Practical Cyber Threat Intelligence in the UK Energy Sector (2023)
Conference Proceeding
Paice, A., & McKeown, S. (2023). Practical Cyber Threat Intelligence in the UK Energy Sector. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Cybersecurity, Situational Awareness and Social Media (3-23). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6414-5_1

The UK energy sector is a prime target for cyber-attacks by foreign states, criminals, ‘hacktivist’ groups, and terrorists. As Critical National Infrastructure (CNI), the industry needs to understand the threats it faces to mitigate risks and make ef... Read More about Practical Cyber Threat Intelligence in the UK Energy Sector.

A Comparative Analysis of Honeypots on Different Cloud Platforms (2021)
Journal Article
Kelly, C., Pitropakis, N., Mylonas, A., McKeown, S., & Buchanan, W. J. (2021). A Comparative Analysis of Honeypots on Different Cloud Platforms. Sensors, 21(7), Article 2433. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072433

In 2019, the majority of companies used at least one cloud computing service and it is expected that by the end of 2021, cloud data centres will process 94% of workloads. The financial and operational advantages of moving IT infrastructure to special... Read More about A Comparative Analysis of Honeypots on Different Cloud Platforms.

Phishing URL Detection Through Top-Level Domain Analysis: A Descriptive Approach (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Christou, O., Pitropakis, N., Papadopoulos, P., Mckeown, S., & Buchanan, W. J. (2020). Phishing URL Detection Through Top-Level Domain Analysis: A Descriptive Approach. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (289-298). https://doi.org/10.5220/0008902202890298

Phishing is considered to be one of the most prevalent cyber-attacks because of its immense flexibility and alarmingly high success rate. Even with adequate training and high situational awareness, it can still be hard for users to continually be awa... Read More about Phishing URL Detection Through Top-Level Domain Analysis: A Descriptive Approach.

Microtargeting or Microphishing? Phishing Unveiled (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Khursheed, B., Pitropakis, N., McKeown, S., & Lambrinoudakis, C. (2020). Microtargeting or Microphishing? Phishing Unveiled. In Trust, Privacy and Security in Digital Business (89-105). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58986-8_7

Online advertisements delivered via social media platforms function in a similar way to phishing emails. In recent years there has been a growing awareness that political advertisements are being microtargeted and tailored to specific demographics, w... Read More about Microtargeting or Microphishing? Phishing Unveiled.

Towards Identifying Human Actions, Intent, and Severity of APT Attacks Applying Deception Techniques - An Experiment (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Chacon, J., Mckeown, S., & Macfarlane, R. (2020). Towards Identifying Human Actions, Intent, and Severity of APT Attacks Applying Deception Techniques - An Experiment. . https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSecurity49315.2020.9138859

Attacks by Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) have been shown to be difficult to detect using traditional signature-and anomaly-based intrusion detection approaches. Deception techniques such as decoy objects, often called honey items, may be deploye... Read More about Towards Identifying Human Actions, Intent, and Severity of APT Attacks Applying Deception Techniques - An Experiment.

Using Amazon Alexa APIs as a Source of Digital Evidence (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Krueger, C., & Mckeown, S. (2020). Using Amazon Alexa APIs as a Source of Digital Evidence. . https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSecurity49315.2020.9138849

With the release of Amazon Alexa and the first Amazon Echo device, the company revolutionised the smart home. It allowed their users to communicate with, and control, their smart home ecosystem purely using voice commands. However, this also means th... Read More about Using Amazon Alexa APIs as a Source of Digital Evidence.

Forensic Considerations for the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Mckeown, S., & Russell, G. (2020). Forensic Considerations for the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF). . https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSecurity49315.2020.9138890

The High Efficiency File Format (HEIF) was adopted by Apple in 2017 as their favoured means of capturing images from their camera application, with Android devices such as the Galaxy S10 providing support more recently. The format is positioned to re... Read More about Forensic Considerations for the High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF).

Testing And Hardening IoT Devices Against the Mirai Botnet (2020)
Conference Proceeding
Kelly, C., Pitropakis, N., McKeown, S., & Lambrinoudakis, C. (2020). Testing And Hardening IoT Devices Against the Mirai Botnet. . https://doi.org/10.1109/CyberSecurity49315.2020.9138887

A large majority of cheap Internet of Things (IoT) devices that arrive brand new, and are configured with out-of-the-box settings, are not being properly secured by the manufactures, and are vulnerable to existing malware lurking on the Internet. Amo... Read More about Testing And Hardening IoT Devices Against the Mirai Botnet.

Fast Forensic Triage Using Centralised Thumbnail Caches on Windows Operating Systems (2020)
Journal Article
Mckeown, S., Russell, G., & Leimich, P. (2020). Fast Forensic Triage Using Centralised Thumbnail Caches on Windows Operating Systems. Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law, 14(3), Article 1

A common investigative task is to identify known contraband images on a device, which typically involves calculating cryptographic hashes for all the files on a disk and checking these against a database of known contraband. However, modern drives ar... Read More about Fast Forensic Triage Using Centralised Thumbnail Caches on Windows Operating Systems.

Utilising Reduced File Representations to Facilitate Fast Contraband Detection (2019)
Thesis
McKeown, S. Utilising Reduced File Representations to Facilitate Fast Contraband Detection. (Thesis). Edinburgh Napier University. Retrieved from http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2386199

Digital forensics practitioners can be tasked with analysing digital data, in all its forms, for legal proceedings. In law enforcement, this largely involves searching for contraband media, such as illegal images and videos, on a wide array of electr... Read More about Utilising Reduced File Representations to Facilitate Fast Contraband Detection.