Table of Contents
- Illicit Gold from Peru and Colombia: Understanding the Trade, Routes, and U.S. Linkages
- Overcoming Reluctance and Increasing Intelligence Gathering from Victims of Trafficking
- Digital Forensic Tools and Techniques for Investigating Control Logic Attacks in Industrial Control Systems
- Graph Analytics and Visualization for Criminal Network Identification
- The CINA Team
- CINA Science Committee
- Research Partners
- Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA)
Also in this report:
Illicit Gold from Peru and Colombia: Understanding the Trade, Routes, and U.S. Linkages
The value of illegal gold exports from Peru and Colombia has overtaken the value of their cocaine exports. Investigators need a better understanding of the illegal gold trade and illicit pathways in order to disrupt illegal activity across borders and identifying linkages to the U.S. market. This project provides information about legal, illicit, and illegal gold mining in the two countries, the trafficking of this gold to the U.S., and the mining companies, criminal groups, brokerages, and exporters who are associated with the trafficking.
Overcoming Reluctance and Increasing Intelligence Gathering from Victims of Trafficking
Millions of people worldwide are victims of commercial sexual exploitation or sex trafficking, with about 25% of these victims under 18; unfortunately, the majority of these cases go undetected and unprosecuted. Law enforcement needs details from victims to successfully prosecute both individual traffickers and the larger crime networks that are often involved. Trafficked victims, particularly minors, are often reluctant to disclose, which places law enforcement in an incredibly challenging position, and affects the likelihood of successfully prosecuting offenders. No evidence-based guidelines exist, however, about how best to question these unique and vulnerable victims, about what topics those questions should focus, or about what other evidence is most useful to successful prosecution. This project is producing evidence-based training and guidelines for effective intelligence gathering from victims to support successful prosecutions, and highlights areas where additional law enforcement training may be needed.
Digital Forensic Tools and Techniques for Investigating Control Logic Attacks in Industrial Control Systems
While digital forensic capabilities continue to advance, industrial control systems (ICS) environments are notoriously heterogenous and proprietary, and techniques for investigating them remain underdeveloped. Tool and knowledge gaps exist regarding how anti-forensic attacks can be realized on ICS devices, which limits forensic analysis, and analysts require tools and techniques to investigate cyber-attacks on industrial control systems in support of their mission to protect critical infrastructure. This project enhances the capabilities of ICS owners and operators by providing better understanding of anti-forensic aided control logic modification attacks, and the project equips them with knowledge, tools, and techniques to more thoroughly and efficiently investigate such attacks.
Graph Analytics and Visualization for Criminal Network Identification
Identification of criminal networks is a highly challenging task. A wide variety of evidence needs to be collected and correlated in order to form and prove hypotheses that stand up under judicial scrutiny. Current systems have an abundance of data, so the challenge has evolved from not having the information needed to finding it inside the vast array of data that is available. Investigators now have an enormous amount of data and information sources to explore and integrate in order to uncover and understand complex criminal networks, and they need a visual representation of the connections between people and events to perform their work.
A wide variety of analytical tools are being developed in order to automatically find valuable knowledge, but in some cases automated extraction may not be sufficient and human ingenuity and intuition will be required to find the obscure connection that breaks a case. This work addresses the challenge of finding efficient ways to structure and present as much information as possible to the human analysts in order to trigger their natural and unique abilities. The project team has developed new methods for graph display and layouts targeted at the kind of data typically encountered by investigators and analysts, allowing them to focus on identifying criminal activity and networks rather than data processing.
The CINA Team
The Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis (CINA) Center is part of the prestigious network of DHS Centers of Excellence funded by the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s Office of University Programs. Our staff brings together leading experts and researchers to pursue multidisciplinary approaches to address the disruption of criminal activities across the physical and cyber spaces.
CINA Science Committee
Research Partners
Multi-disciplinary research teams from across the country and the world partner with CINA to expand our research expertise and portfolio of services. These trusted and valued collaborators possess a shared focus on our collective mission.
To schedule a CINA capabilities briefing, project demo, or to obtain more information about CINA-sponsored events contact us at cina@gmu.edu
1. Arizona State University, AZ
5. California State University San Marcos, CA
6. Carnegie Mellon University, PA
10. East Carolina University, NC
11. Eastern New Mexico University, NM
12. Elizabeth City State University, NC
14. Fayetteville State University, NC
15. Florida International University, FL
16. George Mason University, VA
17. Georgia State University, GA
18. Jackson State University, MS
19. Jacksonville State University, AL
22. Michigan State University, MI
23. New York City College of Technology, NY
24. North Carolina State University, NC
25. Northeastern University, MA
26. Pennsylvania State University, PA
28. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, NY
30. St. Joseph's University, PA
32. Sul Ross State University, TX
34. Trinity Washington University, DC
37. University of Baltimore, MD
38. University of California-Irvine, CA
39. University of Central Florida, FL
41. University of North Texas, TX
42. University of Notre Dame, IN
43. University of Portsmouth (UK)
44. University of Texas at El Paso, TX
45. University of Texas at San Antonio, TX
46. University of the District of Columbia, D.C.
47. University of Washington, WA
48. University of Winchester (UK)
Basic Ordering Agreement
In addition to CINA research projects executed under our main Cooperative Agreement with DHS, the center also has a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) with DHS which allows us to execute projects with classified or sensitive content, and to share data bidirectionally with DHS. The center has six active projects under this BOA, and the projects cover a range of issues including criminal disruptions of supply chains, cyber range development, and digital forensics training curriculum development. If you have a problem, need, or idea which may not fit into the center's main agreement for sensitivity, data sharing, or other reasons, please contact us and we'd be happy to discuss the potential and structure of a BOA project.
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