7. Sniffing out insider threats
Researchers are developing technology they say will use data mining and social networking techniques to spot and stop insider security threats and industrial espionage.
Air Force Institute of Technology researchers have developed software that can spot insider threats using an extended version of automated document indexing known as Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing (PLSI). This technology can discern employees' interests from e-mail and create a social network graph showing their various interactions, researchers said.
The technology could help any organization sniff out insider threats by analyzing e-mail activity or find individuals among potentially tens of thousands of employees with latent interests in sensitive topics. The same technology might also be used to spot individuals who feel alienated within the organization as well as unraveling any worrying changes in their social network interactions. The researchers explain that individuals who have shown an interest in a sensitive topic but who have never communicated to others within the organization on this subject are often the most likely to be an insider threat.
The software can reveal those people either with a secret interest in that topic or who may feel alienated from the organization and so communicate their interest in it only to those outside the organization, researchers said. Another important signal of alienation or a potential problem is a shift in the connections between an individual and others within the organization. If an individual suddenly stops communicating or socializing with others with whom they have previously had frequent contact, then the technology could alert investigators to such changes.
The research team tested their approach on the archived body of messages from the liquidated Enron company e-mail system.
8. All about Twitter
University of Maryland students have written a paper called "Why We Twitter: Understanding Microblogging Usage and Communities" examining why people Twitter. Also known as microblogging, Twittering is a new form of communication in which users can describe their current status in short posts distributed by instant messages, mobile phones, e-mail or the Web," according to the paper's abstract.
The authors, Akshay Java, Xiaodan Song, Tim Finin and Belle Tseng, say the paper "presents our observations of the microblogging phenomena by studying the topological and geographical properties of Twitter's social network." They concluded that figuring out why individuals microblog is elusive, but that by analyzing an aggregate of data across a community can provide insight into why a group of people microblog.
9. Spotting phishers
Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed an online game designed to teach Internet users about the dangers of phishing.
Featuring a cartoon fish named Phil, the game, called Anti-Phishing Phil, has been tested in CMU's Privacy and Security Laboratory. Officials with the lab say users who spent 15 minutes playing the interactive, online game were better able to discern fraudulent Web sites than those who simply read tutorials about the threat.
The game focuses on teaching Internet users how to tell the URL of a fraudulent site from a legitimate one, officials say. It offers tips such as examining URLs for misspellings of popular sites, dissecting a Web address to understand where it's pointing to, and using Google to validate a URL against search results.