Mentions of Security Vulnerabilities on Reddit, Twitter and GitHub

Horawalavithana, Sameera; Bhattacharjee, Abhishek; Liu, Renhao; Choudhury, Nazim; Hall, Lawrence O.; Iamnitchi, Adriana

doi:10.1145/3350546.3352519

Cited by 33 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Horawalavithana et al identify software vulnerabilities disclosure on Reddit, Twitter, and GitHub. 17 They predict the software development activity on GitHub from the discussions on Twitter and Reddit. They identified publicly‐known CVEs and the way discussions are happening after being disclosed publicly on platforms, such as Twitter and Reddit.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reddit has vulnerability discussions initiated even before public disclosure. 17 Twitter users also discuss vulnerabilities that are being exploited in the wild irrespective of severity. Such discussions are done in small groups of 2–13 tweets, but there was no specific account/user to follow for cybersecurity content.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The number of tweets/retweets may reflect the risk level and help find mitigation approaches. 17 Vulnerabilities with a colloquial name attract media attention due to which the users discuss them to increase their content visibility. 13 Twitter Dataset Collection in recent research shows different ways, but the most reliable and ethical practice is the official Twitter Application Programming Interface (API), which we choose for this study.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Twitter, being a broadcast medium, is rich in cybersecurity vulnerability data in comparison to Reddit, which is a discussion forum. Reddit has vulnerability discussions initiated even before public disclosure 17 . Twitter users also discuss vulnerabilities that are being exploited in the wild irrespective of severity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The number of tweets/retweets may reflect the risk level and help find mitigation approaches 17 . Vulnerabilities with a colloquial name attract media attention due to which the users discuss them to increase their content visibility 13 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Vulnerability disclosure and cybersecurity awareness campaigns on twitter during COVID‐19

Bahl

Sharma

Asghar

2021

Security and Privacy

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The COVID‐19 pandemic introduced the new norm that changed the way we work and live. During these unprecedented times, most of the organizations expected their employees to work from home. Remote working created new opportunities for hackers since more users were making use of digital platforms for online shopping, accessing Virtual Private Network (VPN), videoconferencing platforms, and software alike. Consequently, cybercrime increased due to the increase in the attack surface, and software vulnerabilities were exploited for launching cyberattacks. There is existing research that explores vulnerability disclosure on Twitter. However, there is a lack of study on opportunistic targeted attacks where specific vulnerabilities are exploited in a way that benefit adversaries the most in times such as COVID‐19. The primary aim of this work is to study the effectiveness of vulnerability disclosure pattern on Twitter in COVID‐19, and discuss how Twitter can be leveraged as Open‐Source Intelligence (OSINT) during a pandemic where the global users can follow a coordinated approach to share security‐related information and conduct awareness campaigns. The study identifies Twitter as an apt source for conducting cybersecurity awareness campaigns as 99.83% of the security vulnerabilities are found to be accurate. The information can help global cybersecurity agencies to proactively identify vulnerabilities, coordinate activities, and plan for mitigation strategies since releasing patches from the vendor might take time.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%