Security and Defence Quarterly

7-18

Authors: Vasileios Symeonidis, George Andrew Zombanakis

This paper aims to assess the extent to which repeated attacks against sovereign Hellenic air space by Turkey along with the inevitably ensuing engagements between aircraft of the two sides follow a certain predetermined pattern of behaviour that can be detected based on a given statistical model, and if so, to what extent this pattern is predictable in terms of its intensity and the frequency of incidents. To this end, we use the Weibull statistical distribution as an appropriate tool for interpreting and quantifying the pattern of aggressive Turkish behaviour and calculating probabilities of occurrences. Based on this choice, we then proceed with a forecast of this behaviour in the near future. We provide specific mathematical formulae that can be readily used to calculate probabilities and forecast air space violations and engagements. Our models, based on historical data, assume that both Hellenic air space violations and engagement incidents will keep increasing but will inevitably reach a monthly maximum, constrained by the availability of property and human resources on the Turkish side. The conclusions drawn point to the fact that Turkey will at some point in the near future reach its capacity limits in terms of property and human resources used in such offensive exercises, and that there is very little that can be done to enhance the margins of such activities given the room provided by the Turkish economy, which seem to be prohibitive.

41-52

Authors: Cyprian Aleksander Kozera

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the possibility of tracking and identifying military and other security personnel, operating in secretive or restricted areas. Such exposure might have dire consequences from the perspective of counterintelligence or physical security. Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Social Media Intelligence methods and techniques were employed to gather and analyse information on security and military personnel and expose their activities on-line. The case studies presented in the article exemplify utilisation of the new “Suunto” fitness application for open-source-based intelligence research. Despite general Operational Security rules that require all personal data such as names, pictures and habits to be kept discreet, open-source based research with one of the most popular fitness applications allowed the identification of military personnel and government agents operating in Afghanistan, Mali, Syria or working at national military facilities. In a single case, it took the author less than thirty minutes to identify personal details of a US Army soldier in Afghanistan and a Special Forces officer in one of the European countries and obtain their home addresses and pictures of them and their families. The results of the research show how OSINT techniques concerning fitness applications are useful both for intelligence and counterintelligence, specifically for malicious and terrorist purposes, and how necessary it is to make fitness and other, supposedly personal, activity private, especially for those who carry out sensitive missions and work in a restricted or secretive environment.

71-81

Authors: Janusz Gierszewski, Michał Marek Matuśkiewicz

Wireless network communication standards have become very common due to the huge benefits of their application. The use of radio waves to create networks has reduced infrastructure costs and increased the mobility of devices. The advantages of wireless communication (WLAN) also pose a challenge to the security of transmitted data. However, the use of a wireless signal poses certain threats to network security. The aim of the study was to analyse problems related to the security of WLAN 802.11. and assess its resistance to various attack strategies. It was assumed that wireless networks have an insufficient level of security. The assumed assumption is verifiable due to the ability to monitor events in networks. In order to verify the hypothesis, a number of experiments have been carried out in laboratory conditions, concerning the currently used WLAN protections from the IEEE 802.11 family of standards. The electromagnetic waves used for communication are available to the public at a distance of a few / several dozen metres from the communicating devices. It is easy to monitor air traffic using a network card that operates in monitor mode. The communication itself cannot be secured in any way, so data encryption is one way of secure transmission. During the research, the applied security features were successfully broken with the help of publicly available tools. The obtained results are distinguished by a high level of objectivity and reliability in the assessment of applied wireless network security. It was shown that there are still imperfections in the security and it is possible to break the security measures. The consequences of attacks are very serious and lead to a breach of each of the attributes of secure information. Practice has shown that it is impossible to create a wireless network that is fully secure. The findings of the study should be used to develop methods to improve information security, as well as to raise users’ awareness of existing threats. Not all users of wireless networks are aware of how easy some of the commonly used security features are to break.