Data Mining for Obtaining Secure E-Mail Communications

Author(s):  
Mª Dolores del Castillo

Email is now an indispensable communication tool and its use is continually growing. This growth brings with it an increase in the number of electronic threats that can be classified into five categories according to their inner behavior: virus, trojans, pharming, spam, and phishing. Viruses, trojans and pharming threats represent an attack to the user’s computer while the focus of attack of spam and phishing threats is mainly the user, that is, these last two threats involve a kind of intellectual attack. A virus is a small program that replicates itself and inserts copies into other executable code or documents using e-mails as a means of transport. Trojans can not replicate themselves and they are used to open a network port giving other users a means of controlling the infected computer. Other more dangerous trojans are called spy programs (spyware) which wait until users visit some websites and then capture all the keys typed and mouse movements and make screenshots to obtain information. Pharming is a technique used to redirect users to illegitimate websites. These three threats, in spite of being present in e-mails, can be solved by an anti virus program. The next two threats need e-mail filters to be solved and this chapter focuses on them: spam and phishing. Spam consists on the massive sending of unsolicited commercial e-mail to a large number of recipients. Unlike legitimate commercial e-mail, spam is sent without the explicit permission of the recipients. Spammers obtain e-mail addresses by different ways such as guessing common names at known domains or searching addresses in web pages. A report from the Commission of European Communities (“Communication from”, 2004) shows that more than 25 percent of all e-mail currently received is spam. More recent reliable data shows that spam represents 60-80 percent of e-mail volume. Spam is widely recognized as one of the most significant problems facing the Internet today. Spam has evolved to a new and dangerous form known as ‘phishing’. Phishing differs from spam in that it is generated by a criminal intent on stealing personal data for financial gain (“Spyware”, 2007). Phishing is the term used to describe emails which trick recipients into revealing their personal or their company’s confidential information such as social security and financial account numbers, account passwords and other identity or security information. According to Anti-Phishing Working Group (“June Phishing”, 2006) the number of phishing reports has increased from 20,109 in May 2006 to 28,571 in June 2006 and it is the most ever recorded. Phishing attacks increase despite of the efforts of e-mail filters. Although only 0.001 percent of e-mail sent is responded to, this percentage is enough to return on the investment and keep the phishing industry alive. Further research has estimated that the costs of these phishing attacks on consumers in 2003 ranged from $500 million to an amazing $2.4 billion.

Author(s):  
Ranaganayakulu Dhanalakshmi ◽  
Chenniappan Chellappan

Identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain. In spite of the different possible attacks discussed in later chapters, this chapter can focus on phishing attacks – a form of indirect attacks– such as an act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. Phishing attacks use ‘spoofed’ e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, et cetera. The vulnerabilities on various phishing methods such as domain name spoofing, URL obfuscation, susceptive e-mails, spoofed DNS and IP addresses, and cross site scripting are analyzed, and the chapter concludes that an integrated approach is required to mitigate phishing attacks.


Author(s):  
Ramesh Palanisamy ◽  
Mohammed Tariq Shaikh ◽  
Senthil Jayapal ◽  
Darla Thomas

Nowadays phishing can be considered one of the simplest and oldest ways to steal important data from users on the internet. And only by collecting a small quantity of data about victim the attacker will be able to produce personalized and plausible e-mail. However, these days more ways that are trying to be found and new technologies are inventive to deal with phishing. In this paper, I will present type, cause, prevention measures and dynamic features for growing phishing attacks.


Temida ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Marina Kovacevic-Lepojevic ◽  
Borko Lepojevic

The aim of this paper is to present research findings on prevalence and characteristics of cyberstalking in Serbia. A web-based questionnaire was used to collect data from a group of respondents who were recruited by snowball sampling via e-mail. A total of 237 respondents completed the online questionnaire. The aim of the first part of this paper is to determine the notion of cyberstalking as well as, to review research about the prevalence and the nature of stalking. The main results are the following: 39,6 % of respondents reported stalking; every fourth stalking victim is a victims of cyberstalking; mostly, cyberstalking victims were female and perpetrators were male. Victims were stalked by: persistent sending of unwanted e-mails and telephone calls, spreading rumors, abusive and negative comments and threats, encouraged other users to harass, threaten or insult, manipulating with victim's personal data, sending malicious programs and files, etc. In Serbia, cyberstalking is not criminalized yet and there are no organizations to whom victims may appeal and ask for help. We are hoping that this research will raise the awareness on cyberstalking and serve as a base for further research and legal reforms regarding cyberstalking victimization in Serbia.


Cyber Crime ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 245-262
Author(s):  
Madhusudhanan Chandrasekaran ◽  
Shambhu Upadhyaya

Phishing scams pose a serious threat to end-users and commercial institutions alike. E-mail continues to be the favorite vehicle to perpetrate such scams, mainly due to its widespread use combined with the ability to easily spoof them. Several approaches, both generic and specialized, have been proposed to address this growing problem. However, phishing techniques, growing in ingenuity as well as sophistication, render these solutions weak. To overcome these limitations, we propose a multistage framework – the first stage aims at detecting phishing based on their semantic and structural properties, whereas in the second stage we propose a proactive technique based on a challenge-response technique to establish the authenticity of a Web site. Using live e-mail data, we demonstrate that our approach with these two stages is able to detect a wider range of phishing attacks than existing schemes. Also, our performance analysis study shows that the implementation overhead introduced by our tool is negligibly small.


Author(s):  
James W. Ragucci ◽  
Stefan A. Robila

Fraudulent e-mails, known as phishing attacks, have brought chaos across the digital world causing billions of dollars of damage. These attacks are known for their ability to exploit the human aspect of a computer system by pretending to originate from a source trusted by the victim. While technology defenses have been setup for protection, people are still succumbing to these attacks at alarming rates. Therefore, educational techniques must implement to strengthen the human factor of security. We propose the use of a phishing IQ test that when used in classroom setting can help users build experience needed to identify phishing e-mail during their daily routine.


Author(s):  
María José Luzón

Although scientific research has always been a social activity, in recent years the adoption of Internet-based communication tools by researchers (e.g., e-mail, electronic discussion boards, electronic mailing lists, videoconferencing, weblogs) has led to profound changes in social interaction and collaboration among them. Research suggests that Internet technologies can improve and increase communication among noncollocated researchers, increase the size of work groups, increase equality of access to information by helping to integrate disadvantaged and less established researchers, help to coordinate work more efficiently, help to exchange documents and information quickly (Carley & Wendt, 1991; Nentwich, 2003). There is abundant research on new forms of group work originated from the use of computer technologies. Carley and Wendt (1991) use the term extended research group to refer to very large, cohesive, and highly cooperative research groups that, even being geographically dispersed, are coordinated under the supervision of a single director. The term collaboratory is also used to refer to similar groups (Finholt, 2002). Although there is much research on how Internet technologies are used by unified and cohesive work groups to collaborate (e.g., Moon & Sproull, 2002; Walsh & Maloney, 2002), less attention has been paid to how the Internet facilitates collaboration among researchers outside these highly cohesive groups. Weblogs (blogs) can become a useful tool for this type of collaboration and for the creation of virtual groups. Weblogs are frequently updated Web pages, consisting of many relatively short postings, organized in reverse chronological order, which tend to include the date, and a comment button so that readers can answer (Herring, Scheidt, Bonus, & Wright, 2004). They enable users to communicate with a worldwide nonrestricted community of people in similar fields, which leads to several forms of collaboration. The purpose of this article is to present a brief overview of the uses of weblogs as tools for research e-collaboration.


Author(s):  
Melih Kirlidog

Virtual Communities (VC), as defined by Rheingold (2000), are the social groups formed in the cyberspace when enough people carry on public discussions long enough and with sufficient human feeling. VC enabled by the ICT technologies are formed in two ways. Either their members can be actively engaged with each other and tightly coupled in e-mail discussion and communication groups, or they can be the passive observers of the Web pages and thereby loosely coupled with other members of the community.


Author(s):  
Chris Houser ◽  
Patricia Thornton

Mobile devices such as laptop computers, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and cell phones offer many features useful for learning both inside and outside classrooms. These devices offer access to Web pages and e-mail, and provide other functions such as textual noting and video cameras. They promise a single, easily learned device that can be useful in a variety of educational settings. When used appropriately, these devices can enrich the learning experience by connecting learners with each other, their environment, and with information providers. They can enable collaborative problem solving by providing easy face-to-face sharing of data through IR (infrared) beaming or distance sharing through e-mail and Web interfaces. For learners who require repetitive practice for skills development, mobile devices offer a personal tool that can be used anytime, anywhere for quick review. Because of their low cost and ease of use, mobile devices have the potential to bring the power of a computer to every learner.


2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Luis Romeu

Technology, particularly e-mail communication, listservers, newsgroups participation and uses of Web pages, has greatly increased the interaction between faculty and students of universities of different countries. These advances have also raised the interest in, the need for, and the possibilities about participating in international faculty and student exchanges and international course development and implementation. For example, for several years now this panelist has worked on a Student/Faculty exchange project between State University of New York (SUNY) and Mexican universities, using these technologies to substitute scant funds, yet obtaining significant results. This article describes Conference on Instructional Technology (CIT) Panel discussion that addressed some of the problems panelists found in developing their international exchange projects. It also discusses some problems encountered in developing the traditional and two new models of student exchanges and in the lack of a central SUNY structure capable of sustaining projects developed in one campus but benefitting all SUNY. We discuss how technology has helped to circumvent these problems and to provide working solutions that contribute positively. Benefits from as well as the costs of such exchanges are examined, traded off, and openly debated.


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