Forensics and Cyber Crime

Copyright and Media Piracy

We have done an in-depth investigation of the impact of music sharing on media industry. This research discusses several strategies and business models that the media industry may consider to respond to the current threat of media piracy and better cater to changing customer tastes. Currently, we are leading a project with the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government funded by NBC Universal to examine student behavior and perceptions in context of unauthorized downloading media from the Internet. The project also involves providing students with incentives to adopt legal channels for media downloads. We are currently examining how different campuses manage their copyright infringement cases and will measure student behavior and relate it to campus policies.

Botnets

This stream of research originated with a botnet attack on a government agency's network in which a large number of computers were infected and incorporated into a bot network which resulted in substantial network downtime due to the amount of traffic generated. The initial investigation was focused on identifying the mechanism of botnet propagation and has since evolved into identifying different ways of detecting and preventing the attacks.
figura reserach

Figure 1. Shows a schematic architeture of a bot network.

Network Forensics

This research involves analysis of network traffic data collected from different sources on the network that is intelligently mined to identify infected machines, sources of attacks, and other anomalies on the network. In this research, several different tools are being used, including: darknets, honeynets, packet shapers, snort, etc. The tools required for this research have been developed and the data has been collected. Currently the effort is focused on analyzing the data.

Related Publications

  1. Goel, S., Miesing, P., and Chandra U. (2010). The Impact of Illegal Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing on the Media Industry, California Management Review, 52(3), 6-33. (J)
  2. Goel, S., Baykal, A., & Pon, D. (2006). Botnets: The Anatomy of a Case. Journal of Information Systems Security (JISSEC) 1(3), 45-60. (J)
  3. Goel, S., & Baykal, A., & Pon, D. (2005). Botnets: The Anatomy of a Case. Accepted for publication in G. Dhillon (Ed.), Principles of IS Security: Text and Cases.
  4. Baykal, A., Goel, S., & Pon, D. (2005). Botnets: the Anatomy of a Case. Accepted for publication March 2005 in the Proceedings of the 4th Annual Security Conference, Las Vegas, NV. (C)
  5. 1Goel, S., Azoff, J. Network Forensics: Countering the Surge of the Network Based Attacks. (For submission to the Journal of Information Systems Security) (W)