A Three-Pronged Approach
At UAB we believe the criminals are currently winning the CyberCrime war.
The approach we are taking to respond to this situation falls along three lines:
Academics - we must start sending people into the workforce who are prepared to work
as CyberCrime Investigators, whether that be in the public sector or the private sector. At
UAB we call this "Training Digital Detectives for the 21st Century". Our partnership between
Computer & Information Science and Justice Science has created the
Certificate in Computer Forensics
which students may obtain by taking course work in both departments.
Awareness - Its important that law enforcement, corporate security, and the public are all
aware of the risks of CyberCrime and what they can do to protect themselves and help fight back. This is
why we have co-sponsored and hosted events such as:
- Surfing the Internet Safely - co-sponsored with the FBI, this free course invited the public to
hear the truth about CyberCrime and learn how to better protect themselves and their families.
- The Birmingham Conference on Phishing - co-sponsored with the FBI, this free course invited law
enforcement professional from around the SouthEast to learn how to investigate phishing.
- The Metropolitan Summit on Identity Theft - co-sponsored with the Jefferson County District Attorney's
office, this conference brought 300 law enforcement professionals together for two days to learn about
and discuss identity theft.
- Small Business Computer Security - sponsored by the FBI, the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
and the Small Business Administration, this upcoming seminar on August 20th will be open to Small Business
Owners and their IT Professionals.
- InfraGard - UAB participates in the Birmingham InfraGard chapter.
- US Secret Service Computer Crimes Working Group - UAB has hosted meetings for this organization as well!
Research - The CyberCriminals have more manpower, more advanced technology, and freedom from borders.
This means that Law Enforcement is going to need better Tools, Techniques, and Training. At UAB we believe
that great ideas are born in Academic Research.Our Computer Forensics Research Initiative:
talks with the
people on the front lines and documents their problems.
listens to Law Enforcement and applies our
knowledge of Computer Science to those problems.
studies current Investigative Methods and propose alternatives,
measuring these alternative methods in the real world and reporting on our results.
listens to victims, whether
they be corporations, individuals, or government branches, and provides them with better solutions to
analyze what has happened to them, report it properly, and preserve it for proper investigation.
Why Spam Research?
Spam, or Unsolicited Commercial Email, now accounts for more than 85%
of all emails sent on the Internet. A 2007 report by Ferris Research placed the economic
impact of spam at $100 Billion globally and $35 Billion in the USA.
Besides having the impact of making email untrustworthy, and causing individuals to hesitate
about the validity of online commerce, spam is also the source of Phishing emails, counterfeit
product sales, and the main means by which viruses and other malware are propagated.
At UAB, we are applying the principles of Data Mining and Grid Computing to establish the
Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement project. In this project, we invite collaboration
in the form of "spam contribution" to build a large corpus of spam emails which will be analyzed
and clustered to provide significant forensic and investigative data to law enforcement. The
laws are in place, but the tools are lacking, to allow law enforcement to regularly identify,
arrest, and successfully prosecute criminal spammers. Until this activity is automated and
regularly practiced, criminals will continue to believe that spamming is a safe alternative form
of income.
Focus Area: Phishing & Identity Theft
One particular type of spam that is costing Americans millions of dollars each
week is Phishing. According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, criminals create more than
20,000 unique phishing sites EACH MONTH! Each of these is a crime gateway which can lead to
additional theft of finances and identities. In some cases a single phishing site has compromised
hundreds of individual accounts before being shut down.
UAB is working to identify patterns among this data which would allow many unique phishing sites
to be combined into a single law enforcement case. We are also working with other anti-phishing
organizations and law enforcement to develop early warning systems, and actionable advise to brand
owners which would allow them to protect their consumers.
