Comparison of Entropy Calculation Methods for Ransomware Encrypted File Identification
Journal Article
Davies, S., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. (2022)
Comparison of Entropy Calculation Methods for Ransomware Encrypted File Identification. Entropy, 24(10), Article 1503. https://doi.org/10.3390/e24101503
Ransomware is a malicious class of software that utilises encryption to implement an attack on system availability. The target’s data remains encrypted and is held captive by ...
NapierOne: A modern mixed file data set alternative to Govdocs1
Journal Article
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
NapierOne: A modern mixed file data set alternative to Govdocs1. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 40, Article 301330. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2021.301330
It was found when reviewing the ransomware detection research literature that almost no proposal provided enough detail on how the test data set was created, or sufficient des...
Differential Area Analysis for Ransomware Attack Detection within Mixed File Datasets
Journal Article
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021)
Differential Area Analysis for Ransomware Attack Detection within Mixed File Datasets. Computers and Security, 108, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2021.102377
The threat from ransomware continues to grow both in the number of affected victims as well as the cost incurred by the people and organisations impacted in a successful attac...
Evaluation of Live Forensic Techniques in Ransomware Attack Mitigation
Journal Article
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2020)
Evaluation of Live Forensic Techniques in Ransomware Attack Mitigation. Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation, 33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsidi.2020.300979
Ransomware continues to grow in both scale, cost, complexity and impact since its initial discovery nearly 30 years ago. Security practitioners are engaged in a continual "arm...
Wi-Fi Channel Saturation as a Mechanism to Improve Passive Capture of Bluetooth Through Channel Usage Restriction
Journal Article
Lowe, I., Buchanan, W. J., Macfarlane, R., & Lo, O. (2019)
Wi-Fi Channel Saturation as a Mechanism to Improve Passive Capture of Bluetooth Through Channel Usage Restriction. Journal of Networking Technology, 10(4), 124-155. https://doi.org/10.6025/jnt/2019/10/4/124-155
Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology that provides audio and data links between personal smartphones and playback devices, such as speakers, headsets and car enterta...
Distance Measurement Methods for Improved Insider Threat Detection
Journal Article
Lo, O., Buchanan, W. J., Griffiths, P., & Macfarlane, R. (2018)
Distance Measurement Methods for Improved Insider Threat Detection. Security and Communication Networks, 2018, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5906368
Insider threats are a considerable problem within cyber security and it is often difficult to detect these threats using signature detection. Increasing machine learning can p...
A methodology for the security evaluation within third-party Android Marketplaces
Journal Article
Buchanan, W. J., Chiale, S., & Macfarlane, R. (2017)
A methodology for the security evaluation within third-party Android Marketplaces. Digital Investigation, 23, 88-98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diin.2017.10.002
This paper aims to evaluate possible threats with unofficial Android marketplaces, and geo localize the malware distribution over three main regions: China, Europe; and Russia...
Evaluation of TFTP DDoS amplification attack
Journal Article
Sieklik, B., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2016)
Evaluation of TFTP DDoS amplification attack. Computers and Security, 57, 67-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2015.09.006
Web threats are becoming a major issue for both governments and companies. Generally, web threats increased as much as 600% during last year (WebSense, 2013). This appears to ...
Fast contraband detection in large capacity disk drives.
Journal Article
Penrose, P., Buchanan, W. J., & Macfarlane, R. (2015)
Fast contraband detection in large capacity disk drives. Digital Investigation, 12(S1), S22-S29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diin.2015.01.007
In recent years the capacity of digital storage devices has been increasing at a rate that has left digital forensic services struggling to cope. There is an acknowledgement t...
Approaches to the classification of high entropy file fragments.
Journal Article
Penrose, P., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2013)
Approaches to the classification of high entropy file fragments. Digital Investigation, 10(4), 372-384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diin.2013.08.004
In this paper we propose novel approaches to the problem of classifying high entropy file fragments. We achieve 97% correct classification for encrypted fragments and 78% for ...