B. Issac

B. Issac, R. Chiong, S. M. Jacob

One of the biggest problems with the Internet technology is the unwanted spam emails. The well disguised phishing email comes in as part of the spam and makes its entry into the inbox quite frequently nowadays. While phishing is normally considered a consumer issue, the fraudulent tactics the phishers use are now intimidating the corporate sector as well. In this paper, we analyze the various aspects of phishing attacks and draw on some possible defenses as countermeasures. We initially address the different forms of phishing attacks in theory, and then look at some examples of attacks in practice, along with their common defenses. We also highlight some recent statistical data on phishing scam to project the seriousness of the problem. Finally, some specific phishing countermeasures at both the user level and the organization level are listed, and a multi-layered anti-phishing proposal is presented to round up our studies.

B. Issac

For network computers to communicate to one another, they need to know one another's IP address and MAC address. Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is developed to find the Ethernet address that map to a specific IP address. The source computer broadcasts the request for Ethernet address and eventually the target computer replies. The IP to Ethernet address mapping would later be stored in an ARP Cache for some time duration, after which the process is repeated. Since ARP is susceptible to ARP poisoning attacks, we propose to make it unicast, centralized and secure, along with a secure design of DHCP protocol to mitigate MAC spoofing. The secure protocol designs are explained in detail. Lastly we also discuss some performance issues to show how the proposed protocols work.

J. R. Modapothala, B. Issac

Measuring the effectiveness of corporate environmental reports, it being highly qualitative and less regulated, is often considered as a daunting task. The task becomes more complex if comparisons are to be performed. This study is undertaken to overcome the physical verification problems by implementing data mining technique. It further explores on the effectiveness by performing exploratory analysis and structural equation model to bring out the significant linkages between the selected 10 variables. Samples of five hundred and thirty nine reports across various countries are used from an international directory to perform the statistical analysis like: One way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), MDA (Multivariate Discriminant Analysis) and SEM (Structural Equation Modeling). The results indicate the significant differences among the various types of industries in their environmental reporting, and the exploratory factors like stakeholder, organization strategy and industrial oriented factors, proved significant. The major accomplishment is that the findings correlate with the conceptual frame work of GRI.