An Ontology-Based Distributed Whiteboard to Determine Legal Responses to Online Cyber Attacks

Leisheng Peng, Duminda Wijesekera, Thomas C. Wingfield, James B. Michael

2006

Abstract

Today’s cyber attacks come from many Internet and legal domains, requiring a coordinated swift and legitimate response. Consequently, determining the legality of a response requires a coordinated consensual legal argument that weaves legal sub-arguments from all participating domains. Doing so as a precursor for forensic analysis is to provide legitimacy to the process. We describe a tool that can be used to weave such a legal argument using the WWW securely. Our tool is a legal whiteboard that allows participating group of attorneys to meet in Cyberspace in real time and construct a legal argument graphically by using a decision tree. A tree constructed this way and verified to hold anticipated legal challenges can then be used to guide forensic experts and law enforcement personnel during their active responses and off-line examinations. In our tool the group of attorneys that construct the legal argument elects a leader (say the super builder) that permits (through access control) the group to construct a decision tree that, when populated by actual parameters of a cyber incident will output a decision. During the course of the construction, all participating attorneys can construct sub-parts of the arguments that can be substantiated with relevant legal documents from their own legal domains. Because diverse legal domains use different nomenclatures, we provide the capability to index and search legal documents using a complex International legal Ontology that goes beyond the traditional NeuxsLexus like legal databases. This Ontology itself can be created using the tool from remote locations. Once the sub arguments are made, they are submitted to the master builder through a ticketing mechanism that has the final authority to approve and synchronize the sub-trees to become the final decision tree with all its attached legal documents. Our tool has been fine tuned with numerous interviews with practicing attorneys in the subject area of cyber crime.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Peng L., Wijesekera D., C. Wingfield T. and B. Michael J. (2006). An Ontology-Based Distributed Whiteboard to Determine Legal Responses to Online Cyber Attacks . In Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Security in Information Systems - Volume 1: WOSIS, (ICEIS 2006) ISBN 978-972-8865-52-8, pages 232-245. DOI: 10.5220/0002502002320245


in Bibtex Style

@conference{wosis06,
author={Leisheng Peng and Duminda Wijesekera and Thomas C. Wingfield and James B. Michael},
title={An Ontology-Based Distributed Whiteboard to Determine Legal Responses to Online Cyber Attacks},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Security in Information Systems - Volume 1: WOSIS, (ICEIS 2006)},
year={2006},
pages={232-245},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0002502002320245},
isbn={978-972-8865-52-8},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Security in Information Systems - Volume 1: WOSIS, (ICEIS 2006)
TI - An Ontology-Based Distributed Whiteboard to Determine Legal Responses to Online Cyber Attacks
SN - 978-972-8865-52-8
AU - Peng L.
AU - Wijesekera D.
AU - C. Wingfield T.
AU - B. Michael J.
PY - 2006
SP - 232
EP - 245
DO - 10.5220/0002502002320245