis of ISO/IEC 27005 methodology and risk matrix method to highlight the level of risks, impact, and likelihood that an IoT device in smart home settings can have, map the related vulnerability, threats and risks and propose the necessary mitigation strategies or countermeasures that can be taken to secure a device and therefore satisfying some security principles. Around 30 risks were identified on Amazon Echo and the related IoT system using the methodology. A detailed list of countermeasures is proposed as a result of the risk analysis. These results, in turn, can be used to elevate the security posture of the device.

On a regular basis, we hear of well-known online services that have been abused or compromised as a result of data theft. Because insecure applications jeopardize users' privacy as well as the reputation of corporations and organizations, they must be effectively secured from the outset of the development process. The limited expertise and experience of involved parties, such as web developers, is frequently cited as a cause of risky programs. Consequently, they rarely have a full picture of the security-related decisions that must be made, nor do they understand how these decisions affect implementation accurately. The selection of tools and procedures that can best assist a certain situation in order to protect an application against vulnerabilities is a critical decision. Regardless of the level of security that results from adhering to security standards, these factors inadvertently result in web applications that are insufficiently secured. JavaScript is a language that is heavily relied on as a mainstream programming language for web applications with several new JavaScript frameworks being released every year. JavaScript is used on both the server-side in web applications development and the client-side in web browsers as well. However, JavaScript web programming is based on a programming style in which the application developer can, and frequently must, automatically integrate various bits of code from third parties. This potent combination has resulted in a situation today where security issues are frequently exploited. These vulnerabilities can compromise an entire server if left unchecked. Even though there are numerous ad hoc security solutions for web browsers, client-side attacks are also popular. The issue is significantly worse on the server side because the security technologies available for server-side JavaScript application frameworks are nearly non-existent. Consequently, this thesis focuses on the server-side aspect of JavaScript; the development and evaluation of robust server-side security technologies for JavaScript web applications. There is a clear need for robust security technologies and security best practices in server-side JavaScript that allow fine-grained security. However, more than ever, there is this requirement of reducing the associated risks without hindering the web application in its functionality. This is the problem that will be tackled in this thesis: the development of secure security practices and robust security technologies for JavaScript web applications, specifically, on the server-side, that offer adequate security guarantees without putting too many constraints on their functionality.