Difference between revisions of "Talk:Cyber Criminal Activity"

Latest revision as of 21:07, 10 November 2005

Avichal 13:07, 10 November 2005 (PST)Copy of my email
Hi All

Sorry for the long email, but I think this is necessary. I have spoken to Prof. Ed lazowska about 2 things

1) Division of subtopics - I had proposed the a possible subdivision as per the Project Instruction document (http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/csep590/05au/project.doc)

• describing a particular threat
• assessing possible losses in the event of an attack
• assessing current vulnerabilities
• presenting possible responses, and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of each

This is how my group divided it's work for the Red-Team exercises. But it only worked because the scope of the exercise was so small. If we divide the subtopics in this way, it'll need significant team-work to present a coherent paper. We'll have to constantly sync-up to ensure we are all focusing on the same areas/direction, since the subtopics are intertwined and one topic almost flows from another topic.

What I suggested and Professor agreed to was that we divide our subtopics on specific areas of cybercrime. E.g.

• Organized Crime (my topic of interest): focussed on organized cybercrime efforts instead of the lone hackers, links to mafia etc.
• Emerging threat of Internet Bots
• Legal Policies on Cybercrime: effectiveness of laws, examples, etc.
• Future Direction of Cybercrime & Countermeasures- how it could moves upstack from Application to Services layer, is there a solution to this riddle
• Cyberforensics - how cyber criminals are being caught (I also have interest in this)
• ...

Does that make sense to everyone. That way we would be able to work independently and focus on our research. Ofcoourse we'll collaborate later to create an Executive Summary or Epilogue or something which ties the chapters together. Also it'll be great if the subtopics are such that they fit well together in the final report.

I would propose we list all our possible subtopics on the Wiki, and then we can choose out of them (possibly picking topics which we think would fit well in the overall paper). I have listed my topics on the main project page - [1] The sooner we do this the better.

2) Policy Student - Prof. made it clear that this is not a strict requirement, and teams will not be penalized if there aren't any policy students. Ofcourse the course is partly about policy and so will the Final Project/White Paper that we'll work on. We'll just have to put on our policy hats for that. I don't think that should be a problem. So I would say let's not wait for the policy student (we may or may not get one) and finalize this team and move on.

Cheers! - Avichal

--Hema 08:30, 9 November 2005 (PST)We will need a policy student. So I will update the page.

Avichal 16:05, 8 November 2005 (PST) Hi All. Sorry I've been dormant lately. I had checked with Prof. Ed Lazowaska, and the requirement of having a policy student will not be strictly enforced. Ofcourse that does not mean we will not cover the policy angle, infact we'll probably cover it quite extensively. So let's finalize this group and start working.

Start resarching and thinking of how this topic can be divided in sub-topics. If you know what sub-topics you are interested in, then please inform the group immediately. That way we will avoid any wasteful duplication of effort.

We can possibly break it as it's suggested in the project instructions [2]

1. describing a particular threat
2. assessing possible losses in the event of an attack
3. assessing current vulnerabilities
4. presenting possible responses, and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of each

I have been interested in the link between cybercrime and organized crime. I suppose that could contribute to 1 and 4.

--Fleizach 20:33, 4 November 2005 to those who have joined this group, do you want to close the group at four or five people and start working?