There are currently multiple proposed security label designs for consumer products, with each prioritizing different security and privacy factors. These differences risk making product comparisons more confusing than informative. Standardized labels could potentially resolve this by informing consumers of a product's security features at the point of purchase. But which standard? This survey, of 500 participants, studied four label designs and measured comprehension, response time, acceptability, and cognitive load. We gauged understanding of participant perception and preferences using three smart devices: light bulbs, cameras, and thermostats. We identified preferences and behaviors before, during, and after label use for product selection. At first, participants believed more information-dense labels would better support their purchasing behavior; however, after they evaluated and compared products, participants gravitated towards less cognitively demanding designs. We identified how participants utilized and prioritized label elements to provide recommendations for US label design efforts.

Software is increasingly an integral part of the critical infrastructure and processes that society relies upon for basic functions. With the ubiquity of software embedded into civic, industrial, and manufacturing technologies, software supply chain security and resilience are recognized as growing imperatives for the functioning of society. Initiatives, like those around promulgating Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), propel supplier efforts to improve risk management in software supply chains in the right direction. However, tepid acquiescence to the efforts - and the absence of widely adopted modalities for the effective dissemination of SBOMs - present challenges. Accounting for socio-technical factors that are at the root of these headwinds establishes a strong basis for the formulation of practicable solutions to these challenges. This paper presents such an approach, and assesses several key lenses through which the challenges can be explained - leveraging findings from an ethnographic study, and providing recommendations for a way forward.

Purpose Phishing is a well-known cybersecurity attack that has rapidly increased in recent years. It poses risks to businesses, government agencies and all users due to sensitive data breaches and subsequent financial losses. To study the user side, this paper aims to conduct a literature review and user study. Design/methodology/approach To investigate phishing attacks, the authors provide a detailed overview of previous research on phishing techniques by conducting a systematic literature review of n = 367 peer-reviewed academic papers published in ACM Digital Library. Also, the authors report on an evaluation of a high school community. The authors engaged 57 high school students and faculty members (12 high school students, 45 staff members) as participants in research using signal detection theory (SDT). Findings Through the literature review which goes back to as early as 2004, the authors found that only 13.9% of papers focused on user studies. In the user study, through scenario-based analysis, participants were tasked with distinguishing phishing e-mails from authentic e-mails. The results revealed an overconfidence bias in self-detection from the participants, regardless of their technical background. Originality/value The authors conducted a literature review with a focus on user study which is a first in this field as far the authors know. Additionally, the authors conducted a detailed user study with high school students and faculty using SDT which is also an understudied area and population.

The IETF Manufacturer Usage Description (MUD) standard was designed to protect IoT devices through network micro-segmentation. In practice, this is implemented using per-device access control that is defined by the manufacturer. This access control is embedded in a “MUD-File”, which is transferred to the user’s network during the onboarding process, and may contain from one to hundreds of rules. Validating these rules for each device can be a challenge, particularly when devices are interacting. In response, MUD-Visualizer was designed to simplify the validation of individual and interacting MUD-Files through straightforward visualizations. In this work, we report on an evaluation of the usability and efficacy of MUD-Visualizer. The results illustrate that not only it is more usable compared to manual analysis, but the participants that used MUD-Visualizer also had more accurate results in less time.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is the foundation of secure and trusted transactions across the Internet. Public key certificates are issued and validated by Certificate Authorities (CAs), which have their trust-of-anchor certificates in Root Program Operators' stores. These CAs provide certificates that attest to the integrity of the ownership of domain names on the web and enable secure communications. Each year hundreds of certificates are by these verified and trusted Certificate Authorities issued in error. In this research, we complied and classified certificate incident reports documented on Bugzilla, a web-based bug tracking system where such instances are reported. We focus on the 210 incident reports from the last year; we compare this pandemic period to trends from previous years. Our data show that the frequency of Certificate Authority non-compliance is a consistence source of vulnerability in the PKI ecosystem. The evaluation of reasons for the misissuance illustrate the role of one-off human failures, systematic interaction flaws leading to repeated incidents, and evidence of perverse incentives leading to misissuance.

Despite the robust structure of the Internet, it is still susceptible to disruptive routing updates that prevent network traffic from reaching its destination. Our research shows that BGP announcements that are associated with disruptive updates tend to occur in groups of relatively high frequency, followed by periods of infrequent activity. We hypothesize that we may use these bursty characteristics to detect anomalous routing incidents. In this work, we use manually verified ground truth metadata and volume of announcements as a baseline measure, and propose a burstiness measure that detects prior anomalous incidents with high recall and better precision than the volume baseline. We quantify the burstiness of inter-arrival times around the date and times of four large-scale incidents: the Indosat hijacking event in April 2014, the Telecom Malaysia leak in June 2015, the Bharti Airtel Ltd. hijack in November 2015, and the MainOne leak in November 2018; and three smaller scale incidents that led to traffic interception: the Belarusian traffic direction in February 2013, the Icelandic traffic direction in July 2013, and the Russian telecom that hijacked financial services in April 2017. Our method leverages the burstiness of disruptive update messages to detect these incidents. We describe limitations, open challenges, and how this method can be used for routing anomaly detection.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose practical and usable interactions that will allow more informed, risk-aware comparisons for individuals during app selections. The authors include an explicit argument for the role of human decision-making during app selection and close with a discussion of the strengths of a Bayesian approach to evaluating privacy and security interventions. Design/methodology/approach The authors focused on the risk communication in mobile marketplace’s realm, examining how risk indicators can help people choose more secure and privacy-preserving apps. Combining canonical findings in risk perception with previous work in usable security, the authors designed indicators for each app to enable decisions that prioritize risk avoidance. Specifically, the authors performed a natural experiment with N = 60 participants, where they asked them to select applications on Android tablets with accurate real-time marketplace data. Findings In the aggregate, the authors found that app selections changed to be more risk-averse in the presence of a user-centered multi-level warning system using visual indicators that enabled a click-thru to the more detailed risk and permissions information. Originality/value Privacy research in the laboratory is often in conflict with privacy decision-making in the marketplace, resulting in a privacy paradox. To better understand this, the authors implemented a research design based on clinical experimental approaches, testing the interaction in a noisy, confounded field environment.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify factors that determine computer and security expertise in end users. They can be significant determinants of human behaviour and interactions in the security and privacy context. Standardized, externally valid instruments for measuring end-user security expertise are non-existent. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire encompassing skills and knowledge-based questions was developed to identify critical factors that constitute expertise in end users. Exploratory factor analysis was applied on the results from 898 participants from a wide range of populations. Cluster analysis was applied to characterize the relationship between computer and security expertise. Ordered logistic regression models were applied to measure efficacy of the proposed security and computing factors in predicting user comprehension of security concepts: phishing and certificates. Findings There are levels to peoples’ computer and security expertise that could be reasonably measured and operationalized. Four factors that constitute computer security-related skills and knowledge are, namely, basic computer skills, advanced computer skills, security knowledge and advanced security skills, and these are identified as determinants of computer expertise. Practical implications Findings from this work can be used to guide the design of security interfaces such that it caters to people with different expertise levels and does not force users to exercise more cognitive processes than required. Originality/value This work identified four factors that constitute security expertise in end users. Findings from this work were integrated to propose a framework called Security SRK for guiding further research on security expertise. This work posits that security expertise instrument for end user should measure three cognitive dimensions: security skills, rules and knowledge.

Rogue certificates are valid certificates issued by a legitimate certificate authority (CA) that are nonetheless untrustworthy; yet trusted by web browsers and users. With the current public key infrastructure, there exists a window of vulnerability between the time a rogue certificate is issued and when it is detected. Rogue certificates from recent compromises have been trusted for as long as weeks before detection and revocation. Previous proposals to close this window of vulnerability require changes in the infrastructure, Internet protocols, or end user experience. We present a method for detecting rogue certificates from trusted CAs developed from a large and timely collection of certificates. This method automates classification by building machine-learning models with Deep Neural Networks (DNN). Despite the scarcity of rogue instances in the dataset, DNN produced a classification method that is proven both in simulation and in the July 2014 compromise of the India CCA. We report the details of the classification method and illustrate that it is repeatable, such as with datasets obtained from crawling. We describe the classification performance under our current research deployment.

Security indicators in web browsers alert users to the presence of a secure connection between their computer and a web server; many studies have shown that such indicators are largely ignored by users in general. In other areas of computer security, research has shown that technical expertise can decrease user susceptibility to attacks.

Privacy risks have been addressed through technical solutions such as Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) as well as regulatory measures including Do Not Track. These approaches are inherently limited as they are grounded in the paradigm of a rational end user who can determine, articulate, and manage consistent privacy preferences. This assumes that self-serving efforts to enact privacy preferences lead to socially optimal outcomes with regard to information sharing. We argue that this assumption typically does not hold true. Consequently, solutions to specific risks are developed - even mandated - without effective reduction in the overall harm of privacy breaches. We present a systematic framework to examine these limitations of current technical and policy solutions. To address the shortcomings of existing privacy solutions, we argue for considering information sharing to be transactions within a community. Outcomes of privacy management can be improved at a lower overall cost if peers, as a community, are empowered by appropriate technical and policy mechanisms. Designing for a community requires encouraging dialogue, enabling transparency, and supporting enforcement of community norms. We describe how peer production of privacy is possible through PETs that are grounded in the notion of information as a common-pool resource subject to community governance.

Spam is a vector for cybercrime and commonly legally prohibited. Why do certain national jurisdictions produce a higher percentage of spam than others despite its prohibition? Why do some countries have a higher percentage of systems acting as spambots compared to other countries? We begin to answer there questions by conducting a cross-country empirical analysis of economic factors that correlate with the prevalence of spam and associated botnets. The economic factors under consideration are grounded in traditional theories of crime offline, as well as prior research in security economics. We found that more than 50% of spam can be attributed to having originated from merely seven countries, indicating that deterrence through policy is both feasible and economically rational. As expected, higher Internet adoption is correlated with higher percentage of spam from a country. Counterintuitively, Internet adoption is also positively correlated with the percentage of infected machines.

In-home technologies can support older adults' activities of daily living, provide physical safety and security, and connect elders to family and friends. They facilitate aging in place while reducing caregiver burden. One of older adults' primary concerns about in-home technologies is their potential to reduce human contact, particularly from cherished caregivers. In this exploratory in situ study, we provided an ecosystem of networked monitoring technologies to six older adults and their caregivers. We analyzed the amount and content of communication between them. The amount of noncomputer-mediated communication did not decrease through the 6-week study. The content of communication coalesced into four themes: communication about the technologies, communication facilitated by technologies, intrusiveness of technologies, and fun and playfulness with the technologies. Results suggest that in-home technologies, designed with sensitivity to older adults' primary motivations, have the potential to shape and tailor important relationships in later life.

Security solutions fail not only because of technological or usability limitations, but also due to economic constraints and lack of coordinated adoption. Existing research conceptualizes security as a public good suffering from underinvestment, or as a private good with externalities, i.e. consequences that are not part of the price. It is also difficult to distinguish high and low quality security products, thus where there is incentive the resulting investments may be misdirected. We argue for a new paradigm of security solutions designed for communities rather than individuals. We leverage canonical economic theory of 'club goods' and 'common-pool resources' to encourage security through collective action and peer production. We operationalize these by providing examples of security solutions redesigned as club or pool goods. Investigating the paradigm of cooperation through community informs novel solutions that impinge on real world security and we advocate further research to enable this shift.

Attacks on computer systems are rapidly becoming more numerous and more sophisticated, and current preventive techniques do not seem able to keep pace. Many successful attacks can be attributed to user errors: for example, while focused on other tasks, users may succumb to 'social engineering' attacks such as phishing or trojan horses. Warnings about the danger of these attacks are often vaguely worded and given long before the dangers are realized, and are therefore too easy to ignore. However, we hypothesize that users are more likely to be persuaded by messages that (1) leverage mental models to describe the dangers, (2) describe particular vulnerabilities that the user may be exposed to and (3) are delivered close in time before the danger may actually be realized. We discuss the design and initial implementation of a system to achieve this. It first shows a video about a potential danger, then creates warnings tailored to the user's environment and given at the time they may be most useful, displaying a still frame or snippet from the video to remind the user of the potential danger. The system uses templates of user activities as input to a markov logic network to recognize potentially risky behaviors. This approach can identify likely next steps that can be used to predict immediate danger and customize warnings.

We describe an innovative monitoring system designed for elder care. This system is an example of privacy-aware design that addresses specific risks based on gerontology literature and confirmed by focus groups with representations of the target group. The design emphasizes data transparency, minimizes data collection and storage, and balances elder control with elder risks. By being event-driven, this monitor enables a caregiver to react more efficiently than with passive monitoring technologies such as traditional security cameras. By reducing cognitive load, the system empowers caregivers, and allows them to provide a higher quality of care -- thus allowing the elder to remain in their home as long as possible. We make innovative use of arguably the most pervasive communications infrastructure -- the cellular network -- to enhance elder autonomy without sacrificing their privacy.

Copyright is a legal system embedded in a larger technological system. In order to examine the functions of copyright it is critical to examine the larger technological context of copyright: analog media and printed paper in particular. The copyright system includes both the explicit mechanisms implemented by law and the implicit mechanisms resulting from the technologically determinant features of paper and print. In order to prevent confusion between the legal, technical, and economic elements I refer to the whole as "copy accurate".Digital rights management design should explicitly address legal issue in copyright and economics of paper, technology of mass produced analog media, and print culture. An examination of that entire system (copy accurate) yields a return to first principles for the design of digital rights management systems.

Atomicity is necessary for reliable electronic commerce transactions. Anonymity is also an issue of great importance not only to designers of commerce systems, but also to those concerned with the societal effects of information technologies, providing atomicity and anonymity is not trivial. Reliable systems, which provide highly atomic transactions, offer limited anonymity. Many anonymous systems (Rivest and Shamir, 1996) do not offer anonymous reliable transactions (Yee, 1994). Three basic approaches have been used: secure hardware for trusted record-keeping (Brands, 1993), storage of identity information with trustees for conditional anonymity (Low et al., 1993) or by providing dispute resolution only with the removal of anonymity (Chaum, 1988). In this work, the problem of anonymous atomic transactions for a generic token currency is solved using distributed trust and with the assumption that any single party may be corrupt. Defined is a transaction to include the provision of information goods or a contract to deliver specified goods, allowing for the highest degree of atomicity. The cryptographic strength of the atomicity guarantee can be made to the user's specification on a per transaction basis. The atomicity-generating protocol includes provision for dispute resolution and anonymous refunds. Also illustrated, is that any electronic token currency can be made reliable with the addition of this atomicity-generating protocol.

Lilith is a general purpose tool to provide highly scalable, easy distribution of user code across a heterogeneous computing platform. Lilith's principal task is to span a heterogeneous tree of machines executing user-defined code in a scalable and secure fashion. Lilith will be used for controlling user processes as well as general system administrative tasks. Lilith is written in Java, taking advantage of Java's platform independence and intent to move code across networks. The design of Lilith provides hooks for experimenting with tree-spanning algorithms and security schemes. We present the Lilith Object model, security scheme, and implementation, and present timing results demonstrating Lilith's scalable behavior.