Networking and Security Projects

Investigating the Underground Economy

One of the most disturbing recent shifts in Internet attacks has been the change from attackers motivated by glory or vanity to attackers motivated by commercial (criminal) gain. This shift threatens to greatly accelerate the "arms race" between defenders developing effective counters to attacks and highly motivated, well funded attackers finding new ways to circumvent these innovations.

Understanding and Taming the Privacy Footprint

Typical Web pages may contain numerous third-party components, ranging from advertisement networks to analytics tools to third-party APIs necessary for page function. All of these components may leak information to third parties about the users' current activity. We are attempting to quantify this information leakage through a policy written in the Bro IDS. Preliminary analysis paints a bleak picture, as more than 1 percent of all HTTP requests observed by ICSI users are deliberately leaking information just through Google Analytics alone.

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