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 ...
Civil Engineering Graduate Apprenticeships: A feasibility study into development of an MSc programme based on review of current undergraduate provision
Conference Proceeding
Leitch, K., Bernal-Sanchez, J., & Macfarlane, R. (2022)
Civil Engineering Graduate Apprenticeships: A feasibility study into development of an MSc programme based on review of current undergraduate provision. In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium for Engineering Education
This paper details the findings of a study undertaken at Edinburgh Napier University to assess the feasibility of developing an existing Graduate Apprentice programme in Civil...
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...
Exploring the Need For an Updated Mixed File Research Data Set
Conference Proceeding
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
Exploring the Need For an Updated Mixed File Research Data Set. In 2021 International Conference on Engineering and Emerging Technologies (ICEET) (426-430). https://doi.org/10.1109/iceet53442.2021.9659618
Mixed file data sets are used in a variety of research areas, including Digital Forensics, Malware analysis and Ransomware detection. Researchers recently seem to either have ...
Review of Current Ransomware Detection Techniques
Conference Proceeding
Davies, S. R., Macfarlane, R., & Buchanan, W. J. (2022)
Review of Current Ransomware Detection Techniques. In 2021 International Conference on Engineering and Emerging Technologies (ICEET) (696-701). https://doi.org/10.1109/iceet53442.2021.9659643
A review of proposed ransomware detection tools and techniques. The tools are described, compared and contrasted and possible short comings in their approaches are discussed.
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...
Towards Identifying Human Actions, Intent, and Severity of APT Attacks Applying Deception Techniques - An Experiment
Conference Proceeding
Chacon, J., Mckeown, S., & Macfarlane, R. (2020)
Towards Identifying Human Actions, Intent, and Severity of APT Attacks Applying Deception Techniques - An Experiment. https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSecurity49315.2020.9138859
Attacks by Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) have been shown to be difficult to detect using traditional signature-and anomaly-based intrusion detection approaches. Deception...
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...
Identifying Vulnerabilities Using Internet-wide Scanning Data
Conference Proceeding
O'Hare, J., Macfarlane, R., & Lo, O. (2019)
Identifying Vulnerabilities Using Internet-wide Scanning Data. In 2019 IEEE 12th International Conference on Global Security, Safety and Sustainability (ICGS3), (1-10). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGS3.2019.8688018
Internet-wide scanning projects such as Shodan and Censys, scan the Internet and collect active reconnaissance results for online devices. Access to this information is provid...