4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Cybercrime

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Gamification to educate consumers about cybercrime in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Maselo, Kehilwe Venacia; Lee, Gregory
    This study examines the impact of gamification on South African consumers attitudes and understanding of cybercrime. Given the increasing reliance on the Internet activities such as social media, digital banking, and e-commerce, there is a critical need for consumers to adopt basic security measures to protect themselves against threats such as privacy breaches, identity theft, cyberbullying, and exposure to harmful content. However, many individuals lack the necessary knowledge and expertise to ensure their online security. The research explores the challenges associated with enhancing security awareness and assesses the potential of gamification techniques to overcome these obstacles. By integrating game mechanics and elements into online security awareness activities, the study aims to make learning about cybersecurity engaging and enjoyable, leading to better understanding and adoption of safe online practices. The findings indicate that gamification significantly enhances consumer engagement, knowledge retention, and proactive cybersecurity behaviours. Additionally, the research contributes to the theoretical framework of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and behavioural science by providing empirical evidence that intrinsic motivation, fostered through gamification, enhances learning outcomes and behaviour change in cybercrime education. These insights offer valuable implications for businesses and organisations seeking to improve their cybersecurity training and consumer awareness campaigns. Ultimately, this research highlights gamification’s potential to transform cybersecurity education and to promote a more cyber-aware and proactive consumer base in South Africa
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    Regularized Deep Neural Network for Post-Authorship Attribution
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Modupe, Abiodun; Celik, Turgay; Marivate, Vukosi
    Post-authorship attribution is the computational process of determining the legitimate author of an online text snippet, such as an email, blog, forum post, or chat log, by employing stylometric features. The process consists of analysing various linguistic and writing patterns, such as vocabulary, sentence structure, punctuation usage, and even the use of specific words or phrases. By comparing these features to a known set of writing pieces from potential authors, investigators can make educated hypotheses about the true authorship of a text snippet. Additionally, post-authorship attribution has applications in fields like forensic linguistics and cybersecurity, where determining the source of a text can be crucial for investigations or identifying potential threats. Furthermore, in a verification procedure to proactively uncover misogynistic, misandrist, xenophobic, and abusive posts on the internet or social networks, finding a suitable text representation to adequately symbolise and capture an author’s distinctive writing from a computational linguistics perspective is typically known as a stylometric analysis. Additionally, most of the posts on social media or online are generally rife with ambiguous terminologies that could potentially compromise and influence the precision of the early proposed authorship attribution model. The majority of extracted stylistic elements in words are idioms, onomatopoeias, homophones, phonemes, synonyms, acronyms, anaphora, and polysemy, which are fundamentally difficult to interpret by most existing natural language processing (NLP) systems. These difficulties make it difficult to correctly identify the true author of a given text. Therefore, further advancements in NLP systems are necessary to effectively handle these complex linguistic elements and improve the accuracy of authorship attribution models. In this thesis, we introduce a regularised deep neural network (RDNN) model to solve the challenges that come with figuring out who wrote what after the fact. The proposed method utilises a convolutional neural network, a bidirectional long short-term memory encoder, and a distributed highway network to effectively address the post-authorship attribution problem. The neural network was utilised to generate lexical stylometric features, which were then fed into the bidirectional encoder to produce a syntactic feature vector representation. The feature vector was then fed into the distributed high-speed networks for regularisation to reduce network generalisation errors. The regularised feature vector was then given to the bidirectional decoder to learn the author’s writing style. The feature classification layer is made up of a fully connected network and a SoftMax function for prediction. The RDNN method outperformed the existing state-of-the-art methods in terms of accuracy, precision, and recall on the majority of the benchmark datasets. These results highlight the potential of the proposed method to significantly improve classification performance in various domains. Again, the introduction of an interactive system to visualise the performance of the proposed method would further enhance its usability and effectiveness in quantifying the contribution of the author’s writing characteristics in both online text snippets and literary documents. It is useful in processing the evidence that is needed to support claims or draw conclusions about the author’s writing style or intent during the pre-trial investigation by the law enforcement agent in the court of law. The incorporation of this method into the pretrial stage greatly strengthens the credibility and validity of the findings presented in court and has the potential to revolutionise the field of authorship attribution and enhance the accuracy of forensic investigations. Furthermore, it ensures a fair and just legal process for all parties involved by providing concrete evidence to support or challenge claims. We are also aware of the limitations of the proposed methods and recognise the need for additional research to overcome these constraints and improve the overall reliability and applicability of post-authorship attribution of online text snippets and literary documents for forensic investigations. Even though the proposed methods have revealed some unusual differences in author writing style, such as how influential writers, regular people, and suspected authors use language, the evidence from the results with the features extracted from the texts has shown promise for identifying authorship patterns and aiding in forensic analyses. However, much work remains to be done to validate the methodologies’ usefulness and dependability as effective authorship attribution procedures. Further research is needed to determine the extent to which external factors, such as the context in which the text was written or the author’s emotional state, may impact the identified authorship patterns. Additionally, it is crucial to establish a comprehensive dataset that includes a diverse range of authors and writing styles to ensure the generalizability of the findings and enhance the reliability of forensic analyses. Furthermore, the dataset used in this thesis does not include a diverse variety of authors and writing styles, such as impostors attempting to impersonate another author, which limits the generalizability of the conclusions and undermines the credibility of forensic analysis. More studies can be conducted to broaden the proposed strategy for detecting and distinguishing impostors’ writing styles from those of authentic authors when committing crimes on both online and literary documents. It is conceivable for numerous criminals to collaborate to perpetrate a crime, which could aid in improving the proposed methods for detecting the existence of multiple impostors or the contribution of each criminal writing style based on the person or individual they are attempting to mimic. The likelihood of numerous offenders working together complicates the investigation and necessitates advanced procedures for identifying their individual contributions, as well as both authentic and manufactured impostor contents within the text. This is especially difficult on social media, where fake accounts and anonymous profiles can make it difficult to determine the true identity of those involved, which can come from a variety of sources, including text, WhatsApps, chat images, videos, and so on, and can lead to the spread of misinformation and manipulation. As a result, promoting a hybrid approach that goes beyond text as evidence could help address some of the concerns raised above. For example, integrating audio and visual data may provide a more complete perspective of the scenario. As a result, such an approach exacerbates the restrictions indicated in the distribution of data and may necessitate more storage and analytical resources. However, it can also lead to a more accurate and nuanced analysis of the situation
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    The perceived impact of security and privacy risks on social commerce amongst social media users in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Ramjith, Samresh
    This research investigated the influence of social media attitude, social media trust, and risk awareness (cybersecurity and privacy) on social commerce intention. Five hypotheses were proposed, which were then tested with a sample of social media users via an online survey. Survey results were cleaned and then analysed through Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPLS software. The study did not find a significant direct effect of social media attitude on social commerce intention, but did find that social media attitude was found to significantly influence social media trust. The moderation effects of cybersecurity risk awareness and privacy risk awareness on the relationship between social media trust and social commerce intention were not supported. The study supports and reinforces the importance of trust in social commerce and the need for businesses and social media platforms to continuously work to enhance trust amongst users. A research outcome is the necessity for deeper investigation into the role of user attitudes and risk awareness in social commerce. The study contributes to the social commerce literature by providing empirical evidence about the complex interplay between trust, attitude, and risk awareness, contributing to enhancing understanding of these relationships and their impact on business strategies
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    Legal challenges of establishing jurisdiction over cloud data: addressing the gaps in South Africa’s cybercrime legislative framework
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Musoni, Melody; Klaaren, Jonathan
    This thesis discusses the problems presented by the emerging technology of cloud computing during cybercrime investigations. One of the main challenges with cloud computing technologies is the lack of clarity on jurisdiction and whether law enforcement agents can exercise unilateral enforcement jurisdiction over remote cloud data. The thesis signifies the challenge by demonstrating how remote access to cloud data can potentially infringe on the sovereignty of foreign states, violate international law, and infringe on people’s privacy rights. The underlying concern with cybercrime investigations in the cloud context is that the current laws are not only territorial, but they are also outdated and lacking the ability to complement and address technological advancements. The central question discussed is whether the jurisdictional principles need to be revised to address innovative technological advancements or if the traditional principles suffice and can continue to be of application. At present, there are diverging views and approaches to dealing with cloud data jurisdiction for criminal investigation purposes. Some scholars, judges and law officers still rely on traditional jurisdictional principles and apply them to cyberspace and cloud environments. They do not see the justification to have separate laws to address activities in cyberspace. However, others advocate for the acclimatisation of new laws to meet the technological changes. Compounding this difference in opinion is the uncertainty in legal frameworks on cybercrime. Such uncertainty has left the topic vacillating between the views of territorialists and those of data exceptionalists. Similarly, South Africa’s position on this issue is unequivocal as various pieces of legislation address the issue of cloud jurisdiction differently. This makes this study of utmost importance. This thesis argues that law should be developed to address the technological changes presented by cloud computing technologies. Traditional jurisdictional principles which emphasise on geographical territory are not sufficient to address the unique features of cloud data. Pre-internet based jurisdictional principles should not be directly applied in cyberspace or cyber-environments. It is important for law to be developed in a manner which allows it to adequately address technological developments. One way of achieving this is by reformulating jurisdictional principles to conform with the emerging technologies. Apart from law, lawyers and law makers should leverage the use of other regulatory modalities such as code to regulate online conduct. Code can play the role of law which can effectively regulate cyberspaces as well as solve the data jurisdictional problem. This thesis supports the notion of reformulation of jurisdictional principles to address these challenges. In addition, it also points out the importance of reinforcing the current measures in place to address jurisdictional challenges
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    The sufficiency of protection in light of the increasing number of cybercrime and cyber harassment cases
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-10-31) Witz, Daniel Joseph
    This research examines how the South African Police Services, the National Prosecuting Authority, current and new legislation and Criminal Law address harassment in light of the increased threat and technological advancements of cyberbullying and cyber harassment. This research assignment will critically reflect on whether the Protection from Harassment Act, supported by recent additions to South African legislation, affords an applicant sufficient protection considering the increasing number of cybercrime and cyber harassment cases, and whether or not the reliance on the South African Police Services and South African Courts negates any protection that the legislation affords. In conclusion, this research report will make certain recommendations regarding how the complex issues of harassment can be addressed to focus on the protection of South Africa's Constitutional Value
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    A critical analysis of the legal framework relating to cybercrime in Uganda
    (2021) Adesuyi, Daramola
    This dissertation examines the legal framework relating to cybercrime in Uganda and its effect on the enforcement of its terms. Investigating this issue is crucial in the wake of the rise in global interconnectivity as a result of the relative advances in technology, which challenge the application of the old standard of classification and investigation of traditional crimes. Unlike the advanced nations, the current laws regulating criminal conduct in most developing nations today are ill-equipped to cope with these emerging cybercrimes. Therefore, this dissertation argues that Uganda’s extant legal framework is manifestly inadequate to protect individuals from the threats resulting from cybercrime effectively. This view is held based on an analysis of the major procedural challenges and issues in Uganda today and a review of the current legal regime. This dissertation contends that, contrary to the common belief, merely enacting legislation, which is a ‘cut and paste’ of foreign cyber laws, does not automatically resolve issues related to cybercrimes in Uganda. Furthermore, the dissertation argues that useful lessons can be obtained from an effective legal regime based on insights from the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, and South Africa. Similarly, other pragmatic ways of effective protection against cybercrime in Uganda are suggested to improve awareness and scholarship, strengthen law enforcement agencies and the judiciary, and improve cooperation with international and regional cybercrime regimes
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    Factors influencing cyber insurance adoption in South Africa industry
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2020) Mbatha, Nkosinathi Sphiwe
    Organisations are benefiting from the use of emerging digital technologies for improved efficiencies. These technologies are vulnerable to cyber-attacks resulting in breaches on organisational assets. Cyber-attacks necessitates boards and top management to strategically rethink their cybersecurity approaches to managing cyber risks. The purpose of the study was to explore the factors influencing cyber insurance adoption in the South African industry. The study adapted Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE) theoretical framework to investigate cyber insurance adoption relevant to the South African context. The review of literature focused on the cybersecurity, cyber risk management, and cyber insurance phenomenon to understand the global and developing world landscape. The research design followed the systemic collection of qualitative data through semi-structured interview questions on the purposefully selected sample of professionals in the public and private sectors of the South African industry. The analysis and interpretation through categorisation of patterns of data collected enabled presentation and discussion of emerging themes resulting in findings. The key findings relate to effective cybersecurity awareness, organisational approach to managing cyber risks, as well as the nature of industry and compliance with legislation. The study established that the combination of effective cybersecurity awareness, the relationship between the strategic organisational approach to cybersecurity and top management support towards cyber risk management as well as compliance with legislation are the factors influencing cyber insurance adoption in the South African industry. In order to meet the research objectives, various conclusions were made. The study concluded that effective cybersecurity awareness must be viewed as a strategic imperative to enable organisations to operate securely. The study also concluded that organisations must proactively approach cybersecurity strategically thereby ensuring effective top management buy-in. The study concluded that the POPI Act is the primary driver of cyber insurance adoption in the South African industry.