Dr. K. P. Subbalakshmi, Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT), New York, United States, addressed the students and faculty members of Amrita Center for Cybersecurity Systems and Networks, Amritapuri Campus, via A-VIEW (Amrita Virtual Interactive e-Learning World) on October 14, 2015. The talk was titled “Challenges in Social Media Security and Forensics.”
Dr. Subbalakshmi explained that the cyber and physical worlds are no longer separate entities. About 23% of people in the United States use the Internet as their primary source of information in decision making on diet habits, shopping, family and professional issues. Although social media can be an ally in crowd sourcing solutions for simple problems (like choosing a restaurant), to complex ones (like dealing with crises such as the Japanese earthquake), its influence on the day-to-day lives of people, can be a vulnerability that can be exploited by malicious actors leading to significant impact on law and order, economy and personal safety. For example, in April 2015, rumours spread through social media added to the fear of another possible earthquake in Lucknow and Patna. The talk discussed the challenges and methods of detecting deception on the Internet, as well as presenting a demo of her deception detection algorithms. The methods to detect the source of rumours in social media networks were also explained.
