Projekt

CYWARN – Entwicklung von Strategien und Technologien zur Analyse und Kommunikation der Sicherheitslage im Cyberraum

https://peasec.de/cywarn

Die Zunahme komplexer Cyberangriffe verdeutlichen die Verletzbarkeit der Gesellschaft und Informationsinfrastruktur. Neben Technologien zur Informations- und IT-Sicherheit braucht es Frühwarnsysteme und Reaktionsstrategien zur Stärkung der zivilen Sicherheit. Sogenannte Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) sind die zentrale Anlaufstelle für präventive und reaktive Maßnahmen bei IT-Sicherheitsvorfällen. Aufgrund der unübersichtlichen Informationslage bei Cyberangriffen ist die Auswertung und zielgruppengerechte Aufbereitung für diese Teams eine große Herausforderung.

Das Projekt CYWARN verfolgt das Ziel, CERTs durch neue Strategien und Technologien bei der Erfassung, Analyse und Kommunikation des Cyber-Lagebilds zu unterstützen. Es entsteht ein Demonstrator, der die automatisierte Sammlung öffentlicher und geschlossener Datenquellen sowie eine Datenauswertung mit Glaubwürdigkeitsanalyse und Informationspriorisierung ermöglicht. Durch den hohen Grad an Automatisierung werden die Teams durch den Demonstrator darin befähigt, effizienter Cyberbedrohungen zu erkennen, zu analysieren und zu kommunizieren.

Die Ergebnisse fließen in Handlungsempfehlungen, Sensibilisierungsmaßnahmen, Lageberichte und Warnmeldungen ein, die dann von den Teams für die adressatengerechte Kommunikation mit der Bevölkerung, Behörden oder KRITIS-Betreibern verwendet werden. Akzeptanz und Anwenderfreundlichkeit werden bei der Entwicklung ebenso berücksichtigt, wie ethische, rechtliche und soziale Rahmenbedingungen. Langfristig ist ein Einsatz auch bei anderen Behörden und Organisationen mit Sicherheitsaufgaben oder Unternehmen, die ein eigenes CERT betreiben, denkbar.

Publikationen

2024

  • Markus Bayer, Philipp Kuehn, Ramin Shanehsaz, Christian Reuter (2024)
    CySecBERT: A Domain-Adapted Language Model for the Cybersecurity Domain
    ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS) ;27(2). doi:10.1145/3652594
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    The field of cybersecurity is evolving fast. Security professionals are in need of intelligence on past, current and – ideally – on upcoming threats, because attacks are becoming more advanced and are increasingly targeting larger and more complex systems. Since the processing and analysis of such large amounts of information cannot be addressed manually, cybersecurity experts rely on machine learning techniques. In the textual domain, pre-trained language models like BERT have proven to be helpful as they provide a good baseline for further fine-tuning. However, due to the domain-knowledge and the many technical terms in cybersecurity, general language models might miss the gist of textual information. For this reason, we create a high-quality dataset and present a language model specifically tailored to the cybersecurity domain which can serve as a basic building block for cybersecurity systems. The model is compared on 15 tasks: Domain-dependent extrinsic tasks for measuring the performance on specific problems, intrinsic tasks for measuring the performance of the internal representations of the model as well as general tasks from the SuperGLUE benchmark. The results of the intrinsic tasks show that our model improves the internal representation space of domain words compared to the other models. The extrinsic, domain-dependent tasks, consisting of sequence tagging and classification, show that the model performs best in cybersecurity scenarios. In addition, we pay special attention to the choice of hyperparameters against catastrophic forgetting, as pre-trained models tend to forget the original knowledge during further training.

    @article{bayer_cysecbert_2024,
    title = {{CySecBERT}: {A} {Domain}-{Adapted} {Language} {Model} for the {Cybersecurity} {Domain}},
    volume = {27},
    issn = {2471-2566},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3652594},
    doi = {10.1145/3652594},
    abstract = {The field of cybersecurity is evolving fast. Security professionals are in need of intelligence on past, current and - ideally - on upcoming threats, because attacks are becoming more advanced and are increasingly targeting larger and more complex systems. Since the processing and analysis of such large amounts of information cannot be addressed manually, cybersecurity experts rely on machine learning techniques. In the textual domain, pre-trained language models like BERT have proven to be helpful as they provide a good baseline for further fine-tuning. However, due to the domain-knowledge and the many technical terms in cybersecurity, general language models might miss the gist of textual information. For this reason, we create a high-quality dataset and present a language model specifically tailored to the cybersecurity domain which can serve as a basic building block for cybersecurity systems. The model is compared on 15 tasks: Domain-dependent extrinsic tasks for measuring the performance on specific problems, intrinsic tasks for measuring the performance of the internal representations of the model as well as general tasks from the SuperGLUE benchmark. The results of the intrinsic tasks show that our model improves the internal representation space of domain words compared to the other models. The extrinsic, domain-dependent tasks, consisting of sequence tagging and classification, show that the model performs best in cybersecurity scenarios. In addition, we pay special attention to the choice of hyperparameters against catastrophic forgetting, as pre-trained models tend to forget the original knowledge during further training.},
    number = {2},
    journal = {ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS)},
    author = {Bayer, Markus and Kuehn, Philipp and Shanehsaz, Ramin and Reuter, Christian},
    month = apr,
    year = {2024},
    note = {Place: New York, NY, USA
    Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery},
    keywords = {Student, UsableSec, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Ranking-CORE-A, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-CYLENCE, Projekt-ATHENE-CyAware},
    }

  • Markus Bayer (2024)
    Deep Learning in Textual Low-Data Regimes for Cybersecurity
    Darmstadt, Germany: Dissertation (Dr. rer. nat.), Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt.
    [BibTeX]

    @book{bayer_deep_2024,
    address = {Darmstadt, Germany},
    title = {Deep {Learning} in {Textual} {Low}-{Data} {Regimes} for {Cybersecurity}},
    publisher = {Dissertation (Dr. rer. nat.), Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt},
    author = {Bayer, Markus},
    year = {2024},
    keywords = {Security, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-CYLENCE, Dissertation, Projekt-ATHENE-CyAware},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Thea Riebe, Markus Bayer, Christian Reuter (2024)
    ‚We Do Not Have the Capacity to Monitor All Media‘: A Design Case Study on Cyber Situational Awareness in Computer Emergency Response Teams
    Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) (Best Paper Award) New York, NY, USA. doi:10.1145/3613904.3642368
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) have been established in the public sector globally to provide advisory, preventive and reactive cybersecurity services for government agencies, citizens, and businesses. Nevertheless, their responsibility of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating cyber threats and security vulnerabilities have become increasingly challenging due to the growing volume and varying quality of information disseminated through public and social channels. Based on a design case study conducted from 2021 to 2023, this paper combines three iterations of expert interviews (N=25), design workshops (N=4) and cognitive walkthroughs (N=25) to design an automated, cross-platform and real-time cybersecurity dashboard. By adopting the notion of cyber situational awareness, the study further extracts user requirements and design heuristics for enhanced threat intelligence and mission awareness in CERTs, discussing the aspects of source integration, data management, customizable visualization, relationship awareness, information assessment, software integration, (inter-)organizational collaboration, and communication of stakeholder warnings.

    @inproceedings{kaufhold_we_2024,
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    series = {{CHI} '24},
    title = {'{We} {Do} {Not} {Have} the {Capacity} to {Monitor} {All} {Media}': {A} {Design} {Case} {Study} on {Cyber} {Situational} {Awareness} in {Computer} {Emergency} {Response} {Teams}},
    isbn = {9798400703300},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2024/2024_KaufholdRiebeBayerReuter_CertDesignCaseStudy_CHI.pdf},
    doi = {10.1145/3613904.3642368},
    abstract = {Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) have been established in the public sector globally to provide advisory, preventive and reactive cybersecurity services for government agencies, citizens, and businesses. Nevertheless, their responsibility of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating cyber threats and security vulnerabilities have become increasingly challenging due to the growing volume and varying quality of information disseminated through public and social channels. Based on a design case study conducted from 2021 to 2023, this paper combines three iterations of expert interviews (N=25), design workshops (N=4) and cognitive walkthroughs (N=25) to design an automated, cross-platform and real-time cybersecurity dashboard. By adopting the notion of cyber situational awareness, the study further extracts user requirements and design heuristics for enhanced threat intelligence and mission awareness in CERTs, discussing the aspects of source integration, data management, customizable visualization, relationship awareness, information assessment, software integration, (inter-)organizational collaboration, and communication of stakeholder warnings.},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Human} {Factors} in {Computing} {Systems} ({CHI}) ({Best} {Paper} {Award})},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Riebe, Thea and Bayer, Markus and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2024},
    keywords = {HCI, Selected, UsableSec, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-CORE-A*, Projekt-CYWARN, AuswahlUsableSec, AuswahlKaufhold, Projekt-CYLENCE, Projekt-ATHENE-CyAware},
    }

  • Philipp Kuehn, Dilara Nadermahmoodi, Moritz Kerk, Christian Reuter (2024)
    ThreatCluster: Threat Clustering for Information Overload Reduction in Computer Emergency Response Teams
    arXiv. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2210.14067
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    The ever-increasing number of threats and the existing diversity of information sources pose challenges for Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). To respond to emerging threats, CERTs must gather information in a timely and comprehensive manner. But the volume of sources and information leads to information overload. This paper contributes to the question of how to reduce information overload for CERTs. We propose clustering incoming information as scanning this information is one of the most tiresome, but necessary, manual steps. Based on current studies, we establish conditions for such a framework. Different types of evaluation metrics are used and selected in relation to the framework conditions. Furthermore, different document embeddings and distance measures are evaluated and interpreted in combination with clustering methods. We use three different corpora for the evaluation, a novel ground truth corpus based on threat reports, one security bug report (SBR) corpus, and one with news articles. Our work shows, it is possible to reduce the information overload by up to 84.8\% with homogeneous clusters. A runtime analysis of the clustering methods strengthens the decision of selected clustering methods. The source code and dataset will be made publicly available after acceptance.

    @misc{kuehn_threatcluster_2024,
    title = {{ThreatCluster}: {Threat} {Clustering} for {Information} {Overload} {Reduction} in {Computer} {Emergency} {Response} {Teams}},
    shorttitle = {{ThreatCluster}},
    url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2210.14067},
    doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2210.14067},
    abstract = {The ever-increasing number of threats and the existing diversity of information sources pose challenges for Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). To respond to emerging threats, CERTs must gather information in a timely and comprehensive manner. But the volume of sources and information leads to information overload. This paper contributes to the question of how to reduce information overload for CERTs. We propose clustering incoming information as scanning this information is one of the most tiresome, but necessary, manual steps. Based on current studies, we establish conditions for such a framework. Different types of evaluation metrics are used and selected in relation to the framework conditions. Furthermore, different document embeddings and distance measures are evaluated and interpreted in combination with clustering methods. We use three different corpora for the evaluation, a novel ground truth corpus based on threat reports, one security bug report (SBR) corpus, and one with news articles. Our work shows, it is possible to reduce the information overload by up to 84.8\% with homogeneous clusters. A runtime analysis of the clustering methods strengthens the decision of selected clustering methods. The source code and dataset will be made publicly available after acceptance.},
    urldate = {2024-03-18},
    publisher = {arXiv},
    author = {Kuehn, Philipp and Nadermahmoodi, Dilara and Kerk, Moritz and Reuter, Christian},
    month = mar,
    year = {2024},
    note = {arXiv:2210.14067 [cs]
    version: 2},
    keywords = {Student, UsableSec, Security, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

    2023

  • Markus Bayer, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2023)
    A Survey on Data Augmentation for Text Classification
    ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) ;55(7):1–39. doi:10.1145/3544558
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Data augmentation, the artificial creation of training data for machine learning by transformations, is a widely studied research field across machine learning disciplines. While it is useful for increasing a model’s generalization capabilities, it can also address many other challenges and problems, from overcoming a limited amount of training data, to regularizing the objective, to limiting the amount data used to protect privacy. Based on a precise description of the goals and applications of data augmentation and a taxonomy for existing works, this survey is concerned with data augmentation methods for textual classification and aims to provide a concise and comprehensive overview for researchers and practitioners. Derived from the taxonomy, we divide more than 100 methods into 12 different groupings and give state-of-the-art references expounding which methods are highly promising by relating them to each other. Finally, research perspectives that may constitute a building block for future work are provided.

    @article{bayer_survey_2023,
    title = {A {Survey} on {Data} {Augmentation} for {Text} {Classification}},
    volume = {55},
    url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3544558},
    doi = {10.1145/3544558},
    abstract = {Data augmentation, the artificial creation of training data for machine learning by transformations, is a widely studied research field across machine learning disciplines. While it is useful for increasing a model's generalization capabilities, it can also address many other challenges and problems, from overcoming a limited amount of training data, to regularizing the objective, to limiting the amount data used to protect privacy. Based on a precise description of the goals and applications of data augmentation and a taxonomy for existing works, this survey is concerned with data augmentation methods for textual classification and aims to provide a concise and comprehensive overview for researchers and practitioners. Derived from the taxonomy, we divide more than 100 methods into 12 different groupings and give state-of-the-art references expounding which methods are highly promising by relating them to each other. Finally, research perspectives that may constitute a building block for future work are provided.},
    number = {7},
    journal = {ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)},
    author = {Bayer, Markus and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {AuswahlCrisis, Crisis, Selected, A-Paper, Ranking-CORE-A*, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY, AuswahlKaufhold},
    pages = {1--39},
    }

  • Markus Bayer, Tobias Frey, Christian Reuter (2023)
    Multi-Level Fine-Tuning, Data Augmentation, and Few-Shot Learning for Specialized Cyber Threat Intelligence
    Computers & Security . doi:10.1016/j.cose.2023.103430
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    A Design Science Artefact for Cyber Threat Detection and Actor Specific Communication

    @article{bayer_multi-level_2023,
    title = {Multi-{Level} {Fine}-{Tuning}, {Data} {Augmentation}, and {Few}-{Shot} {Learning} for {Specialized} {Cyber} {Threat} {Intelligence}},
    issn = {0167-4048},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2023/2023_BayerFreyReuter_MultiLevelFineTuningForCyberThreatIntelligence_CS.pdf},
    doi = {10.1016/j.cose.2023.103430},
    abstract = {A Design Science Artefact for Cyber Threat Detection and Actor Specific Communication},
    journal = {Computers \& Security},
    author = {Bayer, Markus and Frey, Tobias and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {Student, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Projekt-CROSSING, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-ATHENE},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter, Thomas Ludwig (2023)
    Big Data and Multi-platform Social Media Services in Disaster Management
    In: Amita Singh: International Handbook of Disaster Research. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, , 1–21.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    The use of social media today is not only ubiquitous and an integral part of everyday life but is also increasingly relevant before, during, or after emergencies. Data produced in these contexts, such as situational updates and multimedia content, is disseminated across different social media platforms and can be leveraged by various actors, including emergency services or volunteer communities. However, the dissemination of several thousand or even millions of messages during large-scale emergencies confronts analysts with challenges of information quality and overload. Hence, crisis informatics as a research domain seeks to explore and develop systems that support the collection, analysis, and dissemination of valuable social media information in emergencies. This chapter presents the social media API (SMA), which is a multi-platform service for gathering big social data across different social media channels and analyzing the credibility and relevance of collected data by the means of machine learning models. Based on the lessons learned from both the implementation process and user-centered evaluations in multiple emergency settings, this chapter discusses core challenges and potentials of the SMA and similar services, focusing on (1) the multi-platform gathering and management of data, (2) the mitigation of information overload by relevance assessment and message grouping, (3) the assessment of credibility and information quality, and (4) user-centered tailorability and adjustable data operations.

    @incollection{kaufhold_big_2023,
    address = {Singapore},
    title = {Big {Data} and {Multi}-platform {Social} {Media} {Services} in {Disaster} {Management}},
    isbn = {978-981-16-8800-3},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2023/2023_KaufholdReuterLudwig_BigDataMultiPlatformSocialMediaDisaster_HandbookDisaster.pdf},
    abstract = {The use of social media today is not only ubiquitous and an integral part of everyday life but is also increasingly relevant before, during, or after emergencies. Data produced in these contexts, such as situational updates and multimedia content, is disseminated across different social media platforms and can be leveraged by various actors, including emergency services or volunteer communities. However, the dissemination of several thousand or even millions of messages during large-scale emergencies confronts analysts with challenges of information quality and overload. Hence, crisis informatics as a research domain seeks to explore and develop systems that support the collection, analysis, and dissemination of valuable social media information in emergencies. This chapter presents the social media API (SMA), which is a multi-platform service for gathering big social data across different social media channels and analyzing the credibility and relevance of collected data by the means of machine learning models. Based on the lessons learned from both the implementation process and user-centered evaluations in multiple emergency settings, this chapter discusses core challenges and potentials of the SMA and similar services, focusing on (1) the multi-platform gathering and management of data, (2) the mitigation of information overload by relevance assessment and message grouping, (3) the assessment of credibility and information quality, and (4) user-centered tailorability and adjustable data operations.},
    booktitle = {International {Handbook} of {Disaster} {Research}},
    publisher = {Springer Nature Singapore},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian and Ludwig, Thomas},
    editor = {Singh, Amita},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {Crisis, HCI, Projekt-KOKOS, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    pages = {1--21},
    }

  • Philipp Kuehn, Mike Schmidt, Markus Bayer, Christian Reuter (2023)
    ThreatCrawl: A BERT-based Focused Crawler for the Cybersecurity Domain
    2023.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Publicly available information contains valuable information for Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). This can be used to prevent attacks that have already taken place on other systems. Ideally, only the initial attack succeeds and all subsequent ones are detected and stopped. But while there are different standards to exchange this information, a lot of it is shared in articles or blog posts in non-standardized ways. Manually scanning through multiple online portals and news pages to discover new threats and extracting them is a time-consuming task. To automize parts of this scanning process, multiple papers propose extractors that use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from documents. However, while this already solves the problem of extracting the information out of documents, the search for these documents is rarely considered. In this paper, a new focused crawler is proposed called ThreatCrawl, which uses Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based models to classify documents and adapt its crawling path dynamically. While ThreatCrawl has difficulties to classify the specific type of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) named in texts, e.g., IOC content, it can successfully find relevant documents and modify its path accordingly. It yields harvest rates of up to 52\%, which are, to the best of our knowledge, better than the current state of the art.

    @techreport{kuehn_threatcrawl_2023,
    title = {{ThreatCrawl}: {A} {BERT}-based {Focused} {Crawler} for the {Cybersecurity} {Domain}},
    shorttitle = {{ThreatCrawl}},
    url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11960},
    abstract = {Publicly available information contains valuable information for Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI). This can be used to prevent attacks that have already taken place on other systems. Ideally, only the initial attack succeeds and all subsequent ones are detected and stopped. But while there are different standards to exchange this information, a lot of it is shared in articles or blog posts in non-standardized ways. Manually scanning through multiple online portals and news pages to discover new threats and extracting them is a time-consuming task. To automize parts of this scanning process, multiple papers propose extractors that use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) from documents. However, while this already solves the problem of extracting the information out of documents, the search for these documents is rarely considered. In this paper, a new focused crawler is proposed called ThreatCrawl, which uses Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based models to classify documents and adapt its crawling path dynamically. While ThreatCrawl has difficulties to classify the specific type of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) named in texts, e.g., IOC content, it can successfully find relevant documents and modify its path accordingly. It yields harvest rates of up to 52\%, which are, to the best of our knowledge, better than the current state of the art.},
    number = {arXiv:2304.11960},
    urldate = {2023-04-27},
    institution = {arXiv},
    author = {Kuehn, Philipp and Schmidt, Mike and Bayer, Markus and Reuter, Christian},
    month = apr,
    year = {2023},
    note = {arXiv:2304.11960 [cs]},
    keywords = {Student, Security, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Philipp Kuehn, David N. Relke, Christian Reuter (2023)
    Common vulnerability scoring system prediction based on open source intelligence information sources
    Computers & Security . doi:10.1016/j.cose.2023.103286
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    The number of newly published vulnerabilities is constantly increasing. Until now, the information available when a new vulnerability is published is manually assessed by experts using a ()cvss vector and score. This assessment is time consuming and requires expertise. Various works already try to predict vectors or scores using machine learning based on the textual descriptions of the vulnerability to enable faster assessment. However, for this purpose, previous works only use the texts available in databases such as nvd. With this work, the publicly available web pages referenced in the nvd are analyzed and made available as sources of texts through web scraping. A dl based method for predicting the vector is implemented and evaluated. The present work provides a classification of the nvd’s reference texts based on the suitability and crawlability of their texts. While we identified the overall influence of the additional texts is negligible, we outperformed the state-of-the-art with our dl prediction models.

    @article{kuehn_common_2023,
    title = {Common vulnerability scoring system prediction based on open source intelligence information sources},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2023/2023_KuehnRelkeReuter_CommonVulnerabilityScoringSystemOSINT_CompSec.pdf},
    doi = {10.1016/j.cose.2023.103286},
    abstract = {The number of newly published vulnerabilities is constantly increasing. Until now, the information available when a new vulnerability is published is manually assessed by experts using a ()cvss vector and score. This assessment is time consuming and requires expertise. Various works already try to predict vectors or scores using machine learning based on the textual descriptions of the vulnerability to enable faster assessment. However, for this purpose, previous works only use the texts available in databases such as nvd. With this work, the publicly available web pages referenced in the nvd are analyzed and made available as sources of texts through web scraping. A dl based method for predicting the vector is implemented and evaluated. The present work provides a classification of the nvd’s reference texts based on the suitability and crawlability of their texts. While we identified the overall influence of the additional texts is negligible, we outperformed the state-of-the-art with our dl prediction models.},
    journal = {Computers \& Security},
    author = {Kuehn, Philipp and Relke, David N. and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {Student, UsableSec, Security, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Ranking-CORE-B, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Christian Reuter, Marc-André Kaufhold (2023)
    Crisis Informatics
    In: Zheng Yan: Cambridge Handbook of Cyber Behavior. Cambridge University Press.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    In summary, crisis informatics has established itself as an important research area in the ever-increasing complexity of the cyber world. Its importance is further amplified by the time-critical constraints of emergencies and disasters. However, crisis informatics will be challenged to evolve quickly to tackle global-scale emergencies, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing risks of natural hazards due to climate change. This chapter seeks to supplement this effort by analyzing interaction, role, information, and perception patterns, which were prevalent in the past 20 years of social media use in crises.

    @incollection{reuter_crisis_2023,
    title = {Crisis {Informatics}},
    isbn = {978-1-00-905708-0},
    url = {https://www.cambridge.org/de/universitypress/subjects/psychology/applied-psychology/cambridge-handbook-cyber-behavior?format=WX&isbn=9781316616956},
    abstract = {In summary, crisis informatics has established itself as an important research area in the ever-increasing complexity of the cyber world. Its importance is further amplified by the time-critical constraints of emergencies and disasters. However, crisis informatics will be challenged to evolve quickly to tackle global-scale emergencies, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing risks of natural hazards due to climate change. This chapter seeks to supplement this effort by analyzing interaction, role, information, and perception patterns, which were prevalent in the past 20 years of social media use in crises.},
    booktitle = {Cambridge {Handbook} of {Cyber} {Behavior}},
    publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
    author = {Reuter, Christian and Kaufhold, Marc-André},
    editor = {Yan, Zheng},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {Crisis, HCI, Peace, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-ATHENE-FANCY, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    }

  • Thea Riebe (2023)
    Technology Assessment of Dual-Use ICTs – How to assess Diffusion, Governance and Design
    Darmstadt, Germany: Dissertation (Dr. rer. nat.), Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt. doi:10.26083/tuprints-00022849
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Technologies that can be used in military and civilian applications are referred to as dual-use. The dual-use nature of many information and communications technologies (ICTs) raises new questions for research and development for national, international, and human security. Measures to deal with the risks associated with the various dual-use technologies, including proliferation control, design approaches, and policy measures, vary widely. For example, Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) have not yet been regulated, while cryptographic products are subject to export and import controls. Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cybersecurity, and automated analysis of publicly available data raise new questions about their respective dual-use risks. Dual-use risks have been systematically discussed so far, especially in the life sciences, which have contributed to the development of methods for assessment and risk management. Dual-use risks arise, among other things, from the fact that safety-critical technologies can be easily disseminated or modified, as well as used as part of a weapon system. Therefore, the development and adaptation of robots and software requires an independent consideration that builds on the insights of related dual-use discourses. Therefore, this dissertation considers the management of such risks in terms of the proliferation, regulation, and design of individual dual-use information technologies. Technology Assessment (TA) is the epistemological framework for this work, bringing together the concepts and approaches of Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to help evaluate and shape dual-use technologies. In order to identify the diffusion of dual-use at an early stage, the dissertation first examines the diffusion of dual-use innovations between civilian and military research in expert networks on LinkedIn, as well as on the basis of AI patents in a patent network. The results show low diffusion and tend to confirm existing studies on diffusion in patent networks. In the following section, the regulation of dual-use technologies is examined in the paper through two case studies. The first study uses a discourse analysis to show the value conflicts with regard to the regulation of autonomous weapons systems using the concept of Meaningful Human Control (MHC), while a second study, as a long-term comparative case study, analyzes the change and consequences of the regulation of strong cryptography in the U.S. as well as the programs of intelligence agencies for mass surveillance. Both cases point to the central role of private companies, both in the production of AWS and as intermediaries for the dissemination of encryption, as well as surveillance intermediaries. Subsequently, the dissertation examines the design of a dual-use technology using an Open Source Intelligence System (OSINT) for cybersecurity. For this purpose, conceptual, empirical, and technical studies are conducted as part of the Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) framework. During the studies, implications for research on and design of OSINT were identified. For example, the representative survey of the German population has shown that transparency of use while reducing mistrust is associated with higher acceptance of such systems. Additionally, it has been shown that data sparsity through the use of expert networks has many positive effects, not only improving the performance of the system, but is also preferable for legal and social reasons. Thus, the work contributes to the understanding of specific dual-use risks of AI, the regulation of AWS and cryptography, and the design of OSINT in cybersecurity. By combining concepts from CSS and participatory design methods in HCI, this work provides an interdisciplinary and multi-method contribution.

    @book{riebe_technology_2023,
    address = {Darmstadt, Germany},
    title = {Technology {Assessment} of {Dual}-{Use} {ICTs} – {How} to assess {Diffusion}, {Governance} and {Design}},
    url = {https://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/22849/},
    abstract = {Technologies that can be used in military and civilian applications are referred to as dual-use. The dual-use nature of many information and communications technologies (ICTs) raises new questions for research and development for national, international, and human security. Measures to deal with the risks associated with the various dual-use technologies, including proliferation control, design approaches, and policy measures, vary widely. For example, Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) have not yet been regulated, while cryptographic products are subject to export and import controls. Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cybersecurity, and automated analysis of publicly available data raise new questions about their respective dual-use risks.
    Dual-use risks have been systematically discussed so far, especially in the life sciences, which have contributed to the development of methods for assessment and risk management. Dual-use risks arise, among other things, from the fact that safety-critical technologies can be easily disseminated or modified, as well as used as part of a weapon system. Therefore, the development and adaptation of robots and software requires an independent consideration that builds on the insights of related dual-use discourses. Therefore, this dissertation considers the management of such risks in terms of the proliferation, regulation, and design of individual dual-use information technologies. Technology Assessment (TA) is the epistemological framework for this work, bringing together the concepts and approaches of Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to help evaluate and shape dual-use technologies.
    In order to identify the diffusion of dual-use at an early stage, the dissertation first examines the diffusion of dual-use innovations between civilian and military research in expert networks on LinkedIn, as well as on the basis of AI patents in a patent network. The results show low diffusion and tend to confirm existing studies on diffusion in patent networks. In the following section, the regulation of dual-use technologies is examined in the paper through two case studies. The first study uses a discourse analysis to show the value conflicts with regard to the regulation of autonomous weapons systems using the concept of Meaningful Human Control (MHC), while a second study, as a long-term comparative case study, analyzes the change and consequences of the regulation of strong cryptography in the U.S. as well as the programs of intelligence agencies for mass surveillance. Both cases point to the central role of private companies, both in the production of AWS and as intermediaries for the dissemination of encryption, as well as surveillance intermediaries. Subsequently, the dissertation examines the design of a dual-use technology using an Open Source Intelligence System (OSINT) for cybersecurity. For this purpose, conceptual, empirical, and technical studies are conducted as part of the Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) framework. During the studies, implications for research on and design of OSINT were identified. For example, the representative survey of the German population has shown that transparency of use while reducing mistrust is associated with higher acceptance of such systems. Additionally, it has been shown that data sparsity through the use of expert networks has many positive effects, not only improving the performance of the system, but is also preferable for legal and social reasons. Thus, the work contributes to the understanding of specific dual-use risks of AI, the regulation of AWS and cryptography, and the design of OSINT in cybersecurity. By combining concepts from CSS and participatory design methods in HCI, this work provides an interdisciplinary and multi-method contribution.},
    publisher = {Dissertation (Dr. rer. nat.), Department of Computer Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt},
    author = {Riebe, Thea},
    year = {2023},
    doi = {10.26083/tuprints-00022849},
    keywords = {HCI, Projekt-KontiKat, Peace, Projekt-DualUse, Projekt-CYWARN, Dissertation},
    }

  • Thea Riebe, Julian Bäumler, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2023)
    Values and Value Conflicts in the Context of OSINT Technologies for Cybersecurity Incident Response: A Value Sensitive Design Perspective
    Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing (JCSCW) . doi:10.1007/s10606-022-09453-4
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    The negotiation of stakeholder values as a collaborative process throughout technology development has been studied extensively within the fields of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Human-Computer Interaction. Despite their increasing significance for cybersecurity incident response, there is a gap in research on values of importance to the design of open-source intelligence (OSINT) technologies for this purpose. In this paper, we investigate which values and value conflicts emerge due to the application and development of machine learning (ML) based OSINT technologies to assist cyber security incident response operators. For this purpose, we employ a triangulation of methods, consisting of a systematic survey of the technical literature on the development of OSINT artefacts for cybersecurity (N = 73) and an empirical value sensitive design case study, comprising semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (N = 9) as well as a focus group (N = 7) with developers. Based on our results, we identify implications relevant to the research on and design of OSINT artefacts for cybersecurity incident response.

    @article{riebe_values_2023,
    title = {Values and {Value} {Conflicts} in the {Context} of {OSINT} {Technologies} for {Cybersecurity} {Incident} {Response}: {A} {Value} {Sensitive} {Design} {Perspective}},
    url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-022-09453-4},
    doi = {10.1007/s10606-022-09453-4},
    abstract = {The negotiation of stakeholder values as a collaborative process throughout technology development has been studied extensively within the fields of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Human-Computer Interaction. Despite their increasing significance for cybersecurity incident response, there is a gap in research on values of importance to the design of open-source intelligence (OSINT) technologies for this purpose. In this paper, we investigate which values and value conflicts emerge due to the application and development of machine learning (ML) based OSINT technologies to assist cyber security incident response operators. For this purpose, we employ a triangulation of methods, consisting of a systematic survey of the technical literature on the development of OSINT artefacts for cybersecurity (N = 73) and an empirical value sensitive design case study, comprising semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (N = 9) as well as a focus group (N = 7) with developers. Based on our results, we identify implications relevant to the research on and design of OSINT artefacts for cybersecurity incident response.},
    journal = {Computer Supported Cooperative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing (JCSCW)},
    author = {Riebe, Thea and Bäumler, Julian and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {HCI, Student, UsableSec, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Ranking-CORE-B, Projekt-CROSSING, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Thea Riebe, Tom Biselli, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2023)
    Privacy Concerns and Acceptance Factors of OSINT for Cybersecurity: A Representative Survey
    Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs) (1):477–493. doi:https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2023-0028
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    The use of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to monitor and detect cybersecurity threats is gaining popularity among Cybersecurity Emergency or Incident Response Teams (CERTs/CSIRTs). They increasingly use semi-automated OSINT approaches when monitoring cyber threats for public infrastructure services and incident response. Most of the systems use publicly available data, often focusing on social media due to timely data for situational assessment. As indirect and affected stakeholders, the acceptance of OSINT systems by users, as well as the conditions which influence the acceptance, are relevant for the development of OSINT systems for cybersecurity. Therefore, as part of the ethical and social technology assessment, we conducted a survey (N=1,093), in which we asked participants about their acceptance of OSINT systems, their perceived need for open source surveillance, as well as their privacy behavior and concerns. Further, we tested if the awareness of OSINT is an interactive factor that affects other factors. Our results indicate that cyber threat perception and the perceived need for OSINT are positively related to acceptance, while privacy concerns are negatively related. The awareness of OSINT, however, has only shown effects on people with higher privacy concerns. Here, particularly high OSINT awareness and limited privacy concerns were associated with higher OSINT acceptance. Lastly, we provide implications for further research and the use of OSINT systems for cybersecurity by authorities. As OSINT is a framework rather than a single technology, approaches can be selected and combined to adhere to data minimization and anonymization as well as to leverage improvements in privacy-preserving computation and machine learning innovations. Regarding the use of OSINT, the results suggest to favor approaches that provide transparency to users regarding the use of the systems and the data they gather.

    @article{riebe_privacy_2023,
    title = {Privacy {Concerns} and {Acceptance} {Factors} of {OSINT} for {Cybersecurity}: {A} {Representative} {Survey}},
    url = {https://petsymposium.org/popets/2023/popets-2023-0028.pdf},
    doi = {https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2023-0028},
    abstract = {The use of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to monitor and detect cybersecurity threats is gaining popularity among Cybersecurity Emergency or Incident Response Teams (CERTs/CSIRTs). They increasingly use semi-automated OSINT approaches when monitoring cyber threats for public infrastructure services and incident response. Most of the systems use publicly available data, often focusing on social media due to timely data for situational assessment. As indirect and affected stakeholders, the acceptance of OSINT systems by users, as well as the conditions which influence the acceptance, are relevant for the development of OSINT systems for cybersecurity. Therefore, as part of the ethical and social technology assessment, we conducted a survey (N=1,093), in which we asked participants about their acceptance of OSINT systems, their perceived need for open source surveillance, as well as their privacy behavior and concerns. Further, we tested if the awareness of OSINT is an interactive factor that affects other factors. Our results indicate that cyber threat perception and the perceived need for OSINT are positively related to acceptance, while privacy concerns are negatively related. The awareness of OSINT, however, has only shown effects on people with higher privacy concerns. Here, particularly high OSINT awareness and limited privacy concerns were associated with higher OSINT acceptance. Lastly, we provide implications for further research and the use of OSINT systems for cybersecurity by authorities. As OSINT is a framework rather than a single technology, approaches can be selected and combined to adhere to data minimization and anonymization as well as to leverage improvements in privacy-preserving computation and machine learning innovations. Regarding the use of OSINT, the results suggest to favor approaches that provide transparency to users regarding the use of the systems and the data they gather.},
    number = {1},
    journal = {Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs)},
    author = {Riebe, Thea and Biselli, Tom and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {HCI, UsableSec, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-CORE-A, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-ATHENE-FANCY, AuswahlUsableSec},
    pages = {477--493},
    }

  • Thea Riebe (2023)
    Technology Assessment of Dual-Use ICTs – How to assess Diffusion, Governance and Design
    Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer Vieweg.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Technologies that can be used in military and civilian applications are referred to as dual-use. The dual-use nature of many information and communications technologies (ICTs) raises new questions for research and development for national, international, and human security. Measures to deal with the risks associated with the various dual-use technologies, including proliferation control, design approaches, and policy measures, vary widely. For example, Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) have not yet been regulated, while cryptographic products are subject to export and import controls. Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cybersecurity, and automated analysis of publicly available data raise new questions about their respective dual-use risks. Dual-use risks have been systematically discussed so far, especially in the life sciences, which have contributed to the development of methods for assessment and risk management. Dual-use risks arise, among other things, from the fact that safety-critical technologies can be easily disseminated or modified, as well as used as part of a weapon system. Therefore, the development and adaptation of robots and software requires an independent consideration that builds on the insights of related dual-use discourses. Therefore, this dissertation considers the management of such risks in terms of the proliferation, regulation, and design of individual dual-use information technologies. Technology Assessment (TA) is the epistemological framework for this work, bringing together the concepts and approaches of Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to help evaluate and shape dual-use technologies. In order to identify the diffusion of dual-use at an early stage, the dissertation first examines the diffusion of dual-use innovations between civilian and military research in expert networks on LinkedIn, as well as on the basis of AI patents in a patent network. The results show low diffusion and tend to confirm existing studies on diffusion in patent networks. In the following section, the regulation of dual-use technologies is examined in the paper through two case studies. The first study uses a discourse analysis to show the value conflicts with regard to the regulation of autonomous weapons systems using the concept of Meaningful Human Control (MHC), while a second study, as a long-term comparative case study, analyzes the change and consequences of the regulation of strong cryptography in the U.S. as well as the programs of intelligence agencies for mass surveillance. Both cases point to the central role of private companies, both in the production of AWS and as intermediaries for the dissemination of encryption, as well as surveillance intermediaries. Subsequently, the dissertation examines the design of a dual-use technology using an Open Source Intelligence System (OSINT) for cybersecurity. For this purpose, conceptual, empirical, and technical studies are conducted as part of the Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) framework. During the studies, implications for research on and design of OSINT were identified. For example, the representative survey of the German population has shown that transparency of use while reducing mistrust is associated with higher acceptance of such systems. Additionally, it has been shown that data sparsity through the use of expert networks has many positive effects, not only improving the performance of the system, but is also preferable for legal and social reasons. Thus, the work contributes to the understanding of specific dual-use risks of AI, the regulation of AWS and cryptography, and the design of OSINT in cybersecurity. By combining concepts from CSS and participatory design methods in HCI, this work provides an interdisciplinary and multi-method contribution.

    @book{riebe_technology_2023-1,
    address = {Wiesbaden, Germany},
    title = {Technology {Assessment} of {Dual}-{Use} {ICTs} – {How} to assess {Diffusion}, {Governance} and {Design}},
    isbn = {978-3-658-41666-9},
    url = {https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-41667-6},
    abstract = {Technologies that can be used in military and civilian applications are referred to as dual-use. The dual-use nature of many information and communications technologies (ICTs) raises new questions for research and development for national, international, and human security. Measures to deal with the risks associated with the various dual-use technologies, including proliferation control, design approaches, and policy measures, vary widely. For example, Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) have not yet been regulated, while cryptographic products are subject to export and import controls. Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, cybersecurity, and automated analysis of publicly available data raise new questions about their respective dual-use risks.
    Dual-use risks have been systematically discussed so far, especially in the life sciences, which have contributed to the development of methods for assessment and risk management. Dual-use risks arise, among other things, from the fact that safety-critical technologies can be easily disseminated or modified, as well as used as part of a weapon system. Therefore, the development and adaptation of robots and software requires an independent consideration that builds on the insights of related dual-use discourses. Therefore, this dissertation considers the management of such risks in terms of the proliferation, regulation, and design of individual dual-use information technologies. Technology Assessment (TA) is the epistemological framework for this work, bringing together the concepts and approaches of Critical Security Studies (CSS) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to help evaluate and shape dual-use technologies.
    In order to identify the diffusion of dual-use at an early stage, the dissertation first examines the diffusion of dual-use innovations between civilian and military research in expert networks on LinkedIn, as well as on the basis of AI patents in a patent network. The results show low diffusion and tend to confirm existing studies on diffusion in patent networks. In the following section, the regulation of dual-use technologies is examined in the paper through two case studies. The first study uses a discourse analysis to show the value conflicts with regard to the regulation of autonomous weapons systems using the concept of Meaningful Human Control (MHC), while a second study, as a long-term comparative case study, analyzes the change and consequences of the regulation of strong cryptography in the U.S. as well as the programs of intelligence agencies for mass surveillance. Both cases point to the central role of private companies, both in the production of AWS and as intermediaries for the dissemination of encryption, as well as surveillance intermediaries. Subsequently, the dissertation examines the design of a dual-use technology using an Open Source Intelligence System (OSINT) for cybersecurity. For this purpose, conceptual, empirical, and technical studies are conducted as part of the Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) framework. During the studies, implications for research on and design of OSINT were identified. For example, the representative survey of the German population has shown that transparency of use while reducing mistrust is associated with higher acceptance of such systems. Additionally, it has been shown that data sparsity through the use of expert networks has many positive effects, not only improving the performance of the system, but is also preferable for legal and social reasons. Thus, the work contributes to the understanding of specific dual-use risks of AI, the regulation of AWS and cryptography, and the design of OSINT in cybersecurity. By combining concepts from CSS and participatory design methods in HCI, this work provides an interdisciplinary and multi-method contribution.},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Riebe, Thea},
    year = {2023},
    note = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41667-6},
    keywords = {HCI, Projekt-KontiKat, Peace, Projekt-DualUse, Projekt-CYWARN, Dissertation},
    }

  • Elise Özalp, Katrin Hartwig, Christian Reuter (2023)
    Trends in Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Non-Experts
    In: Peter Klimczak, Christer Petersen: AI – Limits and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, , 223–243.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    In this paper we provide an overview of XAI by introducing fundamental terminology and the goals of XAI, as well as recent research findings. Whilst doing this, we pay special attention to strategies for non-expert stakeholders. This leads us to our first research question: “What are the trends in explainable AI strategies for non-experts?”. In order to illustrate the current state of these trends, we further want to study an exemplary and very relevant application domain. According to Abdul et al. (2018), one of the first domains where researchers pursued XAI is the medical domain. This leads to our second research question: “What are the approaches of XAI in the medical domain for non-expert stakeholders?” These research questions will provide an overview of current topics in XAI and show possible research extensions for specific domains.

    @incollection{ozalp_trends_2023,
    address = {Bielefeld},
    title = {Trends in {Explainable} {Artificial} {Intelligence} for {Non}-{Experts}},
    url = {https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5732-6/ai-limits-and-prospects-of-artificial-intelligence/?c=313000019},
    abstract = {In this paper we provide an overview of XAI by introducing fundamental terminology and the goals of XAI, as well as recent research findings. Whilst doing this, we pay special attention to strategies for non-expert stakeholders. This leads us to our first research question: “What are the trends in explainable AI strategies for non-experts?”. In order to illustrate the current state of these trends, we further want to study an exemplary and very relevant application domain. According to Abdul et al. (2018), one of the first domains where researchers pursued XAI is the medical domain. This leads to our second research question: “What are the approaches of XAI in the medical domain for non-expert stakeholders?” These research questions will provide an overview of current topics in XAI and show possible research extensions for specific domains.},
    booktitle = {{AI} - {Limits} and {Prospects} of {Artificial} {Intelligence}},
    publisher = {Transcript Verlag},
    author = {Özalp, Elise and Hartwig, Katrin and Reuter, Christian},
    editor = {Klimczak, Peter and Petersen, Christer},
    year = {2023},
    keywords = {HCI, Student, UsableSec, Projekt-CROSSING, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {223--243},
    }

    2022

  • Ali Sercan Basyurt, Jennifer Fromm, Philipp Kuehn, Marc-André Kaufhold, Milad Mirabaie (2022)
    Help Wanted – Challenges in Data Collection, Analysis and Communication of Cyber Threats in Security Operation Centers
    Proceedings of the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI) Nürnberg.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Security Operation Centers are tasked with collecting and analyzing cyber threat data from multiple sources to communicate warning messages and solutions. These tasks are extensive and resource consuming, which makes supporting approaches valuable to experts. However, to implement such approaches, information about the challenges these experts face while performing these tasks is necessary. We therefore conducted semi-structured expert interviews to identify these challenges. By doing so, valuable insights into these challenges based on expert knowledge is acquired, which in return could be leveraged to develop automated approaches to support experts and address these challenges.

    @inproceedings{basyurt_help_2022,
    address = {Nürnberg},
    title = {Help {Wanted} - {Challenges} in {Data} {Collection}, {Analysis} and {Communication} of {Cyber} {Threats} in {Security} {Operation} {Centers}},
    url = {http://www.peasec.de/paper/2022/2022_BasyourtFrommKuehnKaufholdMirabaie_HelpWantedChallengesDataCollectionAnalysisCommunication_WI.pdf},
    abstract = {Security Operation Centers are tasked with collecting and analyzing cyber threat data from multiple sources to communicate warning messages and solutions. These tasks are extensive and resource consuming, which makes supporting approaches valuable to experts. However, to implement such approaches, information about the challenges these experts face while performing these tasks is necessary. We therefore conducted semi-structured expert interviews to identify these challenges. By doing so, valuable insights into these challenges based on expert knowledge is acquired, which in return could be leveraged to develop automated approaches to support experts and address these challenges.},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the {International} {Conference} on {Wirtschaftsinformatik} ({WI})},
    author = {Basyurt, Ali Sercan and Fromm, Jennifer and Kuehn, Philipp and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Mirabaie, Milad},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Ranking-CORE-C, Security, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Markus Bayer, Marc-André Kaufhold, Björn Buchhold, Marcel Keller, Jörg Dallmeyer, Christian Reuter (2022)
    Data Augmentation in Natural Language Processing: A Novel Text Generation Approach for Long and Short Text Classifiers
    International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (IJMLC) . doi:10.1007/s13042-022-01553-3
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    In many cases of machine learning, research suggests that the development of training data might have a higher relevance than the choice and modelling of classifiers themselves. Thus, data augmentation methods have been developed to improve classifiers by artificially created training data. In NLP, there is the challenge of establishing universal rules for text transformations which provide new linguistic patterns. In this paper, we present and evaluate a text generation method suitable to increase the performance of classifiers for long and short texts. We achieved promising improvements when evaluating short as well as long text tasks with the enhancement by our text generation method. Especially with regard to small data analytics, additive accuracy gains of up to 15.53\% and 3.56\% are achieved within a constructed low data regime, compared to the no augmentation baseline and another data augmentation technique. As the current track of these constructed regimes is not universally applicable, we also show major improvements in several real world low data tasks (up to +4.84 F1-score). Since we are evaluating the method from many perspectives (in total 11 datasets), we also observe situations where the method might not be suitable. We discuss implications and patterns for the successful application of our approach on different types of datasets.

    @article{bayer_data_2022,
    title = {Data {Augmentation} in {Natural} {Language} {Processing}: {A} {Novel} {Text} {Generation} {Approach} for {Long} and {Short} {Text} {Classifiers}},
    url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13042-022-01553-3},
    doi = {10.1007/s13042-022-01553-3},
    abstract = {In many cases of machine learning, research suggests that the development of training data might have a higher relevance than the choice and modelling of classifiers themselves. Thus, data augmentation methods have been developed to improve classifiers by artificially created training data. In NLP, there is the challenge of establishing universal rules for text transformations which provide new linguistic patterns. In this paper, we present and evaluate a text generation method suitable to increase the performance of classifiers for long and short texts. We achieved promising improvements when evaluating short as well as long text tasks with the enhancement by our text generation method. Especially with regard to small data analytics, additive accuracy gains of up to 15.53\% and 3.56\% are achieved within a constructed low data regime, compared to the no augmentation baseline and another data augmentation technique. As the current track of these constructed regimes is not universally applicable, we also show major improvements in several real world low data tasks (up to +4.84 F1-score). Since we are evaluating the method from many perspectives (in total 11 datasets), we also observe situations where the method might not be suitable. We discuss implications and patterns for the successful application of our approach on different types of datasets.},
    journal = {International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics (IJMLC)},
    author = {Bayer, Markus and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Buchhold, Björn and Keller, Marcel and Dallmeyer, Jörg and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Student, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    }

  • Kaan Eyilmez, Ali Sercan Basyurt, Stefan Stieglitz, Christoph Fuchss, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter, Milad Mirabaie (2022)
    A Design Science Artefact for Cyber Threat Detection and Actor Specific Communication
    Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) .
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Over the past few decades, the number and variety of cyberattacks and malware patterns have increased immensely. As a countermeasure, computer emergency response teams were established with the responsibility of securing the cyber environment. However, recent studies revealed that currently performed manual processes and the unavailability of adequate tools impede the achievement of cybersecurity. To address these challenges, we followed the Design Science paradigm to develop an artefact that improves the evaluation of open-source intelligence obtained from Twitter as well as the actor-specific communication of cyber threat information. Subsequently, the implemented artefact will be evaluated through semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts. This research in progress article presents the identified research gap and describes the development process and the endeavor to contribute to the cybersecurity domain theoretically with design principles for the development of an instrument and practically by implementing an artefact that supports domain experts in their work.

    @inproceedings{eyilmez_design_2022,
    title = {A {Design} {Science} {Artefact} for {Cyber} {Threat} {Detection} and {Actor} {Specific} {Communication}},
    url = {https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=acis2022},
    abstract = {Over the past few decades, the number and variety of cyberattacks and malware patterns have increased immensely. As a countermeasure, computer emergency response teams were established with the responsibility of securing the cyber environment. However, recent studies revealed that currently performed manual processes and the unavailability of adequate tools impede the achievement of cybersecurity. To address these challenges, we followed the Design Science paradigm to develop an artefact that improves the evaluation of open-source intelligence obtained from Twitter as well as the actor-specific communication of cyber threat information. Subsequently, the implemented artefact will be evaluated through semi-structured interviews with subject matter experts. This research in progress article presents the identified research gap and describes the development process and the endeavor to contribute to the cybersecurity domain theoretically with design principles for the development of an instrument and practically by implementing an artefact that supports domain experts in their work.},
    booktitle = {Australasian {Conference} on {Information} {Systems} ({ACIS})},
    publisher = {AIS Electronic Library (AISel)},
    author = {Eyilmez, Kaan and Basyurt, Ali Sercan and Stieglitz, Stefan and Fuchss, Christoph and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian and Mirabaie, Milad},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Student, Security, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Jasmin Haunschild, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2022)
    Cultural Violence and Fragmentation on Social Media: Interventions and Countermeasures by Humans and Social Bots
    In: Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Andreas Wenger: Cyber Security Politics: Socio-Technological Transformations and Political Fragmentation. Routledge, , 48–63.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Mobile technologies and social media services are among the socio-technological innovations that have an enormous impact transforming modern culture and political processes. Social media are often defined as a “group of internet-based applications […] that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Shaping opinions, politics, participation, and protest (Wulf et al. 2013), they are used by citizens for news consumption and social exchange (Robinson et al. 2017); by journalists for reporting, analyzing, and collecting information (Stieglitz et al. 2018a); and by organizations to monitor crises, emergencies, customer feedback, and sentiment, among others (Haunschild et al. 2020). Large-scale international events, such as the 2010 Arab Spring, showcased the potential of socio-technological transformations: Citizens were not passive victims but active and autonomous participants utilizing social media to coordinate protest and for crisis response (Reuter and Kaufhold 2018). However, in other cases, citizens’ activities coordinated via social media also increased the complexity of tasks and pressure for formal authorities, since the lack of state control has not had only empowering or benign effects. Instead, on social media, false information spreads fast and it is easy for groups to find an audience there, either to enhance their profit or to target vulnerable groups with dangerous ideology.

    @incollection{haunschild_cultural_2022,
    title = {Cultural {Violence} and {Fragmentation} on {Social} {Media}: {Interventions} and {Countermeasures} by {Humans} and {Social} {Bots}},
    isbn = {978-0-367-62674-7},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2022/2022_HaunschildKaufholdReuter_SocialMediaAndFragmentation_Routledge.pdf},
    abstract = {Mobile technologies and social media services are among the socio-technological innovations that have an enormous impact transforming modern culture and political processes. Social media are often defined as a “group of internet-based applications […] that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content” (Kaplan and Haenlein 2010). Shaping opinions, politics, participation, and protest (Wulf et al. 2013), they are used by citizens for news consumption and social exchange (Robinson et al. 2017); by journalists for reporting, analyzing, and collecting information (Stieglitz et al. 2018a); and by organizations to monitor crises, emergencies, customer feedback, and sentiment, among others (Haunschild et al. 2020). Large-scale international events, such as the 2010 Arab Spring, showcased the potential of socio-technological transformations: Citizens were not passive victims but active and autonomous participants utilizing social media to coordinate protest and for crisis response (Reuter and Kaufhold 2018). However, in other cases, citizens’ activities coordinated via social media also increased the complexity of tasks and pressure for formal authorities, since the lack of state control has not had only empowering or benign effects. Instead, on social media, false information spreads fast and it is easy for groups to find an audience there, either to enhance their profit or to target vulnerable groups with dangerous ideology.},
    booktitle = {Cyber {Security} {Politics}: {Socio}-{Technological} {Transformations} and {Political} {Fragmentation}},
    publisher = {Routledge},
    author = {Haunschild, Jasmin and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    editor = {Cavelty, Myriam Dunn and Wenger, Andreas},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Crisis, SocialMedia, Peace, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    pages = {48--63},
    }

  • Jasmin Haunschild, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2022)
    Perceptions and Use of Warning Apps – Did Recent Crises Lead to Changes in Germany?
    Mensch und Computer – Tagungsband New York. doi:10.1145/3543758.3543770
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Warning and emergency apps are an integral part of crisis informatics and particularly relevant in countries that currently do not have cell broadcast, such as Germany. Previous studies have shown that such apps are regarded as relevant, but only around 16\% of German citizens used them in 2017 and 2019. With the COVID-19 pandemic and a devastating flash flood, Germany has recently experienced severe crisis-related losses. By comparing data from representative surveys from 2017, 2019 and 2021, this study investigates whether these events have changed the perceptions of warning apps and their usage patterns in Germany. The study shows that while multi-hazard emergency and warning apps have been easily surpassed in usage by COVID-19 contact tracing apps, the use of warning apps has also increased and the pandemic has added new desired features. While these have been little-used during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially non-users see smartphone messengers app channels as possible alternatives to warning apps. In addition, regional warning apps appear promising, possibly because they make choosing a warning app easier when there are several available on the market.

    @inproceedings{haunschild_perceptions_2022,
    address = {New York},
    title = {Perceptions and {Use} of {Warning} {Apps} – {Did} {Recent} {Crises} {Lead} to {Changes} in {Germany}?},
    url = {http://www.peasec.de/paper/2022/2022_HaunschildKaufholdReuter_WarningAppsChangesGermany_MuC.pdf},
    doi = {10.1145/3543758.3543770},
    abstract = {Warning and emergency apps are an integral part of crisis informatics and particularly relevant in countries that currently do not have cell broadcast, such as Germany. Previous studies have shown that such apps are regarded as relevant, but only around 16\% of German citizens used them in 2017 and 2019. With the COVID-19 pandemic and a devastating flash flood, Germany has recently experienced severe crisis-related losses. By comparing data from representative surveys from 2017, 2019 and 2021, this study investigates whether these events have changed the perceptions of warning apps and their usage patterns in Germany. The study shows that while multi-hazard emergency and warning apps have been easily surpassed in usage by COVID-19 contact tracing apps, the use of warning apps has also increased and the pandemic has added new desired features. While these have been little-used during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially non-users see smartphone messengers app channels as possible alternatives to warning apps. In addition, regional warning apps appear promising, possibly because they make choosing a warning app easier when there are several available on the market.},
    language = {en},
    booktitle = {Mensch und {Computer} - {Tagungsband}},
    publisher = {ACM},
    author = {Haunschild, Jasmin and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Crisis, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Julian Bäumler, Christian Reuter (2022)
    The Implementation of Protective Measures and Communication of Cybersecurity Alerts in Germany – A Representative Survey of the Population
    Mensch und Computer – Workshopband Darmstadt. doi:10.18420/muc2022-mci-ws01-228
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Despite the merits of digitization in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are increasingly exposed to cyberattacks. We conducted a representative survey with German citizens (N=1,093) to examine how they assess the current and future cyber threat situation as well as possible protective measures in cyberspace. Furthermore, we asked what information and channels citizens need to be aware of cyber threats. Our findings indicate that large proportions of the German population feel inadequately informed about cyber threats and tend to only apply enforced security measures by programs (e.g., updates) and services (e.g., two-factor authentication). Furthermore, institutions such as state-level Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are relatively unknown among the population and respondents showed little confidence in German security authorities to cope with largescale attacks and ultimately protect citizens. Still, our participants prefer to receive cybersecurity information via installed security applications, television channels, or emergency warning apps.

    @inproceedings{kaufhold_implementation_2022,
    address = {Darmstadt},
    series = {Mensch und {Computer} 2022 - {Workshopband}},
    title = {The {Implementation} of {Protective} {Measures} and {Communication} of {Cybersecurity} {Alerts} in {Germany} - {A} {Representative} {Survey} of the {Population}},
    url = {https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/39061},
    doi = {10.18420/muc2022-mci-ws01-228},
    abstract = {Despite the merits of digitization in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are increasingly exposed to cyberattacks. We conducted a representative survey with German citizens (N=1,093) to examine how they assess the current and future cyber threat situation as well as possible protective measures in cyberspace. Furthermore, we asked what information and channels citizens need to be aware of cyber threats. Our findings indicate that large proportions of the German population feel inadequately informed about cyber threats and tend to only apply enforced security measures by programs (e.g., updates) and services (e.g., two-factor authentication). Furthermore, institutions such as state-level Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are relatively unknown among the population and respondents showed little confidence in German security authorities to cope with largescale attacks and ultimately protect citizens. Still, our participants prefer to receive cybersecurity information via installed security applications, television channels, or emergency warning apps.},
    language = {en},
    booktitle = {Mensch und {Computer} - {Workshopband}},
    publisher = {Gesellschaft für Informatik},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Bäumler, Julian and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {HCI, Student, UsableSec, Security, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Ali Sercan Basyurt, Kaan Eyilmez, Marc Stöttinger, Christian Reuter (2022)
    Cyber Threat Observatory: Design and Evaluation of an Interactive Dashboard for Computer Emergency Response Teams
    Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) Timisoara, Romania.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Besides the merits of increasing digitization and networking, societies are increasling exposed to cyberattacks. In Germany, Computer Emerrgency Response Teams (CERTs) of the public sector operate on federal and state level to provide preventative and reactive information security services for authorities, citizens, and enterprises. Their tasks of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating threats is getting more complex by the increasing information quantity disseminated into relevant public channels. Using the lens of design science research, this paper contributes with the design and evaluation of a cross-platform cybersecurity dashboard for CERTs. Based on expert scenario-based walkthroughs in combination with semi-structured interviews (N=12), it discusses six design implications, including the customizability of data sources and filtering of displayed entities, modular integration of additional information sources, interrelation between different information feeds, intelligent algorithms for content assessment and filtering, integration with security software and systems, as well as export, sharing and communication of relevant data.

    @inproceedings{kaufhold_cyber_2022,
    address = {Timisoara, Romania},
    title = {Cyber {Threat} {Observatory}: {Design} and {Evaluation} of an {Interactive} {Dashboard} for {Computer} {Emergency} {Response} {Teams}},
    url = {http://www.peasec.de/paper/2022/2022_KaufholdBasyurtEyilmezStoettingerReuter_CyberThreatObservatory_ECIS.pdf},
    abstract = {Besides the merits of increasing digitization and networking, societies are increasling exposed to cyberattacks. In Germany, Computer Emerrgency Response Teams (CERTs) of the public sector operate on federal and state level to provide preventative and reactive information security services for authorities, citizens, and enterprises. Their tasks of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating threats is getting more complex by the increasing information quantity disseminated into relevant public channels. Using the lens of design science research, this paper contributes with the design and evaluation of a cross-platform cybersecurity dashboard for CERTs. Based on expert scenario-based walkthroughs in combination with semi-structured interviews (N=12), it discusses six design implications, including the customizability of data sources and filtering of displayed entities, modular integration of additional information sources, interrelation between different information feeds, intelligent algorithms for content assessment and filtering, integration with security software and systems, as well as export, sharing and communication of relevant data.},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the {European} {Conference} on {Information} {Systems} ({ECIS})},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Basyurt, Ali Sercan and Eyilmez, Kaan and Stöttinger, Marc and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {HCI, UsableSec, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-CORE-A, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter, Tina Comes, Milad Mirabaie, Stefan Stieglitz (2022)
    Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Mobile Resilience: Designing Interactive Systems for Crisis Response
    Darmstadt: TUprints.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Information and communication technologies (ICT), including artificial intelligence, internet of things, and mobile applications can be utilized to tackle important societal challenges, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While they may increase societal resilience, their design, functionality, and underlying infrastructures must be resilient against disruptions caused by anthropogenic, natural and hybrid crises, emergencies, and threats. In order to research challenges, designs, and potentials of interactive technologies, this workshop investigated the space of mobile technologies and resilient systems for crisis response, including the application domains of cyber threat and pandemic response.

    @book{kaufhold_proceedings_2022,
    address = {Darmstadt},
    title = {Proceedings of the 2nd {Workshop} on {Mobile} {Resilience}: {Designing} {Interactive} {Systems} for {Crisis} {Response}},
    url = {http://www.peasec.de/paper/2022/2022_KaufholdReuterComesMirbabaieStieglitz_Proceedings2ndWorkshopMobileResilience.pdf},
    abstract = {Information and communication technologies (ICT), including artificial intelligence, internet of things, and mobile applications can be utilized to tackle important societal challenges, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While they may increase societal resilience, their design, functionality, and underlying infrastructures must be resilient against disruptions caused by anthropogenic, natural and hybrid crises, emergencies, and threats. In order to research challenges, designs, and potentials of interactive technologies, this workshop investigated the space of mobile technologies and resilient systems for crisis response, including the application domains of cyber threat and pandemic response.},
    publisher = {TUprints},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian and Comes, Tina and Mirabaie, Milad and Stieglitz, Stefan},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Crisis, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Philipp Kuehn, Julian Bäumler, Marc-André Kaufhold, Marc Wendelborn, Christian Reuter (2022)
    The Notion of Relevance in Cybersecurity: A Categorization of Security Tools and Deduction of Relevance Notions
    Mensch und Computer – Workshopband Darmstadt. doi:10.18420/muc2022-mci-ws01-220
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Proper cybersecurity requires timely information to defend the IT infrastructure. In a dynamic field like cybersecurity, gathering up-to-date information is usually a manual, time-consuming, and exhaustive task. Automatic and usable approaches are supposed to be a solution to this problem, but for this, they require a notion of information relevance to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. First, on the basis of a literature review, this paper proposes a novel cybersecurity tool categorization based on corresponding tool types with their respective definitions and core features. Second, it elaborates information used in each category and deduces notions of relevance. Third, it outlines how these findings informed the design of a security dashboard to guide computer emergency response team staff in identifying current threats in open source intelligence sources while mitigating information overload.

    @inproceedings{kuehn_notion_2022,
    address = {Darmstadt},
    series = {Mensch und {Computer} 2022 - {Workshopband}},
    title = {The {Notion} of {Relevance} in {Cybersecurity}: {A} {Categorization} of {Security} {Tools} and {Deduction} of {Relevance} {Notions}},
    url = {https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/39072},
    doi = {10.18420/muc2022-mci-ws01-220},
    abstract = {Proper cybersecurity requires timely information to defend the IT infrastructure. In a dynamic field like cybersecurity, gathering up-to-date information is usually a manual, time-consuming, and exhaustive task. Automatic and usable approaches are supposed to be a solution to this problem, but for this, they require a notion of information relevance to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. First, on the basis of a literature review, this paper proposes a novel cybersecurity tool categorization based on corresponding tool types with their respective definitions and core features. Second, it elaborates information used in each category and deduces notions of relevance. Third, it outlines how these findings informed the design of a security dashboard to guide computer emergency response team staff in identifying current threats in open source intelligence sources while mitigating information overload.},
    language = {en},
    booktitle = {Mensch und {Computer} - {Workshopband}},
    publisher = {Gesellschaft für Informatik},
    author = {Kuehn, Philipp and Bäumler, Julian and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Wendelborn, Marc and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Student, UsableSec, Security, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Thea Riebe, Philipp Kuehn, Philipp Imperatori, Christian Reuter (2022)
    U.S. Security Policy: The Dual-Use Regulation of Cryptography and its Effects on Surveillance
    European Journal for Security Research (EJSR) . doi:10.1007/s41125-022-00080-0
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Cryptography has become ubiquitous in communication technology and is considered a necessary part of information security. However, both the regulation to restrict access to cryptography, as well as practices to weaken or break encryption, are part of the States’ security policies. The United States (U.S.) regulate cryptography for export in international trade as a dual-use good. However, the regulation has been increasingly loosened and transferred to bilateral agreements with Information and Communication Technology companies. At the same time, the National Security Agency attempted to implement a government encryption standard to guarantee itself easier access to data, thus progressively expanding surveillance on non-U.S. citizens. In this paper, using comparative policy analysis, we examine the evolution of both security policies by tracing the historical development of U.S. regulation of cryptography as a dual-use good, and surveillance technologies, and practices used from the 1990s to today. We conclude that the impact of the dual-use regulation has affected the efficiency of surveillance technology, by loosening regulations only for mass communication services, thereby supporting the proliferation of surveillance intermediaries, while working on strategies to collaborate and exploit their coverage.

    @article{riebe_us_2022,
    title = {U.{S}. {Security} {Policy}: {The} {Dual}-{Use} {Regulation} of {Cryptography} and its {Effects} on {Surveillance}},
    url = {https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s41125-022-00080-0.pdf},
    doi = {10.1007/s41125-022-00080-0},
    abstract = {Cryptography has become ubiquitous in communication technology and is considered a necessary part of information security. However, both the regulation to restrict access to cryptography, as well as practices to weaken or break encryption, are part of the States’ security policies. The United States (U.S.) regulate cryptography for export in international trade as a dual-use good. However, the regulation has been increasingly loosened and transferred to bilateral agreements with Information and Communication Technology companies. At the same time, the National Security Agency attempted to implement a government encryption standard to guarantee itself easier access to data, thus progressively expanding surveillance on non-U.S. citizens. In this paper, using comparative policy analysis, we examine the evolution of both security policies by tracing the historical development of U.S. regulation of cryptography as a dual-use good, and surveillance technologies, and practices used from the 1990s to today. We conclude that the impact of the dual-use regulation has affected the efficiency of surveillance technology, by loosening regulations only for mass communication services, thereby supporting the proliferation of surveillance intermediaries, while working on strategies to collaborate and exploit their coverage.},
    journal = {European Journal for Security Research (EJSR)},
    author = {Riebe, Thea and Kuehn, Philipp and Imperatori, Philipp and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {Student, Security, Projekt-KontiKat, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Stefka Schmid, Thea Riebe, Christian Reuter (2022)
    Dual-Use and Trustworthy? A Mixed Methods Analysis of AI Diffusion between Civilian and Defense R&D
    Science and Engineering Ethics ;28(12):1–23. doi:10.1007/s11948-022-00364-7
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be impacting all industry sectors, while becoming a motor for innovation. The diffusion of AI from the civilian sector to the defense sector, and AI’s dual-use potential has drawn attention from security and ethics scholars. With the publication of the ethical guideline Trustworthy AI by the European Union (EU), normative questions on the application of AI have been further evaluated. In order to draw conclusions on Trustworthy AI as a point of reference for responsible research and development (R&D), we approach the diffusion of AI across both civilian and military spheres in the EU. We capture the extent of technological diffusion and derive European and German patent citation networks. Both networks indicate a low degree of diffusion of AI between civilian and defense sectors. A qualitative investigation of project descriptions of a research institute’s work in both civilian and military fields shows that military AI applications stress accuracy or robustness, while civilian AI reflects a focus on human-centric values. Our work represents a first approach by linking processes of technology diffusion with normative evaluations of R&D.

    @article{schmid_dual-use_2022,
    title = {Dual-{Use} and {Trustworthy}? {A} {Mixed} {Methods} {Analysis} of {AI} {Diffusion} between {Civilian} and {Defense} {R}\&{D}},
    volume = {28},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2022/2022_SchmidRiebeReuter_DualUseandTrustworthy_ScienceEngineeringEthics.pdf},
    doi = {10.1007/s11948-022-00364-7},
    abstract = {Artificial Intelligence (AI) seems to be impacting all industry sectors, while becoming a motor for innovation. The diffusion of AI from the civilian sector to the defense sector, and AI’s dual-use potential has drawn attention from security and ethics scholars. With the publication of the ethical guideline Trustworthy AI by the European Union (EU), normative questions on the application of AI have been further evaluated. In order to draw conclusions on Trustworthy AI as a point of reference for responsible research and development (R\&D), we approach the diffusion of AI across both civilian and military spheres in the EU. We capture the extent of technological diffusion and derive European and German patent citation networks. Both networks indicate a low degree of diffusion of AI between civilian and defense sectors. A qualitative investigation of project descriptions of a research institute’s work in both civilian and military fields shows that military AI applications stress accuracy or robustness, while civilian AI reflects a focus on human-centric values. Our work represents a first approach by linking processes of technology diffusion with normative evaluations of R\&D.},
    number = {12},
    journal = {Science and Engineering Ethics},
    author = {Schmid, Stefka and Riebe, Thea and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2022},
    keywords = {A-Paper, Ranking-ImpactFactor, Projekt-KontiKat, Peace, AuswahlPeace, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {1--23},
    }

    2021

  • Markus Bayer, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2021)
    Information Overload in Crisis Management: Bilingual Evaluation of Embedding Models for Clustering Social Media Posts in Emergencies
    Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) .
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Past studies in the domains of information systems have analysed the potentials and barriers of social media in emergencies. While information disseminated in social media can lead to valuable insights, emergency services and researchers face the challenge of information overload as data quickly exceeds the manageable amount. We propose an embedding-based clustering approach and a method for the automated labelling of clusters. Given that the clustering quality is highly dependent on embeddings, we evaluate 19 embedding models with respect to time, internal cluster quality, and language invariance. The results show that it may be sensible to use embedding models that were already trained on other crisis datasets. However, one must ensure that the training data generalizes enough, so that the clustering can adapt to new situations. Confirming this, we found out that some embeddings were not able to perform as well on a German dataset as on an English dataset.

    @inproceedings{bayer_information_2021,
    title = {Information {Overload} in {Crisis} {Management}: {Bilingual} {Evaluation} of {Embedding} {Models} for {Clustering} {Social} {Media} {Posts} in {Emergencies}},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_BayerKaufholdReuter_InformationOverloadInCrisisManagementBilingualEvaluation_ECIS.pdf},
    abstract = {Past studies in the domains of information systems have analysed the potentials and barriers of social media in emergencies. While information disseminated in social media can lead to valuable insights, emergency services and researchers face the challenge of information overload as data quickly exceeds the manageable amount. We propose an embedding-based clustering approach and a method for the automated labelling of clusters. Given that the clustering quality is highly dependent on embeddings, we evaluate 19 embedding models with respect to time, internal cluster quality, and language invariance. The results show that it may be sensible to use embedding models that were already trained on other crisis datasets. However, one must ensure that the training data generalizes enough, so that the clustering can adapt to new situations. Confirming this, we found out that some embeddings were not able to perform as well on a German dataset as on an English dataset.},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the {European} {Conference} on {Information} {Systems} ({ECIS})},
    author = {Bayer, Markus and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Crisis, SocialMedia, A-Paper, Ranking-CORE-A, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {1--18},
    }

  • Rolf Egert, Nina Gerber, Jasmin Haunschild, Philipp Kuehn, Verena Zimmermann (2021)
    Towards Resilient Critical Infrastructures – Motivating Users to Contribute to Smart Grid Resilience
    i-com – Journal of Interactive Media ;20(2):161–175. doi:10.1515/icom-2021-0021
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Smart cities aim at improving efficiency while providing safety and security by merging conventional infrastructures with information and communication technology. One strategy for mitigating hazardous situations and improving the overall resilience of the system is to involve citizens. For instance, smart grids involve prosumers – capable of producing and consuming electricity – who can adjust their electricity profile dynamically (i.e., decrease or increase electricity consumption), or use their local production to supply electricity to the grid. This mitigates the impact of peak-consumption periods on the grid and makes it easier for operators to control the grid. This involvement of prosumers is accompanied by numerous socio-technical challenges, including motivating citizens to contribute by adjusting their electricity consumption to the requirements of the energy grid. Towards this end, this work investigates motivational strategies and tools, including nudging, persuasive technologies, and incentives, that can be leveraged to increase the motivation of citizens. We discuss long-term and side effects and ethical and privacy considerations, before portraying bug bounty programs, gamification and apps as technologies and strategies to communicate the motivational strategies to citizens.

    @article{egert_towards_2021,
    series = {i-com},
    title = {Towards {Resilient} {Critical} {Infrastructures} - {Motivating} {Users} to {Contribute} to {Smart} {Grid} {Resilience}},
    volume = {20},
    url = {https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/icom-2021-0021/html},
    doi = {10.1515/icom-2021-0021},
    abstract = {Smart cities aim at improving efficiency while providing safety and security by merging conventional infrastructures with information and communication technology. One strategy for mitigating hazardous situations and improving the overall resilience of the system is to involve citizens. For instance, smart grids involve prosumers - capable of producing and consuming electricity - who can adjust their electricity profile dynamically (i.e., decrease or increase electricity consumption), or use their local production to supply electricity to the grid. This mitigates the impact of peak-consumption periods on the grid and makes it easier for operators to control the grid. This involvement of prosumers is accompanied by numerous socio-technical challenges, including motivating citizens to contribute by adjusting their electricity consumption to the requirements of the energy grid. Towards this end, this work investigates motivational strategies and tools, including nudging, persuasive technologies, and incentives, that can be leveraged to increase the motivation of citizens. We discuss long-term and side effects and ethical and privacy considerations, before portraying bug bounty programs, gamification and apps as technologies and strategies to communicate the motivational strategies to citizens.},
    number = {2},
    journal = {i-com - Journal of Interactive Media},
    author = {Egert, Rolf and Gerber, Nina and Haunschild, Jasmin and Kuehn, Philipp and Zimmermann, Verena},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Security, Infrastructure, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    pages = {161--175},
    }

  • Jasmin Haunschild, Christian Reuter (2021)
    Perceptions of Police Technology Use and Attitudes Towards the Police – A Representative Survey of the German Population
    Mensch und Computer – Workshopband Bonn. doi:10.18420/muc2021-mci-ws08-255
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Many Germans perceive a brutalization of society, and state officials also report feeling under attack. At the same time, policing is criticised for becoming increasingly militarised and for having extended surveillance in the course of fighting terrorism. Advancements in HCI are used in the context of many of the issues that policing is facing. In this study, we conduct a representative survey of the German population to investigate personal experiences with and attitudes towards the police and information and communication technologies (ICT) used for policing. We find an overall positive image of the police and uncritical attitudes towards ICT used for general surveillance (body-worn cameras, video surveillance, face recognition) and slightly more critical attitudes towards personal surveillance (e.g. through communication data retention). The study indicates that perceptions differ according to experience of unfair treatment by the police, while other factors such as age and education have similar effects.

    @inproceedings{haunschild_perceptions_2021,
    address = {Bonn},
    title = {Perceptions of {Police} {Technology} {Use} and {Attitudes} {Towards} the {Police} - {A} {Representative} {Survey} of the {German} {Population}},
    volume = {Mensch und Computer 2021 - Workshopband},
    url = {http://www.peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_HaunschildReuter_PoliceTechnologyUseSurvey_MuC-WS.pdf},
    doi = {10.18420/muc2021-mci-ws08-255},
    abstract = {Many Germans perceive a brutalization of society, and state officials also report feeling under attack. At the same time, policing is criticised for becoming increasingly militarised and for having extended surveillance in the course of fighting terrorism. Advancements in HCI are used in the context of many of the issues that policing is facing. In this study, we conduct a representative survey of the German population to investigate personal experiences with and attitudes towards the police and information and communication technologies (ICT) used for policing. We find an overall positive image of the police and uncritical attitudes towards ICT used for general surveillance (body-worn cameras, video surveillance, face recognition) and slightly more critical attitudes towards personal surveillance (e.g. through communication data retention). The study indicates that perceptions differ according to experience of unfair treatment by the police, while other factors such as age and education have similar effects.},
    booktitle = {Mensch und {Computer} - {Workshopband}},
    publisher = {Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V.},
    author = {Haunschild, Jasmin and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Security, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Markus Bayer, Daniel Hartung, Christian Reuter (2021)
    Design and Evaluation of Deep Learning Models for Real-Time Credibility Assessment in Twitter
    30th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN2021) Bratislava. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86383-8_32
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Social media have an enormous impact on modern life but are prone to the dissemination of false information. In several domains, such as crisis management or political communication, it is of utmost importance to detect false and to promote credible information. Although educational measures might help individuals to detect false information, the sheer volume of social big data, which sometimes need to be anal- ysed under time-critical constraints, calls for automated and (near) real- time assessment methods. Hence, this paper reviews existing approaches before designing and evaluating three deep learning models (MLP, RNN, BERT) for real-time credibility assessment using the example of Twitter posts. While our BERT implementation achieved best results with an accuracy of up to 87.07\% and an F1 score of 0.8764 when using meta- data, text, and user features, MLP and RNN showed lower classification quality but better performance for real-time application. Furthermore, the paper contributes with a novel dataset for credibility assessment.

    @inproceedings{kaufhold_design_2021,
    address = {Bratislava},
    title = {Design and {Evaluation} of {Deep} {Learning} {Models} for {Real}-{Time} {Credibility} {Assessment} in {Twitter}},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_KaufholdBayerHartungReuter_DeepLearningCredibilityAssessmentTwitter_ICANN.pdf},
    doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86383-8_32},
    abstract = {Social media have an enormous impact on modern life but are prone to the dissemination of false information. In several domains, such as crisis management or political communication, it is of utmost importance to detect false and to promote credible information. Although educational measures might help individuals to detect false information, the sheer volume of social big data, which sometimes need to be anal- ysed under time-critical constraints, calls for automated and (near) real- time assessment methods. Hence, this paper reviews existing approaches before designing and evaluating three deep learning models (MLP, RNN, BERT) for real-time credibility assessment using the example of Twitter posts. While our BERT implementation achieved best results with an accuracy of up to 87.07\% and an F1 score of 0.8764 when using meta- data, text, and user features, MLP and RNN showed lower classification quality but better performance for real-time application. Furthermore, the paper contributes with a novel dataset for credibility assessment.},
    booktitle = {30th {International} {Conference} on {Artificial} {Neural} {Networks} ({ICANN2021})},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Bayer, Markus and Hartung, Daniel and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Student, Security, Ranking-CORE-B, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {1--13},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Jennifer Fromm, Thea Riebe, Milad Mirbabaie, Philipp Kuehn, Ali Sercan Basyurt, Markus Bayer, Marc Stöttinger, Kaan Eyilmez, Reinhard Möller, Christoph Fuchß, Stefan Stieglitz, Christian Reuter (2021)
    CYWARN: Strategy and Technology Development for Cross-Platform Cyber Situational Awareness and Actor-Specific Cyber Threat Communication
    Mensch und Computer – Workshopband Bonn. doi:10.18420/muc2021-mci-ws08-263
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Despite the merits of digitisation in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are increasingly ex-posed to cyberattacks. Thus, Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are deployed in many countries and organisations to enhance the preventive and reactive capabilities against cyberattacks. However, their tasks are getting more complex by the increasing amount and varying quality of information dissem-inated into public channels. Adopting the perspectives of Crisis Informatics and safety-critical Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and based on both a narrative literature review and group discussions, this paper first outlines the research agenda of the CYWARN project, which seeks to design strategies and technolo-gies for cross-platform cyber situational awareness and actor-spe-cific cyber threat communication. Second, it identifies and elabo-rates eight research challenges with regard to the monitoring, analysis and communication of cyber threats in CERTs, which serve as a starting point for in-depth research within the project.

    @inproceedings{kaufhold_cywarn_2021,
    address = {Bonn},
    series = {Mensch und {Computer} 2021 - {Workshopband}},
    title = {{CYWARN}: {Strategy} and {Technology} {Development} for {Cross}-{Platform} {Cyber} {Situational} {Awareness} and {Actor}-{Specific} {Cyber} {Threat} {Communication}},
    url = {https://dl.gi.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/8f470f6b-5050-4fb9-b923-d08cf84c17b7/content},
    doi = {10.18420/muc2021-mci-ws08-263},
    abstract = {Despite the merits of digitisation in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are increasingly ex-posed to cyberattacks. Thus, Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are deployed in many countries and organisations to enhance the preventive and reactive capabilities against cyberattacks. However, their tasks are getting more complex by the increasing amount and varying quality of information dissem-inated into public channels. Adopting the perspectives of Crisis Informatics and safety-critical Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and based on both a narrative literature review and group discussions, this paper first outlines the research agenda of the CYWARN project, which seeks to design strategies and technolo-gies for cross-platform cyber situational awareness and actor-spe-cific cyber threat communication. Second, it identifies and elabo-rates eight research challenges with regard to the monitoring, analysis and communication of cyber threats in CERTs, which serve as a starting point for in-depth research within the project.},
    booktitle = {Mensch und {Computer} - {Workshopband}},
    publisher = {Gesellschaft für Informatik},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Fromm, Jennifer and Riebe, Thea and Mirbabaie, Milad and Kuehn, Philipp and Basyurt, Ali Sercan and Bayer, Markus and Stöttinger, Marc and Eyilmez, Kaan and Möller, Reinhard and Fuchß, Christoph and Stieglitz, Stefan and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Security, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter, Tina Comes, Milad Mirbabaie, Stefan Stieglitz (2021)
    2nd Workshop on Mobile Resilience: Designing Mobile Interactive Systems for Crisis Response
    MobileHCI ’21: 23nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services . doi:10.1145/3447527.3474869
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Information and communication technologies (ICT), including artificial intelligence, internet of things, and mobile applications, can be utilized to tackle important societal challenges, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While they may increase societal resilience, their design, functionality, and underlying infrastructures must be resilient against disruptions caused by anthropogenic, natural and hybrid crises, emergencies, and threats. In order to research challenges, designs, and potentials of interactive technologies, the second iteration of the workshop investigates the space of mobile technologies and resilient systems for crisis response, including the application domains of cyber threat and pandemic response.

    @article{kaufhold_2nd_2021,
    series = {{MobileHCI} '21 {Adjunct}},
    title = {2nd {Workshop} on {Mobile} {Resilience}: {Designing} {Mobile} {Interactive} {Systems} for {Crisis} {Response}},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_KaufholdReuterComesMirbabaieStieglitz_2ndWorkshopMobileResilience_MobileHCI.pdf},
    doi = {10.1145/3447527.3474869},
    abstract = {Information and communication technologies (ICT), including artificial intelligence, internet of things, and mobile applications, can be utilized to tackle important societal challenges, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While they may increase societal resilience, their design, functionality, and underlying infrastructures must be resilient against disruptions caused by anthropogenic, natural and hybrid crises, emergencies, and threats. In order to research challenges, designs, and potentials of interactive technologies, the second iteration of the workshop investigates the space of mobile technologies and resilient systems for crisis response, including the application domains of cyber threat and pandemic response.},
    journal = {MobileHCI '21: 23nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian and Comes, Tina and Mirbabaie, Milad and Stieglitz, Stefan},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Crisis, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Marc-André Kaufhold (2021)
    Information Refinement Technologies for Crisis Informatics: User Expectations and Design Principles for Social Media and Mobile Apps
    Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer Vieweg. doi:10.1007/978-3-658-33341-6
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Marc-André Kaufhold explores user expectations and design implications for the utilization of new media in crisis management and response. He develops a novel framework for information refinement, which integrates the event, organisational, societal, and technological perspectives of crises. Therefore, he reviews the state of the art on crisis informatics and empirically examines the use, potentials and barriers of both social media and mobile apps. Based on these insights, he designs and evaluates ICT concepts and artifacts with the aim to overcome the issues of information overload and quality in large-scale crises, concluding with practical and theoretical implications for technology adaptation and design.

    @book{kaufhold_information_2021,
    address = {Wiesbaden, Germany},
    title = {Information {Refinement} {Technologies} for {Crisis} {Informatics}: {User} {Expectations} and {Design} {Principles} for {Social} {Media} and {Mobile} {Apps}},
    isbn = {978-3-658-33343-0},
    url = {https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783658333430},
    abstract = {Marc-André Kaufhold explores user expectations and design implications for the utilization of new media in crisis management and response. He develops a novel framework for information refinement, which integrates the event, organisational, societal, and technological perspectives of crises. Therefore, he reviews the state of the art on crisis informatics and empirically examines the use, potentials and barriers of both social media and mobile apps. Based on these insights, he designs and evaluates ICT concepts and artifacts with the aim to overcome the issues of information overload and quality in large-scale crises, concluding with practical and theoretical implications for technology adaptation and design.},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André},
    year = {2021},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-658-33341-6},
    keywords = {Crisis, Projekt-KontiKat, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, AuswahlKaufhold, Dissertation},
    }

  • Philipp Kuehn, Markus Bayer, Marc Wendelborn, Christian Reuter (2021)
    OVANA: An Approach to Analyze and Improve the Information Quality of Vulnerability Databases
    Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES 2021) . doi:10.1145/3465481.3465744
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Vulnerability databases are one of the main information sources for IT security experts. Hence, the quality of their information is of utmost importance for anyone working in this area. Previous work has shown that machine readable information is either missing, incorrect, or inconsistent with other data sources. In this paper, we introduce a system called Overt Vulnerability source ANAlysis (OVANA), utilizing state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) and natural-language processing (NLP) techniques, which analyzes the information quality (IQ) of vulnerability databases, searches the free-form description for relevant information missing from structured fields, and updates it accordingly. Our paper shows that OVANA is able to improve the IQ of the National Vulnerability Database by 51.23\% based on the indicators of accuracy, completeness, and uniqueness. Moreover, we present information which should be incorporated into the structured fields to increase the uniqueness of vulnerability entries and improve the discriminability of different vulnerability entries. The identified information from OVANA enables a more targeted vulnerability search and provides guidance for IT security experts in finding relevant information in vulnerability descriptions for severity assessment.

    @inproceedings{kuehn_ovana_2021,
    title = {{OVANA}: {An} {Approach} to {Analyze} and {Improve} the {Information} {Quality} of {Vulnerability} {Databases}},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-9051-4},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_KuehnBayerWendelbornReuter_OVANAQualityVulnerabilityDatabases_ARES.pdf},
    doi = {10.1145/3465481.3465744},
    abstract = {Vulnerability databases are one of the main information sources for IT security experts. Hence, the quality of their information is of utmost importance for anyone working in this area. Previous work has shown that machine readable information is either missing, incorrect, or inconsistent with other data sources. In this paper, we introduce a system called Overt Vulnerability source ANAlysis (OVANA), utilizing state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) and natural-language processing (NLP) techniques, which analyzes the information quality (IQ) of vulnerability databases, searches the free-form description for relevant information missing from structured fields, and updates it accordingly. Our paper shows that OVANA is able to improve the IQ of the National Vulnerability Database by 51.23\% based on the indicators of accuracy, completeness, and uniqueness. Moreover, we present information which should be incorporated into the structured fields to increase the uniqueness of vulnerability entries and improve the discriminability of different vulnerability entries. The identified information from OVANA enables a more targeted vulnerability search and provides guidance for IT security experts in finding relevant information in vulnerability descriptions for severity assessment.},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 16th {International} {Conference} on {Availability}, {Reliability} and {Security} ({ARES} 2021)},
    publisher = {ACM},
    author = {Kuehn, Philipp and Bayer, Markus and Wendelborn, Marc and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Security, Peace, Ranking-CORE-B, AuswahlPeace, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {1--11},
    }

  • Tilo Mentler, Christian Reuter, Simon Nestler, Marc-André Kaufhold, Michael Herczeg, Jens Pottebaum (2021)
    8. Workshop Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion in sicherheitskritischen Systemen: Ausnahmezustand
    Mensch und Computer – Workshopband Ingolstadt. doi:10.18420/muc2021-mci-ws08-117
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Im Zentrum dieses Workshops steht die Interaktion von Mensch und Technik in sicherheitskritischen Kontexten. Hierzu zählen Anwendungsfelder, die bereits seit vielen Jahren Gegenstand der Forschung und Entwicklung sind. Beispiele sind Katastrophen-schutz oder Medizin, aber auch kritische Infrastrukturen. In die-sen und vielen weiteren Bereichen gilt, dass sichere Systemzu-stände nur durch die ganzheitliche Betrachtung von Mensch, Technik und Organisation gewährleistet bzw. schnellstmöglich wieder erreicht werden können. In diesem Zusammenhang ist der Workshop auch der Nutzbarkeit und Akzeptanz von Sicher-heitskonzepten sowie einer bewussteren Auseinandersetzung der Nutzenden mit diesem Thema gewidmet. Dieser Beitrag stellt die Themenkomplexe des Workshops, die angenommenen Bei-träge und das Organisationsteam vor.

    @inproceedings{mentler_8_2021,
    address = {Ingolstadt},
    title = {8. {Workshop} {Mensch}-{Maschine}-{Interaktion} in sicherheitskritischen {Systemen}: {Ausnahmezustand}},
    url = {https://dl.gi.de/handle/20.500.12116/37338},
    doi = {10.18420/muc2021-mci-ws08-117},
    abstract = {Im Zentrum dieses Workshops steht die Interaktion von Mensch und Technik in sicherheitskritischen Kontexten. Hierzu zählen Anwendungsfelder, die bereits seit vielen Jahren Gegenstand der Forschung und Entwicklung sind. Beispiele sind Katastrophen-schutz oder Medizin, aber auch kritische Infrastrukturen. In die-sen und vielen weiteren Bereichen gilt, dass sichere Systemzu-stände nur durch die ganzheitliche Betrachtung von Mensch, Technik und Organisation gewährleistet bzw. schnellstmöglich wieder erreicht werden können. In diesem Zusammenhang ist der Workshop auch der Nutzbarkeit und Akzeptanz von Sicher-heitskonzepten sowie einer bewussteren Auseinandersetzung der Nutzenden mit diesem Thema gewidmet. Dieser Beitrag stellt die Themenkomplexe des Workshops, die angenommenen Bei-träge und das Organisationsteam vor.},
    booktitle = {Mensch und {Computer} - {Workshopband}},
    publisher = {Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.},
    author = {Mentler, Tilo and Reuter, Christian and Nestler, Simon and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Herczeg, Michael and Pottebaum, Jens},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {HCI, Security, Projekt-CYWARN},
    }

  • Christian Reuter (2021)
    Sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion: Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement (Zweite Auflage)
    2 ed. Wiesbaden: Springer Vieweg.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Die zweite, aktualisierte Auflage dieses Lehr- und Fachbuchs gibt eine fundierte und praxisbezogene Einführung sowie einen Überblick über Grundlagen, Methoden und Anwendungen der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion im Kontext von Sicherheit, Notfällen, Krisen, Katastrophen, Krieg und Frieden. Dies adressierend werden interaktive, mobile, ubiquitäre und kooperative Technologien sowie soziale Medien vorgestellt. Hierbei finden klassische Themen wie benutzbare (IT-)Sicherheit, Industrie 4.0, Katastrophenschutz, Medizin und Automobil, aber auch Augmented Reality, Crowdsourcing, Shitstorm Management, Social Media Analytics und Cyberwar ihren Platz. Methodisch wird das Spektrum von Usable Safety bis Usable Security Engineering von Analyse über Design bis Evaluation abgedeckt. Das Buch eignet sich ebenso als Lehrbuch für Studierende wie als Handbuch für Wissenschaftler, Designer, Entwickler und Anwender.

    @book{reuter_sicherheitskritische_2021,
    address = {Wiesbaden},
    edition = {2},
    title = {Sicherheitskritische {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}: {Interaktive} {Technologien} und {Soziale} {Medien} im {Krisen}- und {Sicherheitsmanagement} ({Zweite} {Auflage})},
    isbn = {978-3-658-32795-8},
    url = {https://www.springer.com/de/book/9783658327941},
    abstract = {Die zweite, aktualisierte Auflage dieses Lehr- und Fachbuchs gibt eine fundierte und praxisbezogene Einführung sowie einen Überblick über Grundlagen, Methoden und Anwendungen der Mensch-Computer-Interaktion im Kontext von Sicherheit, Notfällen, Krisen, Katastrophen, Krieg und Frieden. Dies adressierend werden interaktive, mobile, ubiquitäre und kooperative Technologien sowie soziale Medien vorgestellt. Hierbei finden klassische Themen wie benutzbare (IT-)Sicherheit, Industrie 4.0, Katastrophenschutz, Medizin und Automobil, aber auch Augmented Reality, Crowdsourcing, Shitstorm Management, Social Media Analytics und Cyberwar ihren Platz. Methodisch wird das Spektrum von Usable Safety bis Usable Security Engineering von Analyse über Design bis Evaluation abgedeckt. Das Buch eignet sich ebenso als Lehrbuch für Studierende wie als Handbuch für Wissenschaftler, Designer, Entwickler und Anwender.},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {AuswahlCrisis, HCI, Selected, SocialMedia, UsableSec, Security, Projekt-KontiKat, Peace, Infrastructure, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    }

  • Christian Reuter (2021)
    Einleitung in die sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion
    In: Christian ReuterSicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion: Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement (Zweite Auflage). 2 ed. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer Vieweg, , 3–17.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Die sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion (MCI) ist eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung und ein für die Informatik und die jeweiligen Anwendungsdomänen ein zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnendes Thema. Dieses Kapitel bietet eine Einfüh-rung in das Lehr- und Fachbuch „Sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion – Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement“. Als didaktisch aufbereiteter, umfassender Überblick über Grundlagen, Methoden und Anwendungsgebiete soll es sowohl als vorlesungsbegleitende Lektüre als auch als Nach-schlagewerk für Personen aus Wissenschaft, Design und Entwicklung dienen. Dies ad-ressierend werden interaktive, mobile, ubiquitäre und kooperative Technologien sowie soziale Medien vorgestellt. Hierbei finden klassische Themen wie benutzbare (IT-)Sicherheit, Industrie 4.0, Katastrophenschutz, Medizin und Automobil, aber auch Augmented Reality, Crowdsourcing, Shitstorm Management, Social Media Analytics und Cyberwar ihren Platz. Methodisch wird das Spektrum von Usable Safety bis Usable Security Engineering, von Analyse über Design bis Evaluation abgedeckt.

    @incollection{reuter_einleitung_2021,
    address = {Wiesbaden, Germany},
    edition = {2},
    title = {Einleitung in die sicherheitskritische {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}},
    isbn = {978-3-658-32794-1},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32795-8_1},
    abstract = {Die sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion (MCI) ist eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung und ein für die Informatik und die jeweiligen Anwendungsdomänen ein zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnendes Thema. Dieses Kapitel bietet eine Einfüh-rung in das Lehr- und Fachbuch „Sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion – Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement“. Als didaktisch aufbereiteter, umfassender Überblick über Grundlagen, Methoden und Anwendungsgebiete soll es sowohl als vorlesungsbegleitende Lektüre als auch als Nach-schlagewerk für Personen aus Wissenschaft, Design und Entwicklung dienen. Dies ad-ressierend werden interaktive, mobile, ubiquitäre und kooperative Technologien sowie soziale Medien vorgestellt. Hierbei finden klassische Themen wie benutzbare (IT-)Sicherheit, Industrie 4.0, Katastrophenschutz, Medizin und Automobil, aber auch Augmented Reality, Crowdsourcing, Shitstorm Management, Social Media Analytics und Cyberwar ihren Platz. Methodisch wird das Spektrum von Usable Safety bis Usable Security Engineering, von Analyse über Design bis Evaluation abgedeckt.},
    booktitle = {Sicherheitskritische {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}: {Interaktive} {Technologien} und {Soziale} {Medien} im {Krisen}- und {Sicherheitsmanagement} ({Zweite} {Auflage})},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Reuter, Christian},
    editor = {Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Crisis, HCI, UsableSec, Security, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {3--17},
    }

  • Christian Reuter, Marc-André Kaufhold (2021)
    Soziale Medien in Notfällen, Krisen und Katastrophen
    In: Christian ReuterSicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion: Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement (Zweite Auflage). 2 ed. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer Vieweg, , 407–430.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Die Nutzung sozialer Medien hat sich nicht nur im Alltag, sondern auch in vielen ver-schiedenen Notfällen, Krisen und Katastrophen etabliert. Dieser Prozess begann bereits vor etwa 20 Jahren nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001. In den darauf-folgenden Jahren, vor allem aber dem letzten Jahrzehnt, wurde eine Vielzahl von Stu-dien veröffentlicht, die sich auf den Gebrauch von Informations- und Kommunikations-technologien einschließlich der sozialen Medien vor, während oder nach Notfällen kon-zentrieren. Dieser Forschungsbereich wird auch unter dem Begriff Crisis Informatics zusammengefasst. Das Ziel dieses Kapitels ist es, den Gebrauch von und die Forschung über soziale Medien in Katastrophen und Notfällen in den vergangenen 20 Jahren mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf identifizierbare Nutzungsmuster und deren Wahrnehmung zusammenzufassen, um die bisherigen Ergebnisse und zukünftigen Potenziale herauszu-stellen.

    @incollection{reuter_soziale_2021,
    address = {Wiesbaden, Germany},
    edition = {2},
    title = {Soziale {Medien} in {Notfällen}, {Krisen} und {Katastrophen}},
    isbn = {978-3-658-32794-1},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32795-8_19},
    abstract = {Die Nutzung sozialer Medien hat sich nicht nur im Alltag, sondern auch in vielen ver-schiedenen Notfällen, Krisen und Katastrophen etabliert. Dieser Prozess begann bereits vor etwa 20 Jahren nach den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001. In den darauf-folgenden Jahren, vor allem aber dem letzten Jahrzehnt, wurde eine Vielzahl von Stu-dien veröffentlicht, die sich auf den Gebrauch von Informations- und Kommunikations-technologien einschließlich der sozialen Medien vor, während oder nach Notfällen kon-zentrieren. Dieser Forschungsbereich wird auch unter dem Begriff Crisis Informatics zusammengefasst. Das Ziel dieses Kapitels ist es, den Gebrauch von und die Forschung über soziale Medien in Katastrophen und Notfällen in den vergangenen 20 Jahren mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf identifizierbare Nutzungsmuster und deren Wahrnehmung zusammenzufassen, um die bisherigen Ergebnisse und zukünftigen Potenziale herauszu-stellen.},
    booktitle = {Sicherheitskritische {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}: {Interaktive} {Technologien} und {Soziale} {Medien} im {Krisen}- und {Sicherheitsmanagement} ({Zweite} {Auflage})},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Reuter, Christian and Kaufhold, Marc-André},
    editor = {Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Crisis, Security, Peace, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {407--430},
    }

  • Christian Reuter, Konstantin Aal, Frank Beham, Alexander Boden, Florian Brauner, Thomas Ludwig, Stephan Lukosch, Frank Fiedrich, Frank FuchsKittowski, Stefan Geisler, Klaus Gennen, Dominik Herrmann, Marc-André Kaufhold, Michael Klafft, Myriam Lipprandt, Luigi Lo Iacono, Volkmar Pipek, Tilo Mentler, Simon Nestler, Jens Pottebaum, Sven Quadflieg, Stefan Stieglitz, Christian Sturm, Gebhard Rusch, Stefan Sackmann, Melanie Volkamer, Volker Wulf (2021)
    Die Zukunft sicherheitskritischer Mensch-Computer-Interaktion
    In: Christian ReuterSicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion: Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement (2. Auflage). 2 ed. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer Vieweg, , 673–681.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion ist nicht nur derzeit ein hochaktuel-les Thema, sondern wird dies auch in Zukunft bleiben. Insofern ist ein Lehr- und Fach-buch wie dieses immer nur eine Momentaufnahme, und kann immer nur einen punktuel-len Stand abdecken. Dennoch kann der Versuch unternommen werden, aktuelle Trends zu identifizieren und einen Ausblick in die Zukunft zu wagen. Genau das möchte dieses Kapitel erreichen: Es sollen zukünftige Entwicklungen vorausgesagt und versucht wer-den, diese korrekt einzuordnen. Das ist an dieser Stelle nicht nur durch den Herausgeber, sondern durch Abfrage bei zahlreichen am Lehrbuch beteiligten Autor*innen geschehen. Neben einem Ausblick auf Grundlagen und Methoden werden dementsprechend auch sicherheitskritische interaktive Systeme und sicherheitskritische kooperative Systeme abgedeckt.

    @incollection{reuter_zukunft_2021,
    address = {Wiesbaden, Germany},
    edition = {2},
    title = {Die {Zukunft} sicherheitskritischer {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}},
    isbn = {978-3-658-19523-6},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32795-8_31},
    abstract = {Sicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion ist nicht nur derzeit ein hochaktuel-les Thema, sondern wird dies auch in Zukunft bleiben. Insofern ist ein Lehr- und Fach-buch wie dieses immer nur eine Momentaufnahme, und kann immer nur einen punktuel-len Stand abdecken. Dennoch kann der Versuch unternommen werden, aktuelle Trends zu identifizieren und einen Ausblick in die Zukunft zu wagen. Genau das möchte dieses Kapitel erreichen: Es sollen zukünftige Entwicklungen vorausgesagt und versucht wer-den, diese korrekt einzuordnen. Das ist an dieser Stelle nicht nur durch den Herausgeber, sondern durch Abfrage bei zahlreichen am Lehrbuch beteiligten Autor*innen geschehen. Neben einem Ausblick auf Grundlagen und Methoden werden dementsprechend auch sicherheitskritische interaktive Systeme und sicherheitskritische kooperative Systeme abgedeckt.},
    booktitle = {Sicherheitskritische {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}: {Interaktive} {Technologien} und {Soziale} {Medien} im {Krisen}- und {Sicherheitsmanagement} (2. {Auflage})},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Reuter, Christian and Aal, Konstantin and Beham, Frank and Boden, Alexander and Brauner, Florian and Ludwig, Thomas and Lukosch, Stephan and Fiedrich, Frank and Fuchs-Kittowski, Frank and Geisler, Stefan and Gennen, Klaus and Herrmann, Dominik and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Klafft, Michael and Lipprandt, Myriam and Lo Iacono, Luigi and Pipek, Volkmar and Mentler, Tilo and Nestler, Simon and Pottebaum, Jens and Quadflieg, Sven and Stieglitz, Stefan and Sturm, Christian and Rusch, Gebhard and Sackmann, Stefan and Volkamer, Melanie and Wulf, Volker},
    editor = {Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    note = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32795-8\_31},
    keywords = {Crisis, HCI, SocialMedia, UsableSec, Security, Projekt-KontiKat, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {673--681},
    }

  • Christian Reuter, Marc-André Kaufhold (2021)
    Informatik für Frieden-, Konflikt- und Sicherheitsforschung
    In: Christian ReuterSicherheitskritische Mensch-Computer-Interaktion: Interaktive Technologien und Soziale Medien im Krisen- und Sicherheitsmanagement (Zweite Auflage). 2 ed. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer Vieweg, , 605–630.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Seit jeher hatten die Erkenntnisse aus Naturwissenschaft und Technik einen großen Einfluss auf die Art und Weise, wie Kriege und Konflikte ausgetragen wurden bezie-hungsweise werden. Im Kontext von Frieden und Sicherheit können Erkenntnisse, die eigentlich für zivile Kontexte gewonnen wurden, auch für militärische Auseinanderset-zungen genutzt werden (Dual-Use-Problematik). Seit einigen Jahren betrifft dies insbe-sondere die Informatik, die durch die militärische Nutzung von Computern, Cyberwar, Cyberspionage Information Warfare, aber auch in Bereichen wie Desinformationen kon-fliktäre Auseinandersetzungen unterstützen (und verstärken) kann. Auch werden Kon-flikte vermehrt im digitalen Raum ausgetragen, mit erschwerter Zuordnungsmöglichkeit von einzelnen (angreifenden) Akteur*innen. Im Gegenzug dazu bietet die Informatik jedoch auch für friedensstiftende Aktivitäten zahlreiche Einsatzmöglichkeiten. Dieses Kapitel möchte eine Einführung in die zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnende Thematik liefern.

    @incollection{reuter_informatik_2021,
    address = {Wiesbaden, Germany},
    edition = {2},
    title = {Informatik für {Frieden}-, {Konflikt}- und {Sicherheitsforschung}},
    isbn = {978-3-658-32794-1},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-32795-8_28},
    abstract = {Seit jeher hatten die Erkenntnisse aus Naturwissenschaft und Technik einen großen Einfluss auf die Art und Weise, wie Kriege und Konflikte ausgetragen wurden bezie-hungsweise werden. Im Kontext von Frieden und Sicherheit können Erkenntnisse, die eigentlich für zivile Kontexte gewonnen wurden, auch für militärische Auseinanderset-zungen genutzt werden (Dual-Use-Problematik). Seit einigen Jahren betrifft dies insbe-sondere die Informatik, die durch die militärische Nutzung von Computern, Cyberwar, Cyberspionage Information Warfare, aber auch in Bereichen wie Desinformationen kon-fliktäre Auseinandersetzungen unterstützen (und verstärken) kann. Auch werden Kon-flikte vermehrt im digitalen Raum ausgetragen, mit erschwerter Zuordnungsmöglichkeit von einzelnen (angreifenden) Akteur*innen. Im Gegenzug dazu bietet die Informatik jedoch auch für friedensstiftende Aktivitäten zahlreiche Einsatzmöglichkeiten. Dieses Kapitel möchte eine Einführung in die zunehmend an Bedeutung gewinnende Thematik liefern.},
    booktitle = {Sicherheitskritische {Mensch}-{Computer}-{Interaktion}: {Interaktive} {Technologien} und {Soziale} {Medien} im {Krisen}- und {Sicherheitsmanagement} ({Zweite} {Auflage})},
    publisher = {Springer Vieweg},
    author = {Reuter, Christian and Kaufhold, Marc-André},
    editor = {Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Security, Peace, Projekt-DualUse, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {605--630},
    }

  • Thea Riebe, Marc-André Kaufhold, Christian Reuter (2021)
    The Impact of Organizational Structure and Technology Use on Collaborative Practices in Computer Emergency Response Teams: An Empirical Study
    Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM): Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing ;5(CSCW2). doi:10.1145/3479865
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Besides the merits of increasing digitization and interconnectedness in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are more and more exposed to cyberattacks. In order to enhance the preventative and reactive capabilities against cyberattacks, Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are deployed in many countries and organizations. In Germany, CERTs in the public sector operate on federal and state level to provide information security services for authorities, citizens, and enterprises. Their tasks of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating threats and incidents is getting more complex due to the increasing amount of information disseminated into public channels. By adopting the perspectives of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Crisis Informatics, we contribute to the study of organizational structures, technology use, and the impact on collaborative practices in and between state CERTs with empirical research based on expert interviews with representatives of German state CERTs (N=15) and supplementary document analyses (N=25). We derive design and policy implications from our findings, including the need for interoperable and modular architecture, a shift towards service level agreements, cross-platform monitoring and analysis of incident data, use of deduplication techniques and standardized threat exchange formats, a reduction of resource costs through process automation, and transparent reporting and tool structures for information exchange.

    @article{riebe_impact_2021,
    title = {The {Impact} of {Organizational} {Structure} and {Technology} {Use} on {Collaborative} {Practices} in {Computer} {Emergency} {Response} {Teams}: {An} {Empirical} {Study}},
    volume = {5},
    url = {https://www.peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_RiebeKaufholdReuter_ComputerEmegencyResponseTeams_CSCW.pdf},
    doi = {10.1145/3479865},
    abstract = {Besides the merits of increasing digitization and interconnectedness in private and professional spaces, critical infrastructures and societies are more and more exposed to cyberattacks. In order to enhance the preventative and reactive capabilities against cyberattacks, Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) are deployed in many countries and organizations. In Germany, CERTs in the public sector operate on federal and state level to provide information security services for authorities, citizens, and enterprises. Their tasks of monitoring, analyzing, and communicating threats and incidents is getting more complex due to the increasing amount of information disseminated into public channels. By adopting the perspectives of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Crisis Informatics, we contribute to the study of organizational structures, technology use, and the impact on collaborative practices in and between state CERTs with empirical research based on expert interviews with representatives of German state CERTs (N=15) and supplementary document analyses (N=25). We derive design and policy implications from our findings, including the need for interoperable and modular architecture, a shift towards service level agreements, cross-platform monitoring and analysis of incident data, use of deduplication techniques and standardized threat exchange formats, a reduction of resource costs through process automation, and transparent reporting and tool structures for information exchange.},
    number = {CSCW2},
    journal = {Proceedings of the ACM: Human Computer Interaction (PACM): Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing},
    author = {Riebe, Thea and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Crisis, UsableSec, Security, A-Paper, Ranking-CORE-A, Projekt-KontiKat, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, AuswahlUsableSec, AuswahlKaufhold},
    }

  • Thea Riebe, Tristan Wirth, Markus Bayer, Philipp Kuehn, Marc-André Kaufhold, Volker Knauthe, Stefan Guthe, Christian Reuter (2021)
    CySecAlert: An Alert Generation System for Cyber Security Events Using Open Source Intelligence Data
    Information and Communications Security (ICICS) . doi:10.1007/978-3-030-86890-1_24
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Receiving relevant information on possible cyber threats, attacks, and data breaches in a timely manner is crucial for early response. The social media platform Twitter hosts an active cyber security community. Their activities are often monitored manually by security experts, such as Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). We thus propose a Twitter-based alert generation system that issues alerts to a system operator as soon as new relevant cyber security related topics emerge. Thereby, our system allows us to monitor user accounts with significantly less workload. Our system applies a supervised classifier, based on active learning, that detects tweets containing relevant information. The results indicate that uncertainty sampling can reduce the amount of manual relevance classification effort and enhance the classifier performance substantially compared to random sampling. Our approach reduces the number of accounts and tweets that are needed for the classifier training, thus making the tool easily and rapidly adaptable to the specific context while also supporting data minimization for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). Relevant tweets are clustered by a greedy stream clustering algorithm in order to identify significant events. The proposed system is able to work near real-time within the required 15-minutes time frame and detects up to 93.8\% of relevant events with a false alert rate of 14.81\%.

    @inproceedings{riebe_cysecalert_2021,
    title = {{CySecAlert}: {An} {Alert} {Generation} {System} for {Cyber} {Security} {Events} {Using} {Open} {Source} {Intelligence} {Data}},
    url = {https://peasec.de/paper/2021/2021_RiebeWirthBayerKuehnKaufholdKnautheGutheReuter_CySecAlertOpenSourceIntelligence_ICICS.pdf},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-86890-1_24},
    abstract = {Receiving relevant information on possible cyber threats, attacks, and data breaches in a timely manner is crucial for early response. The social media platform Twitter hosts an active cyber security community. Their activities are often monitored manually by security experts, such as Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). We thus propose a Twitter-based alert generation system that issues alerts to a system operator as soon as new relevant cyber security related topics emerge. Thereby, our system allows us to monitor user accounts with significantly less workload. Our system applies a supervised classifier, based on active learning, that detects tweets containing relevant information. The results indicate that uncertainty sampling can reduce the amount of manual relevance classification effort and enhance the classifier performance substantially compared to random sampling. Our approach reduces the number of accounts and tweets that are needed for the classifier training, thus making the tool easily and rapidly adaptable to the specific context while also supporting data minimization for Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). Relevant tweets are clustered by a greedy stream clustering algorithm in order to identify significant events. The proposed system is able to work near real-time within the required 15-minutes time frame and detects up to 93.8\% of relevant events with a false alert rate of 14.81\%.},
    booktitle = {Information and {Communications} {Security} ({ICICS})},
    author = {Riebe, Thea and Wirth, Tristan and Bayer, Markus and Kuehn, Philipp and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Knauthe, Volker and Guthe, Stefan and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2021},
    keywords = {Student, UsableSec, Security, Ranking-CORE-B, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {429--446},
    }

    2020

  • Marc-André Kaufhold (2020)
    Information Refinement Technologies for Crisis Informatics: User Expectations and Design Implications for Social Media and Mobile Apps in Crisis
    Darmstadt, Germany: Dissertation (Dr. rer. nat.), Department of Computer Science, Technische Unviersität Darmstadt.
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    In den letzten 20 Jahren haben sich mobile Technologien und soziale Medien nicht nur im Alltag, sondern auch in Krisensituationen etabliert. Insbesondere großflächige Ereignisse wie der Hurrikan Sandy (2012) oder das mitteleuropäische Hochwasser (2013) haben gezeigt, dass sich die Bevölkerung aktiv mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (IKT) an der Schadensbewältigung beteiligt (Reuter, Hughes, et al., 2018). Daraus ist das Forschungsfeld der Kriseninformatik entstanden, welches Wissen der Informatik und Gesellschaftswissenschaften kombiniert und zudem in Disziplinen wie der MenschMaschine-Interaktion (HCI), Computerunterstützten Gruppenarbeit (CSCW) und Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI) verankert ist. Während die Bevölkerung IKT einsetzt, um die Unsicherheiten in Krisen zu bewältigen, nutzen Behörden und Organisationen mit Sicherheitsaufgaben (BOS), etwa Feuerwehr und Polizei, öffentliche Daten, um das Situationsbewusstsein und die Entscheidungsfindung für eine bessere Schadensbewältigung zu verbessern (Palen & Anderson, 2016). Noch größere Katastrophen wie die aktuelle COVID-19-Pandemie verstärken dabei die Herausforderungen der Kriseninformatik (Xie et al., 2020). Für BOS stellt die umfangreiche Menge heterogener und semantisch verknüpfter Daten, auch Social Big Data genannt (Olshannikova et al., 2017), eine große Herausforderung im Hinblick auf die Qualität, Quantität und den Zugriff auf relevante Informationen dar. Um ein Situationsbewusstsein und nutzbare Informationen, d. h. die richtigen Informationen zur richtigen Zeit bei der richtigen Person, zu erhalten (Zade et al., 2018), müssen Informationen auf die Bedingungen des Ereignisses, organisationale Anforderungen, soziale Rahmenbedingungen und technische Möglichkeiten verfeinert werden. Diese Dissertation kombiniert das methodische Framework der Designfallstudien (Wulf et al., 2011) mit den Prinzipien der Design-Science-Forschung (Hevner et al., 2004), um das Thema der Informationsverfeinerung (Information Refinement) in vier Phasen zu untersuchen, wovon jede unterschiedliche Forschungsbeiträge hervorbringt. Die Arbeit begutachtet zunächst Nutzungs-, Rollen- und Wahrnehmungsmuster in der Kriseninformatik und stellt die Potenziale sozialer Medien zur öffentlichen Teilhabe an der Krisenbewältigung heraus. Die empirische Studien mit der deutschen Bevölkerung zeigen die positiven Einstellungen und die steigende Nutzung mobiler und sozialer Technologien in Krisen, stellen aber auch Barrieren heraus und zeigen die Erwartung, dass BOS in soziale Medien aktiv sind. Die Ergebnisse fundieren das Design innovativer IKT-Artefakte, darunter visuelle Bevölkerungsrichtlinien für soziale Medien in Krisen (SMG), ein Web-Interface für BOS zur Aggregation mobiler und sozialer Daten (ESI), ein Algorithmus zur Extraktion relevanter Informationen in sozialen Medien (SMO), und eine mobile App für die bidirektionale Kommunikation zwischen BOS und Bevölkerung (112.social). Die Evaluation der Artefakte involviert EndnutzerInnen aus dem Anwendungsfeld des Krisenmanagements, um potenziale für Verbesserungen und zukünftige Forschung zu identifizieren. Die Arbeit schließt mit einem Framework zur Informationsverfeinerung für die Kriseninformatik ab, welche die event-, gesellschafts-, organisation- und technologiebasierte Perspektive integriert.

    @book{kaufhold_information_2020,
    address = {Darmstadt, Germany},
    title = {Information {Refinement} {Technologies} for {Crisis} {Informatics}: {User} {Expectations} and {Design} {Implications} for {Social} {Media} and {Mobile} {Apps} in {Crisis}},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.26083/tuprints-00017474},
    abstract = {In den letzten 20 Jahren haben sich mobile Technologien und soziale Medien nicht nur im Alltag, sondern auch in Krisensituationen etabliert. Insbesondere großflächige Ereignisse wie der Hurrikan Sandy (2012) oder das mitteleuropäische Hochwasser (2013) haben gezeigt, dass sich die Bevölkerung aktiv mit Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (IKT) an der Schadensbewältigung beteiligt (Reuter, Hughes, et al., 2018). Daraus ist das Forschungsfeld der Kriseninformatik entstanden, welches Wissen der Informatik und Gesellschaftswissenschaften kombiniert und zudem in Disziplinen wie der MenschMaschine-Interaktion (HCI), Computerunterstützten Gruppenarbeit (CSCW) und Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI) verankert ist. Während die Bevölkerung IKT einsetzt, um die Unsicherheiten in Krisen zu bewältigen, nutzen Behörden und Organisationen mit Sicherheitsaufgaben (BOS), etwa Feuerwehr und Polizei, öffentliche Daten, um das Situationsbewusstsein und die Entscheidungsfindung für eine bessere Schadensbewältigung zu verbessern (Palen \& Anderson, 2016). Noch größere Katastrophen wie die aktuelle COVID-19-Pandemie verstärken dabei die Herausforderungen der Kriseninformatik (Xie et al., 2020). Für BOS stellt die umfangreiche Menge heterogener und semantisch verknüpfter Daten, auch Social Big Data genannt (Olshannikova et al., 2017), eine große Herausforderung im Hinblick auf die Qualität, Quantität und den Zugriff auf relevante Informationen dar. Um ein Situationsbewusstsein und nutzbare Informationen, d. h. die richtigen Informationen zur richtigen Zeit bei der richtigen Person, zu erhalten (Zade et al., 2018), müssen Informationen auf die Bedingungen des Ereignisses, organisationale Anforderungen, soziale Rahmenbedingungen und technische Möglichkeiten verfeinert werden. Diese Dissertation kombiniert das methodische Framework der Designfallstudien (Wulf et al., 2011) mit den Prinzipien der Design-Science-Forschung (Hevner et al., 2004), um das Thema der Informationsverfeinerung (Information Refinement) in vier Phasen zu untersuchen, wovon jede unterschiedliche Forschungsbeiträge hervorbringt. Die Arbeit begutachtet zunächst Nutzungs-, Rollen- und Wahrnehmungsmuster in der Kriseninformatik und stellt die Potenziale sozialer Medien zur öffentlichen Teilhabe an der Krisenbewältigung heraus. Die empirische Studien mit der deutschen Bevölkerung zeigen die positiven Einstellungen und die steigende Nutzung mobiler und sozialer Technologien in Krisen, stellen aber auch Barrieren heraus und zeigen die Erwartung, dass BOS in soziale Medien aktiv sind. Die Ergebnisse fundieren das Design innovativer IKT-Artefakte, darunter visuelle Bevölkerungsrichtlinien für soziale Medien in Krisen (SMG), ein Web-Interface für BOS zur Aggregation mobiler und sozialer Daten (ESI), ein Algorithmus zur Extraktion relevanter Informationen in sozialen Medien (SMO), und eine mobile App für die bidirektionale Kommunikation zwischen BOS und Bevölkerung (112.social). Die Evaluation der Artefakte involviert EndnutzerInnen aus dem Anwendungsfeld des Krisenmanagements, um potenziale für Verbesserungen und zukünftige Forschung zu identifizieren. Die Arbeit schließt mit einem Framework zur Informationsverfeinerung für die Kriseninformatik ab, welche die event-, gesellschafts-, organisation- und technologiebasierte Perspektive integriert.},
    publisher = {Dissertation (Dr. rer. nat.), Department of Computer Science, Technische Unviersität Darmstadt},
    author = {Kaufhold, Marc-André},
    year = {2020},
    keywords = {Crisis, Projekt-KontiKat, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Dissertation},
    }

  • Philipp Kuehn, Thea Riebe, Lynn Apelt, Max Jansen, Christian Reuter (2020)
    Sharing of Cyber Threat Intelligence between States
    S+F Sicherheit und Frieden / Peace and Security ;38(1):22–28. doi:10.5771/0175-274X-2020-1-22
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Threats in cyberspace have increased in recent years due to the increment of offensive capabilities by states. Approaches to mitigate the security dilemma in cyberspace within the UN are deadlocked, as states have not been able to achieve agreements. However, from the perspective of IT-Security, there are Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) platforms to share and analyze cyber threats for a collective crisis management. To investigate, whether or not CTI platforms can be used as a confidence-building measure between states and international organizations, we portray current CTI platforms, showcase political requirements, and answer the question of how CTI communication may contribute to confidence-building in international affairs. Our results suggest the need to further develop analytical capabilities, as well as the implementation of a broad social, political, and legal environment for international CTI sharing.

    @article{kuehn_sharing_2020,
    title = {Sharing of {Cyber} {Threat} {Intelligence} between {States}},
    volume = {38},
    url = {http://www.peasec.de/paper/2020/2020_KuehnRiebeApeltJansenReuter_SharingCyberThreatIntelligence_SF.pdf},
    doi = {10.5771/0175-274X-2020-1-22},
    abstract = {Threats in cyberspace have increased in recent years due to the increment of offensive capabilities by states. Approaches to mitigate the security dilemma in cyberspace within the UN are deadlocked, as states have not been able to achieve agreements. However, from the perspective of IT-Security, there are Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) platforms to share and analyze cyber threats for a collective crisis management. To investigate, whether or not CTI platforms can be used as a confidence-building measure between states and international organizations, we portray current CTI platforms, showcase political requirements, and answer the question of how CTI communication may contribute to confidence-building in international affairs. Our results suggest the need to further develop analytical capabilities, as well as the implementation of a broad social, political, and legal environment for international CTI sharing.},
    number = {1},
    journal = {S+F Sicherheit und Frieden / Peace and Security},
    author = {Kuehn, Philipp and Riebe, Thea and Apelt, Lynn and Jansen, Max and Reuter, Christian},
    year = {2020},
    keywords = {Student, Security, Peace, Projekt-DualUse, Cyberwar, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN},
    pages = {22--28},
    }

  • Christian Reuter, Marc-André Kaufhold, Tina Comes, Michèle Knodt, Max Mühlhäuser (2020)
    Mobile Resilience: Designing Mobile Interactive Systems for Societal and Technical Resilience
    MobileHCI ’20: 22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services . doi:10.1145/3406324.3424590
    [BibTeX] [Abstract] [Download PDF]

    Digitalization and interconnectedness, facilitated by the Internet of Things (IoT) and the widespread distribution of mobile devices, can be used to tackle important societal challenges. This is maybe most prominently visible in the response to the COVID-2019 Pandemic. However, the design of mobile technology, functionality and underlying infrastructures must be resilient against disruptions caused by man-made (e.g. bombings, hacking) and natural (e.g. earthquakes, hurricanes) crises, emergencies and threats. To explore challenges, designs and potentials of interactive technologies, this workshop investigates the overlapping space of mobile technologies and resilient systems, including future application domains such as smart cities.

    @inproceedings{reuter_mobile_2020,
    title = {Mobile {Resilience}: {Designing} {Mobile} {Interactive} {Systems} for {Societal} and {Technical} {Resilience}},
    url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3406324.3424590},
    doi = {10.1145/3406324.3424590},
    abstract = {Digitalization and interconnectedness, facilitated by the Internet of Things (IoT) and the widespread distribution of mobile devices, can be used to tackle important societal challenges. This is maybe most prominently visible in the response to the COVID-2019 Pandemic. However, the design of mobile technology, functionality and underlying infrastructures must be resilient against disruptions caused by man-made (e.g. bombings, hacking) and natural (e.g. earthquakes, hurricanes) crises, emergencies and threats. To explore challenges, designs and potentials of interactive technologies, this workshop investigates the overlapping space of mobile technologies and resilient systems, including future application domains such as smart cities.},
    booktitle = {{MobileHCI} '20: 22nd {International} {Conference} on {Human}-{Computer} {Interaction} with {Mobile} {Devices} and {Services}},
    author = {Reuter, Christian and Kaufhold, Marc-André and Comes, Tina and Knodt, Michèle and Mühlhäuser, Max},
    year = {2020},
    keywords = {Crisis, HCI, SocialMedia, Ranking-CORE-B, Projekt-ATHENE-SecUrban, Projekt-CYWARN, Projekt-emergenCITY},
    pages = {1--3},
    }

    News

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    2023 (1)

    2022 (8)

    2021 (9)

    2020 (4)

    Kontakt

    Technische Universität Darmstadt

    Fachbereich Informatik
    Wissenschaft und Technik für Frieden und Sicherheit (PEASEC)
    Pankratiusstraße 2, 64289 Darmstadt
    www.peasec.de

    Projektmanager

    Dr. Marc-André Kaufhold
    www.peasec.de/team/kaufhold

    Verbundkoodinator

    Prof. Dr. Dr. Christian Reuter
    www.peasec.de/team/reuter

    Sekretariat

    Förderung

    Projektname: Strategie- und Technologie-Entwicklung zur medienübergreifenden Erstellung eines Cyber-Lagebilds und akteursspezifischen Kommunikation von Cyber-Warnmeldungen (CYWARN)

    Schlüsselwörter: Cyber-Lagebild, Cyber-Warnmeldungen, Computer Emergency Response Teams, Open Source Intelligence, Glaubwürdigkeitsbewertung, Visual Analytics, Medien und Informationsinfrastrukturen

    Förderung: Programm „Zivile Sicherheit – Sozioökonomische und soziokulturelle Infrastrukturen“ vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF).

    Förderkennzeichen: 13N15407 bis 13N15410

    Laufzeit: 10.2020 – 03.2024

    Projektträger: VDI Technologiezentrum GmbH