Cryptojacking is the exploitation of victims' computer resources to mine for cryptocurrency using malicious scripts. It has become popular after 2017 when attackers started to exploit legal mining scripts, especially Coinhive scripts. Coinhive was actually a legal mining service that provided scripts and servers for in-browser mining activities. Nevertheless, over 10 million web users had been victims every month before the Coinhive shutdown that happened in Mar 2019. This paper explores the new era of the cryptojacking world after Coinhive discontinued its service. We aimed to see whether and how attackers continue cryptojacking, generate new malicious scripts, and developed new methods. We used a capable cryptojacking detector named CMTracker that proposed by Hong et al. in 2018. We automatically and manually examined 2770 websites that had been detected by CMTracker before the Coinhive shutdown. The results revealed that 99% of sites no longer continue cryptojacking. 1% of websites still run 8 unique mining scripts. By tracking these mining scripts, we detected 632 unique cryptojacking websites. Moreover, open-source investigations (OSINT) demonstrated that attackers still use the same methods. Therefore, we listed the typical patterns of cryptojacking. We concluded that cryptojacking is not dead after the Coinhive shutdown. It is still alive, but not as attractive as it used to be. 1
Online social network analysis has attracted great attention with a vast
number of users sharing information and availability of APIs that help to crawl
online social network data. In this paper, we study the research studies that
are helpful for user characterization as online users may not always reveal
their true identity or attributes. We especially focused on user attribute
determination such as gender, age, etc.; user behavior analysis such as motives
for deception; mental models that are indicators of user behavior; user
categorization such as bots vs. humans; and entity matching on different social
networks. We believe our summary of analysis of user characterization will
provide important insights to researchers and better services to online users
Intrusion detection systems have undergone numerous years of study and yet a great deal of problems remain; primarily a high percentage of false alarms and abysmal detection rates. A new type of threat has emerged that of Advanced Persistent Threat. This type of attack is known for being sophisticated and slow moving over a long period of time and is found in networked systems. Such threats may be detected by evaluation of large numbers of state variables describing complex system operation and state transitions over time. Analysis of such large numbers of variables is computationally inefficient especially if it is meant to be done in real time. The paper develops a completely new theoretical model that appears to be able to distill high order state variable data sets down to the essence of analytic changes in a system with APT operating. The model is based on the computationally efficient use of integer vectors. This approach has the capability to analyze threat over time, and has potential to detect, predict and classify new threat as being similar to threat already detected. The model presented is highly theoretical at this point with some initial prototype work demonstrated and some initial performance data.
The availability of sophisticated technologies and methods of perpetrating criminogenic activities in the cyberspace is a pertinent societal problem. Darknet is an encrypted network technology that uses the internet infrastructure and can only be accessed using special network configuration and software tools to access its contents which are not indexed by search engines. Over the years darknets traditionally are used for criminogenic activities and famously acclaimed to promote cybercrime, procurements of illegal drugs, arms deals, and cryptocurrency markets. In countries with oppressive regimes, censorship of digital communications, and strict policies prompted journalists and freedom fighters to seek freedom using darknet technologies anonymously while others simply exploit it for illegal activities. Recently, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence augmented a tool that can be used to expose illegal activities behind the darknet. We studied relevant literature reviews to help researchers to better understand the darknet technologies, identify future areas of research on the darknet and ultimately to optimize how data-driven insights can be utilized to support governmental agencies in unraveling the depths of darknet technologies. This paper focuses on the use of internet for crimes, deanonymization of TOR-services, darknet a new digital street for illicit drugs, research questions and hypothesis to guide researchers in further studies. Finally, in this study, we propose a model to examine and investigate anonymous online illicit markets. 1
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.