A Comprehensive Analysis on Cyber-Threats Against Elearning Systems

Abstract

The cybercrime phenomenon is becoming more offensive and the number of cyber-attacks against eLearning systems is growing in number and diversity. Cybercrime nowadays represents an industry; the Cybercrime-as-a-Service model offers easy access to illegal products and services. Unexperienced cybercriminals from different states can join together in underground forums and share information and tools for cyber-attacks. They can easily spread dangerous malware or launch big-scale attacks anywhere in the world with less resources and sizeable profits for them. This article analyzes the cyber threats that can affect eLearning systems. Malware represents one of the most important threat areas within cybercrime. There are many kind of malware that can be uploaded on the compromised eLearning systems like viruses, trojans, worms, adware, spyware, and ransomware, which can infect all the users that have access to the infected files. Compromised eLearning platforms can be used by cybercriminals for malware infections, redirections to malicious websites or for phishing or spamming activities. Social engineering is an attack vector that refers to manipulation of people into performing actions in order to compromise the systems security and can affect the eLearning systems security. Regarding communications, more and more eLearning systems use encryption to protect the traffic between the platform and its users. The benefits of encryption for eLearning systems are clear, but for law enforcement is a big disadvantage, when they have to investigate some encrypted communications. This paper indicates also the importance of the international cooperation in the process of fighting and combating the cyber-threats against eLearning systems, for a safer cyber environment.

Assessing the Impact and Effectiveness of Cybersecurity Measures in e-Learning on Students and Educators: A Case Study

“…As e-learning systems are increasingly used by universities due to the low costs associated with education, Ioan et al [19] presented the security issues related to these platforms. Such issues can be used by cybercriminals for phishing and spamming activities.…”