Behavioral Cybersecurity

A Linguistic Analysis Metric in Detecting Ransomware Cyber-attacks

“…In previous studies [7,8], we have analyzed ransomware external messaging via a mechanism that has involved six extensively used languages (French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, and Hindi) and several round-trip translation (RTT) operations from target language into English using the Google Translate (GT) functionality. Our analysis was then conducted on a number of random quotations from popular culture and English literature and that finally allowed us to devise a procedure which could establish whether a perceived attack was initiated by a human writer with some knowledge of English, or alternatively, by a machine translation.…”

“…To conduct this analysis, we will use the GT functionality on a number of sampled texts analyzed in six Southeast European languages (Macedonian, Romanian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Serbian) through a RTT process (a back and forth translation hereafter referred to as ABA). Additionally, while the effectiveness of GT is under scrutiny as well, several comparisons between the earlier data [7] and the languages that now form the basis of our approach will afford a better grasp of the method we are proposing relative to its general use and scalability properties.…”

“…Cyberattacks may be motivated by ideological, financial, or personal reasons and are directed at governments and institutions, businesses and private individuals engendering geopolitical, security, reputational and privacy concerns. While there is a wide literature on the typology, counter measures, policies and security information sharing across state and private sectors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], for our practical purposes, we shall briefly refer in this section to ransomware and ways to address cybersecurity by means of linguistic approaches and instruments.…”