Discipline: Computer Sciences and Information Management
Subcategory: Computer Science & Information Systems
Akinyele Akinsanya - Bowie State University
Co-Author(s): Haydar Teymourlouei and Guy Alain-Amoussou, Bowie State University, Bowie, MD
The vast popularity of social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, google+, have revolutionized the way people interact. These social networking tools provide innovative environments and means to share private information. Moreover, the widespread use of Internet-ready mobile hand held devices has also increased the use of social networking tools as they provide an array of applications to enhance users’ social experiences. The increased use of these social networking applications has generated a need for privacy protection. Unfortunately, the security of these shared information cannot be fully guaranteed due to cyber-attacks. Our research focused on how to prevent users from becoming vulnerable to eavesdropping, attacks, vulnerabilities, threats and various methods that potentially compromise users’ privacy on social networking environment. Our proposed solution for increasing the protection of privacy on social networking platform, focuses on the implementation of three function requirements designed to encrypt the user identification and the communication of user interactions. The encryption of the user identification is based on hash and salt algorithms which enhance the traditional password-based access control of the user’s account. The user communication interactions encryption is based on using asymmetric (public) key encryption. Our proposed solution is to use encryption to safeguard users’ data from unauthorized sharing with third parties; it does not prevent interception of communications, but denies access to potential hackers. The proposed solution could contribute to the confidentiality of personal data on social networking sites.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): My appreciation goes to Bowie State University Education Innovation Initiative - EI2 and Summer Undergraduate Research Institute - SURI program for giving me the opportunity to partake in this research project. Also, appreciation to my two mentors, Guy Alain- Amoussou and Haydar Teymourlouei, for ensuring that this research was a great learning process.
Faculty Advisor: Haydar Teymourlouei, Guy Alain-Amoussou, hteymourlouei@bowiestate.edu
Role: The implementation of Password Hashing. Encryption.