Michael Neuwirth
April 7th, 2024
Cybersecurity and the Social Sciences
Diwakar Yalpi
Career Paper
Cyber Forensics
The cybersecurity career path I selected for this assignment was Cyber Forensics. Cyber
Forensics is a field of cybersecurity where the forensics experts will often assist law enforcement
or businesses with crimes that were committed in the cyber field. They will assist by hacking
into internet of things devices such as cars, phones, and laptops. If the offending criminal used
one of these devices to commit the crime you can bet it’s gonna be looked at by a cyber forensics
expert. Aside from crimes that just happen to be committed with technology, cyber forensics
experts also look at high profile hacks, often for companies that were compromised. They will
look at their systems and consult with team members in order to figure out the origin of the
attacks, and in some cases they will even get data that can be used to prosecute the hackers.
However most of the time they will just be doing research so the company can figure out which
systems were compromised and act accordingly to the findings.
Relation to Social Sciences
One of the ways in which my chosen career for this paper; Cyber Forensics, relates to
social sciences and social science research is discussed in an article by Springer Link. Within this
paper they discuss how modern social media, like twitter, facebook, instagram, etc, or just any
open general information platform can be used to aid cyber forensics. They found that those
trying to do research could look someone up on twitter and then use the information gathered
from there to build a deeper profile of them. This is a way in which social research has helped
cyber forensics to succeed. One of the issues with using something like social media to aid social
cyber forensics is the prevalence of fake news. It’s entirely possible for a threat actor to create
fake accounts in an attempt to make a red herring for the cyber forensics expert and make their
task of finding them harder.
Another way a cyber forensics expert could conduct research is through peer networks.
This is a social science concept concerned with who we surround ourselves with. This social
science principle shows us that if we surround ourselves with people who have been hacked or
are a hacker we are more likely to hack or be hacked ourselves. Using this idea and social cyber
forensics, the expert can track a threat actor through who they associate themselves with, and
potentially leverage the peer network to complete their job. It is also possible that conflict theory
in combination with peer networks could be even more effective. By figuring out who socially
holds the power within the peer network it may cut down on time finding the true culprit for an
attack.
Conclusion
The career path I chose was cyber forensics. This career has to use social theories and
science a lot because they are primarily dealing with humans they have to perform logical
deductions on. One way they might do this is with social media, leveraging it to find more
information while being careful to avoid fake news. Another way could be using peer networks,
figuring out who is related to who within a network to find potential options for the threat actor,
using conflict theory in conjunction with peer networks can be even more effective for social
cyber forensics.
Sources:
Samer Al-khateeb, Agarwal N. Social cyber forensics: leveraging open source information and
social network analysis to advance cyber security informatics. Computational and mathematical
organization theory. 2019;26(4):412-430. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10588-019-09296-3
Samer Al-Khateeb, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, Agarwal N. Leveraging Social Network Analysis
and Cyber Forensics Approaches to Study Cyber Propaganda Campaigns. Lecture notes in social
networks (Print). Published online August 4, 2018:19-42.
doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78256-0_2
Arif Ali Mughal. A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES AND
METHODOLOGIES IN INCIDENT-BASED APPROACHES FOR CYBER FORENSICS.
Tensorgate Journal of Sustainable Technology and Infrastructure for Developing Countries.
2019;2(1):1-18. Accessed April 8, 2024.
https://research.tensorgate.org/index.php/tjstidc/article/view/1