Elastic gradient boosting decision trees under limited labels by sequential epistemic uncertainty quantification: Elastic CatBoost Uncertainty (eCBU)

Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are essential for protecting computer systems and networks from malicious attacks. However, IDSs face challenges in dealing with dynamic and imbalanced data, as well as limited label availability. In this thesis, we propose a novel elastic gradient boosting decision tree algorithm, namely Elastic CatBoost...

Operational Resilience: Backup Strategies for Crisis Management in the Age of Ransomware

Increasing digitalization of systems bring about the grand challenge of keeping these systems secure from malicious prying eyes, and thus highlighting the need for increased Cybersecurity practices. Ransomware is among the most prevalent cybersecurity threats in our current digital era. The attacks are mainly done by advanced persistent threats ...

Enhancing AI Systems Classification Framework: A Study in the EU’s Proposed AI Act

The EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) proposed by the European Commission is a significant legislative effort to regulate AI systems. It is the first legal framework that specifically addresses the risks associated with AI systems, aiming to ensure their trustworthiness and alignment with the values enshrined in the Charter of the...

Learning from phishing emails: Creating new metrics to measure the effect of anti-phishing training in a large company

Phishing attacks are a growing cause of cybersecurity incidents such as data breaches. With these attacks, malicious actors try to gain access to systems by exploiting the vulnerability of employees. Particularly, intruders use different tricks to create convincing phishing emails to force people to behave less securely. Unfortunately,...

VoBERT: Unstable Log Sequence Anomaly Detection: Introducing Vocabulary-Free BERT

With the ever-increasing digitalisation of society and the explosion of internet-enabled devices with the Internet of Things (IoT), keeping services and devices secure is becoming more important. Logs play a critical role in sustaining system reliability. Manual analysis of logs has become increasingly difficult, accelerating the development of...

The Cryptogeddon of Blockchain: Designing policy recommendations for public blockchains to transition towards a quantum-safe environment

Dynamic analysis of Android applications to extract spam caller IDs

Spam calls are becoming an increasing problem, with people receiving multiple spam calls per month on average. Multiple Android applications exist that are able to detect spam calls and display a warning or block such calls. Little is known however on how these applications work and what numbers they block.<br/>In this research, the following...

Analysing Android Spam Call Applications: Developing a Methodology For Dynamic Analysis

The aim of this research is to provide a structured approach for dynamically analysing Android applications, focusing on applications that block or flag suspected spam caller IDs. This paper discusses ways to determine how an application stores the data regarding the phone numbers, and what APIs it utilizes. In order to develop a methodology of...

Storage and retrieval mechanisms in mobile spam blocking applications

Applications on Android phones which block spam calls could be argued a necessity for people unfortunate enough to have their number on spam lists. Third-party applications provide exten- sive, up-to-date blocklists to screen incoming calls. This paper analyses and describes how these types of applications store and access their data. First we...

Static Analysis of Spam Call Blocking Applications: Common Android APIs Used for Call Interception and Blocking

In order to combat increasing spam calls, many applications are developed and downloaded to block those calls. Some studies about performance of the applications were previously conducted, however, the actual processes the applications go through to intercept and block the spam calls are not well studied. This research presents a method to...

Analysis of components in the manifest file of spam call blocking applications on Android

Spam calls are a widespread problem as people receive about 14 spam calls per month on average. In response, tens of applications are available in Google’s Play Store that aim to block these calls. While these apps have hundreds of millions of installations, there’s a lack of research into these applications. Research has been done on the user...