CYSE 201S talked about the Social Science involved with cybersecurity and the digital environment. We explored into the reasoning that people might commit cybercrimes, what the motivating factor that could cause someone’s behavioral, and the outcomes on people and companies from these cyber attacks. The overall course has broadened my knowledge on the reasoning and effects that people have when it comes to the digital world, and has made me think more about how much has changed with technology and will continue to change for better or worse in the future.
Discussion Board 1
Hi, my name is Cody. I am currently a Junior Cybersecurity Major. I have taken a lot of online classes since 2020 mainly due to transferring from another university, attending community college, changing my major, and having to take time away from college because of health problems. My goals after graduation is to find a job as a penetration tester and possibly go for government certification. I do have an e-portfolio, but I plan on making a better one later.
Discussion Board 2
Determinism’s relation to computer hacking can be summed up to what is the reason for someone hacking into computers or what is their motive for hacking in general. People tend to hack for a lot of different reasons whether they are good or bad, there is ethical reasons for hacking into computers that can justify the determinism for someone to decide to do something. Hacking and determinism goes together because there is always a motif for someone breaking the law.
Discussion Board 3
Security breaches are becoming even more common and convoluted on how they are being carried out, even though human error are the most common ways that they happen, there is still multiple ways that can influence human error. Human error can be classified in different ways from negligence or external threats, these are different ways that could result in human error that companies have to look out for and make sure that the employees are aware of these things. The most common way that companies prioritize limiting human error is by teaching, teaching can go a long way by informing employees about what to look out for and the importance of the damages that negligence can cause; this is very important because it can keep employees up to date on developing threats and if something had occurred due to the result of an employee. To help improve security two-factor authentication is a key way in making sure that the employee is who they supposed to be, watching for malware and keeping watch for any phishing emails that employees might not be aware of is also important for maintaining security, rules and guidelines for personal device use while actively being logged into work and looking at secure information.
Discussion Board 4
Victim precipitation can lead to cyber victimization due to the victim putting themselves in a position that can warrant backlash or a response because of them initiating a provocative online activity. This is very common in the gaming space where someone will start a provocative attack against someone warranting them to retaliate in different ways that sometimes can lead to doxing or constant harassment. It is also fairly common on social media where someone post something that they know will get people to react in a way, that term is sometimes referred to as “engagement farming” and also can involve “rage baiting”. All of these things can lead to cyberbullying or being targeted by hackers with malicious intent, this is a wrong way for people to react, but the internet is massive place that has people from all over the world that has different mindsets, so people should understand that what they do or who they engage on the internet can have repercussions.
Discussion Board 5
Behavioral Theory and Neutralization Theory are the two theories that I feel best explain the reason behind cybercrimes. Behavioral Theory is the study that people’s behavior is learned and that ties into cybercrimes being learned, different factors can influence a persons behavior for the way that they decide to do things; if a person was to join a hacktivist group and learn to DDOS servers for fun, that person might start to do that more and enjoy it. Neutralization Theory is the ethical thinking of an individual and it involves individuals justifying there reasoning for doing something even if it was wrong, like someone or a group of people deciding to hack into a company’s database and collect data for ransom. I like behavioral theory because of it talking about influences on a persons behavior or the reason that they could be acting a certain way, and Neutralization theory because it talks about a persons ethical reasoning and how or why they try to justify their reasoning; both of the theories can go hand in hand for why someone’s behavior could have influenced their ethical decision and their justification.
Discussion Board 6
The conversation about Human Firewalls as talked about in the Ted Talk brings up very valid talking points about how a lot of the times people’s information is taken because of human error. Phishing attacks are a very common and easy way to grab someone’s information because there’s a lot of different ways that people can carry out the attack and make it look authenticate, that posses a threat to majority of the population that can’t recognize when something looks fake, I personally was victim of a phishing attack and I also have done a phishing attack for a learning purpose that has worked. Human Firewall is a very important concept that everyone should know about and have to better protect our private information and any information that we are given, it should be the first thing that people think of when interacting out in public or on the the internet because it can better prevent the widespread usage of phishing attacks. Teaching and training should be prioritized to inform the public about the safety that being a human firewall brings to people, the same way that cybersecurity teaching does when it comes to protecting information and preventing harmful attacks on systems and people.
Discussion Board 7
The video displaying the the 12-year old Reuben Paul is an example of the importance of knowing about cyber safety at a young age and understanding how cyber threats can be carried out through simple WIFI connections. He was able to realize how easy it is to grab peoples information through connecting to WIFI, this is a important thing because a lot of people connect to pubic places without understanding that a bad actor could be watching a waiting for their information. The fact that he was able to hack into the Cloud Pets and be able to make any toy into a listening device as long as he is within 30ft as a 12 year old is impressive and alarming, as he said “if he can do it at 12 years old, what’s stopping someone older with more skill and trying to cause harm from being able to do it”, that is something that should be a warning for people to start taking more care about their cyber awareness. Reuben Paul is in a good situation by understanding cyber awareness, having a very supportive and knowledgeable family that deals with technology, and has little brother that also involves himself in cyber awareness; these things are stuff that we talk about in class that can lead to an individual’s ethical decision making and can lead them to be an ethical hacker trying to inform people about the dangers of the cyber space.
Discussion Board 8
A common question that we see being asked in this digital era is: What is the dangers that AI will have on the cybersecurity field and the digital environment?
When looking at AI and how much it is growing and being incorporated into a lot of stuff that we as people use on the daily basis, it makes people start to question the ethical reasoning and starts to make grow more concerned with it being in their daily lives. People’s concerns are valid because we see that AI like Grok that is incorporated into Twitter or X, is able to manipulate images to make people have less clothes or doing something inappropriate against the the persons posting, and all it takes is for another user to ask it a command to do it. This has also caused the AI to produce CP of people under 18 that have had an image posted on the site and has caused countries to take legal action against Twitter, yet people can still ask the AI to do it but behind a paid subscription.
Another question that is asked by people is: The concern of IoT devices becoming more common and how safe they are form being hacked?
IoT devices are becoming more common for use in peoples homes and people concerned about what the devices are able to collect when it comes to their privacy. IoT devices do collect data on peoples actions, whether it is what they have said around the house or have looked up on the internet, but that does not mean that the devices are securely keeping that information. People are also concerned about the vulnerabilities of IoT devices, which is something that is concerning because they can be an easy path way to getting into the security of someone’s home due to a lack of hardened security on the devices.
Discussion Board 9
When talking about the effect that economics has on cybersecurity, we can correlate it to reasoning for someone hacking. The 2008 market caused a massive influx of cybercrime related to financial attacks, the cybercrimes were targeting financial institutes and regular citizens because of the financial problems that people were facing and people getting desperate. People also felt like they were in the right to target the financial places, the government, and people that were financially stable at the time; because of everything that was happening to them financially. Economics also changed the way that cybersecurity was prioritized in organizational structure, due to the threats and cost of lost that companies had experienced since they didn’t put focus on security in a growing digital age. Organizations had suffered breeches constantly through ransom attacks and phishing attacks that has costed millions in damages and customer personal information stollen. Cybersecurity also focuses on building trust between the customer and the service, by showing that their information is protected under the their security, which then can bring in more customers that will feel like their services are being prioritized; An example of this was the 2013 Target Data Breach where 40 million credit/debit card accounts were stollen, reputation was down, 46% drop in earnings, and a complete overhaul of the cybersecurity; all of that happened due to a 3rd party HVAC vendor.
Brando, D., Kotidis, A., Kovner, A., Lee, M., & Schreft, S. L. (2022, December 5). Implications of cyber risk for financial stability. The Fed – Implications of Cyber Risk for Financial Stability. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/implications-of-cyber-risk-for-financial-stability-20220512.htmlLinks to an external site.
A “kill chain” analysis of the 2013 Target Data Breach. (n.d.-a). https://www.commerce.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/media/doc/2014%200325%20Target%20Kill%20Chain%20Analysis.pdf
Discussion Board 10
I believe that one of the reason that cybercrime victimization doesn’t get reported is because of the response that might be given and people tend to feel that authorities don’t help if you they report something. Generations have different views about what happens on the internet and how someone can prevent it from happening, cyberbullying for instance tends to get looked down on until it becomes serious, because it involves the use of a device that people can just turn-off or walk away from. People tend to argue that just getting off the device and stop interacting with it can solve the cyberbullying problem completely, when in fact that cyberbullying can spread out to in real life meetings or can be spread out to multiple other people that can join in on the bullying. So if someone is to report that cyberbullying is happening to them and they get the response of just turn off the device, it might make them feel helpless to the problem seeing that they told a trusted individual that is looking playing down on the problem. Cyberbullying is only one example of a cybercrime that is very common that effects a wide age range of people, but it also shows how dealing with cybercrimes has a long way to go.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11572478/Links to an external site.
Article 1 , Testing Human Ability to Detect ‘Deepfake’ Images of Human Faces
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Rool64jl-kw18PATCnogt-eTYEWp6g_0EHQbabIPxmg/edit?usp=sharing
Article 2, Cyberbullying on Social Media: Definitions, Prevalence, and Impact Challenges
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1a5JmM5we4z1Gv6jxcHVVLf79yKVN2i3UGKnbylcU1NQ/edit?usp=sharing
Career Paper-Cybersecurity Penetration Tester
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18JQwupnLGUOie9v_DenABsGNj2sQ8gaCTxuzAf_BvUQ/edit?usp=sharing