COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course addresses the social, political, legal, criminological, and economic dimensions of cybersecurity through a social science framework. Students are introduced to a human-factors approach to understanding cybersecurity threats. Attention is given to the social factors that contribute to cyber incidents and the political and legal mechanisms that are developed to control the behaviors of those who create risks and cybersecurity incidents. The class also explores how cybersecurity is studied by social scientists in various social science disciplines.

Article #1 review:

Article #2 review:

Career Paper:

module 1: sep,1,2023

The three social science jobs that I found interesting were criminology, psychologist, and historian. I find these jobs interesting because they deal with different aspects of people for example with criminology you learn why some people commit crimes and why others don’t. A psychologist learns why people may act in different ways when confronted with different situations, how people’s brains may handle certain stressful situations, and how that may cause someone to do or not do a certain thing. Historians, on the other hand, handle things that have already happened in the past and study what led to a certain event from happening in the first place. The most interesting about these jobs is that with them we can learn how to help prevent bad things from happening in the future, for example, a historian may find out why a war happened in the past and may be able to compare past events to current ones to warn people that we may be going down the same road as people from the past. With criminology, we can find what causes people to commit crimes and try to fix the root cause of the problem, and finally psychology. When learning about how people behave in certain situations we may be able to better help people when put in a bad situation, and or help prevent people from acting in a way that may hurt themselves or others. I personally like criminology the most because I believe that mixes the best with cybersecurity and is more in line with what cybersecurity is and what cybersecurity professionals do, which is to stop and protect against cybercrime. 

module 2: 12/15/2023

Explain how the principles of science relate to cybersecurity

The principles of science relate to cybersecurity by showing us why people may commit cyber crimes and knowing why certain people are more likely to engage in cybercrime may lead to a way for us to more efficiently stop cybercrime from happening by addressing the root cause for most cybercrimes.

module 3: 12/15/2023

Researchers could use this information to study what the most commonly targeted systems are for cyber criminals allowing cybersecurity experts to focus more resources onto those systems allowing for better protection of them. This information is also very useful for companies and organizations to see and understand what resources they have that are most likely to be targeted. Looking at the information on the first page of the website we can see that most attacks are being done against banks, which can allow researchers to inform banks that they need to increase their security since they are the most commonly targeted organizations. This website also gives us information on the way people are breaching systems security which can also give researchers more insight on the way someone is most likely to try and breach a systems security.

Module 4 12/15/2023: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs  

In this journal entry, I will be talking about how my digital experiences relate to each of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and I will be starting from the bottom of his pyramid and going up toward the stop. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has been bunched together an encompassing layer of needs such as basic needs, physiological needs, and self-fulfillment needs which will be the three that I will be discussing today so let us begin. The way I relate to basic needs from a digital standpoint is the want to remain secure online by using VPNs and other ways to try and stay safe online, like staying away from websites without HTTPS and trying not to click on random ads on websites. The other layer of the pyramid the “physiological needs” relates to me by allowing me to be able to easily and quickly connect with friends and family through certain apps like Discord or WhatsApp. This allows me to always be capable of speaking with them whenever they or I want to. Lastly, for the last layer the self-fulfillment layer I relate to it by being able to use technology like AI to learn and explore different concepts and ideas quickly and with ease without having to do much traveling. These technologies like chat-GPT also allow me to quickly answer any questions I may have about certain topics that a regular search engine like Google may not quickly answer for me. No one wants to have to read dozens of articles just to answer one question after all.

Module 5 12/15/2023: Review the articles linked with each individual motive. Rank the motives from 1 to 7 as the motives that you 

Today I will be ranking 7 motives that are linked with 7 articles and explaining why I ranked each motive the way I did. The rankings will be from 1-7 one being the highest and 7 being the lowest. I will be ranking each motive by the article they are associated with, so let us begin. The first motive I will be ranking is entertainment. I give this motive a 7, because committing cybercrime just for the “fun of it” is not a good reason to do it. I mean there is no GOOD reason to be a criminal, but at least some who do it have no choice or are in poverty so overall I would say this motive makes the least sense. The next motive I’ll be ranking will be boredom. This is arguably even worse than the first one, but I will give it a 6. This is because cyberbullying kids or sharing and posting illegal content because you are bored is probably the single most dumbest thing someone could do. Recognition will be the next motive I rank and I think it’s best ranked at 5 on the scale. This is because committing cybercrime for recognition similar to the article that was associated with this motive I think makes more sense compared to the last two. I can see and understand that some kids out here may want to stand out and seem “cool” by doing these things, which they hope will give me popularity, but in the end they most likely will just end up like the Bradley Niblocks from the article. With this being in mind I would say that doing a crime just to gain some momentary recognition doesn’t make the most sense.The next motive is revenge and as you might have guessed by the way I’ve been organizing this I have ranked this at a 4. Now revenge as it relates to revenge porn is ranked this high by me, because I kind of understand the sense behind people doing it even though it is possibly one of the worst things to be a victim of on the internet. I’d say that I understand feeling hurt by someone and wanting to get payback, but is it really worth risking going to prison for? I’d say no, but it still ranks above the other motives that lead people to commit certain crimes. The next motive will be political and I have given it a rank of 3. This is because I think that this may be one of the more reasonable reasons why someone might commit cybercrime depending on how it is done. This next one is listed as multiple reasons for a criminal’s motives so I’m putting this on in 2nd rank, since it lists multiple motives but it could go in either 2nd or 1st place. Now in rank one that goes to the motive “for money” since I think this one makes the most amount of sense on why someone would commit a crime. Money is something everyone needs and if you grow up in a bad situation and around the wrong people that may lead you down to crime and since you need money you are more likely to take the risks that criminal activity brings.

Module 6 12/15/2023: Can you spot three fake websites and compare the three fake websites to three real websites, plus showcase what makes the fake websites fake?

I can’t show you any fake websites but I can tell you how to spot fake websites one sign you should look for when trying to identify a fake website is the URL try to find any misspellings wrong words or anything that shouldn’t be a part of the domain name. Checking to make sure that the website you are on has an SSL certificate is also another good step to make sure it is legit or fake. A third thing to look for which should be the first thing you notice when you are on a fake sight is the design if it’s a low-effort fake the design won’t look too much like the original and or may not operate as it should. 

Module 9 12/15/2023: COMPLETE THE SOCIAL MEDIA DISORDER SCALE. HOW DID YOU SCORE? WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE ITEMS IN THE SCALE? WHY DO YOU THINK THAT DIFFERENT PATTERNS ARE FOUND ACROSS THE WORLD?

For the social media disorder scale, I got a score of 0 out of 9 on this scale which seems quite good since most of the questions were things that I have never seen or experienced. This makes sense because I am not a person who regularly uses social media. I think that the questions presented in the scale are good for people who may be too obsessed with social media or for people whose lives revolve around it. Lastly, I think that different patterns are found across the world because different cultures have different effects on social media usage, for example, one country might heavily frown at the use of social media while another may not care or even encourage it. This effect also happens most at a family level, so how the culture affects the family is upriver from how a family will affect a kid who uses social media.

Module 10 12/15/2023: read this and write a journal entry summarizing your responses to the article on social cybersecurity https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/Mar-Apr-2019/117-Cybersecurity/b/

In summary, this article is about the importance of social cybersecurity, which is the practice of targeting humans instead of trying to hack into traditional computer systems. The author then goes on to argue that the United States needs to understand and prepare for this new type of warfare. My response to this article is that yes, we need to start developing methods to counter intentionally directed misinformation against our people. Information warfare is probably the most important domain currently not just for our military having accurate information, but so the public isn’t manipulated into believing a false narrative that runs counter to the United States national’s security.

Module 12 12/15/2023: Review what the author says and write a paragraph describing the five most serious violations and why you think those offenses are serious.

Today I will be looking at an article called “11 illegal things you unknowingly do on the Internet” and will be going over five of the crimes listed there and explaining why I think those five crimes are the most serious. So let us get started with my list starting with the sharing of passwords, addresses, and or photos of others, cyberbullying,  recording VOIP calls without consent, using other people’s internet networks, and lastly, identity fraud. The reasons why I picked these 5 were because I think they’re the ones with the most risk to people. The Sharing of people’s passwords, addresses, and or photos can cause important and private information to be leaked on into the public where anyone can get a hold of it potentially allowing them to access important systems and files, find where someone lives, and or use the metadata within photos Which would be a massive breach of someones privacy and security. Cyberbullying can be dangerous as well by causing certain people to commit suicide, have mental health problems, and or commit other crimes that they wouldn’t normally have done. I have recording VOIP calls without consent as another serious crime because of the possible risk of confidential information being leaked from a company or person which may put a company or person into a   compromising situation. The act of using someone else internet network might not seem so bad, but not only are you using someone else property for free that you do not have permission to use, but you also opening yourself up to attack by putting your IP address and other digital information in a place easy for others to access. It would be essentially the same thing as accessing sensitive websites and putting in your payment information and such into a site while on public wifi it’s just not good. Lastly, I have identity fraud as the last digital crime. I think we all know this is bad but just in case I will explain quickly. I act of impersonating someone online even if it’s just for jokes is a very serious crime and can be punishable by 12 months in jail, other ways people may do this is by putting in the wrong age into a site which isn’t illegal but is against the term and services of most sites and may also open minors up to 18 plus content. 

Source:

“https://clario.co/blog/illegal-things-you-do-online/”  

Reflection:

While taking this course I was able to better understand how human factor into security and how they are often the weakest link when trying to create a secure system or network. I learned how cybersecurity is affected by social, political, legal, criminological, and economic factors and how they all come together to influence how a company or government address cybersecurity issues. I was also able to deepen my understanding of how social factors lead to cyber risks and how political and legal mechanisms are used to limit the risks individuals pose a company or governments digital security.