Engineer, criminologist work in tandem against hackers

An engineer and a criminologist have teamed up to study the modus operandi of hackers and come up with proper measures to foil their evil attempts. The duo comprises Michel Cukier, associate professor of reliability engineering and David Maimon, assistant professor of criminology and criminal justice. Both constitute the faculty of the University of Maryland.

The two academics intend to study cyber attacks from two different perspectives – one from the perspective of a user and the other from that of a hacker. In the initial stage, the focus will be on the relationship between the activity patterns in computer networks and the trends in cyber crime. The data used in the beginning will include information on the university’s own network between 2007 and 2009.

Employing a criminal expert would help understand the social engineering aspects of cyber attacks better, which isn’t exactly the forte of a technically sound engineer.

“We believe that criminological ideas in the field of cyber crime are important because they can support the development of specific policies in the field of information security, which takes into account not only technical element of cyber-crime, but also the human factor,” said Maimon.

A mere browsing of the Internet could heighten the security risk posed to the campus network. “The study shows that the human aspect needs to be included in security studies, where humans are already referred as the ‘weakest link’,” Cukier said.

The findings of their research so far have brought Cukier and Maimon to the conclusion that users need to be enlightened more on the risks pertaining to computer security if cyber attacks are to be avoided.