DigLA – A Digsby log analysis tool to identify forensic artifacts

Since the inception of Web 2.0, instant messaging, e-mailing, and social networking have emerged as cheap and efficient means of communication over the Web. As a result, a number of communication platforms like Digsby have been developed by various research groups to facilitate access to multiple e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking sites using a single credential. Although such platforms are advantageous for end-users, they present new challenges to digital forensic examiners because of their illegitimate use by anti-social elements. To identify digital artifacts from Digsby log data, an examiner is assumed to have knowledge of the whereabouts of Digsby traces before starting an investigation process. This paper proposes a design for a user-friendly GUI-based forensic tool, DigLA, which provides a unified platform for analyzing Digsby log data at different levels of granularity. DigLA is also equipped with password decryption methods for both machine-specific and portable installation versions of Digsby. By considering Windows registry and Digsby log files as dynamic sources of evidence, specifically when Digsby has been used to commit a cyber crime, this paper presents a systematic approach to analyzing Digsby log data. It also presents an approach to analyzing RAM and swap files to collect relevant traces, specifically the login credentials of Digsby and IM users. An expected insider attack from a server security perspective is also studied and discussed in this paper.     

Muslim communities attitudes towards and recruitment into the British police service

Recent UK media reports have often portrayed Muslim communities in a negative light (Allen, 2010). Indeed, the frequent media focus of Muslim's being arrested for counter-terrorism offences have been reported in great length. Yet the Muslim community remains diverse and is one of the longest established UK communities within Britain. However, previous studies show that there remains a tense relationship with the police and Muslim communities (Awan, 2011) with negative attitudes held by many young British Muslims towards the police (Kundnani, 2009), and indeed negativity remains stronger from young people from minority ethnic communities. The focus and aim of this research was to gather perceptions from the Muslim community in Birmingham as regards whether they would choose or recommend a career within the police service. Thus the objective for the study was to try and get a better understanding of Muslim perceptions about police recruitment.This article reports on the findings and implications of a small-scale study conducted in 2011 comprising of interviews with two Muslim groups namely the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities from Birmingham (in the UK), where 20 people were interviewed in four groups consisting of (5) participants. The categories included Young People (aged between 15 years and 18 years); Community Leaders; Mosque Representatives and Female Groups (aged between 18 years and 30 years) which aimed to identify and gather the views of Muslim communities in respect to their views about choosing a career with the police service. Analysis revealed that the Muslim community responded in a fairly homogeneous way: they had a lack of trust towards the police and also issues were raised about the legality of counter-terrorism policing operations; a perception that the police service were a racist organisation and that the police had failed to engage with the Muslim community in Birmingham which had left a negative experience of Muslim communities and the police.³ Recommendations to improve the image and recruitment into the police service include more pro-active work with local communities and the use of community policing as a means to reach out to otherwise ‘hard to reach groups’.     

Writing Islamic Constitutions: Lessons from Pakistan

Muslim-majority countries often face the question of how to reconcile the place and role of religion within the framework of the nation state and a modern westernised system of constitutional ordering. And few states have wrangled with the politics of constitutionalising religion as profoundly and persistently as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This paper argues that insights drawn from Pakistan are pertinent as much for contemporary debates on Islam within many Muslim-majority countries as they are for wider debates on religion and politics in the modern period. It argues that when contemplating the constitutionalisation of Islam and Islamic provisions: the design and jurisdiction of the courts matter; it may be better to achieve a workable political compromise between competing parties on religious matters than to stall or strive for the realisation of some ideal; the constitution should be free of any sectarian bias; and constitution-makers must take more structural matters such as the separation of powers seriously when considering discussions on religion and politics.     

Chinese Proposal,Global Echoes

The development philosophy of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), one of President Xi Jinping's signature projects, has reverberated across the international community following its splendid achievements benefiting people across its participating countries. Over the past eight years, regions across China have opened wider to the world through the initiative, and win-win cooperation has been achieved between China and participating countries, Xi said at a symposium on the initiative on November 19.     

The Wadi al-Hawarith affair (Emek Hefer): disputed land and the struggle for ownership: 1929–33

The Wadi al-Hawarith (Emek Hefer) affair was considered to be one of the prominent land disputes between Jews and Arabs in Palestine during the British mandate period. The region in which the dispute broke out was found south of Hadera in Emek Hefer.

The purchase of lands of Wadi al-Hawarith, by Jewish bodies, had already started at the end of the nineteenth century and continued for four decades, and during this there were disputes between the Jews and Arabs, which were accompanied by legal hearings.

The Jewish National Fund tried to reach an arrangement by means of compensation for the Bedouin tenants who dwelled on the lands of the valley, in exchange for their willingness to leave the territory. From time to time, the Bedouins agreed to this, but they went back on their agreement.

Despite the effort to reach compensation arrangements with the Bedouins, the Palestinian political leadership was interested in inflaming the opposition of the Bedouins to leaving the land. This is what caused a long string of trials, which continued for many years.     

The discourse and study of terrorism in decolonised states: the case of Pakistan

The existing literature in the terrorism field does not address the absence of terrorism scholarship in developing countries. This article focuses on this intellectual gap using the case of Pakistan. It argues that most decolonised states, including Pakistan, are yet to grasp the complexities of traditional approaches to the study of terrorism, let alone its critical dimensions. The article explores some of the prevailing conditions in developing countries, specifically decolonised states such as Pakistan, which prevent the development of a robust academic discourse on terrorism and the development of a strong field of study. It suggests that the main barriers that account for this shortfall include the state’s legitimacy deficit, a flawed education system that nurtures fictions as truth and inhibits knowledge production, the institutionalised role of conspiracy theories in national politics and the multiplicity of terrorism discourses among government and sociopolitical entities. The conclusion highlights a number of reasons that might help to explain this persistent condition and offers a few policy recommendations.     

Terrorism in India as a Determinant of Terrorism in Pakistan

Terrorism in Pakistan springs from many factors such as, poverty, corruption, inequality, sham democracy, and low-level literacy; however, the effect of terrorism in India over terrorism in Pakistan remains unnoticed. This study explores the role of terrorism in India as a determinant of terrorism in Pakistan. This fangled determinant of terrorism in Pakistan forms the premise of our work. The Johansen cointegration analysis technique confirms the long-run relationship among terrorism in India and Pakistan and unemployment in Pakistan. Error correction model (ECM) resulted 55% of convergence annually. Besides, ECM verifies both short and long-run causalities. The VECM Granger and Modified Wald (MWALD) causality tests reveal that terrorism in India and unemployment in Pakistan Granger causes terrorism in Pakistan, but no reverse causality exists. The study concludes that both terrorism in India and unemployment in Pakistan results in terrorism in Pakistan. Coping with terrorism, Pakistan and India must revisit their respective roles; and simultaneously, Pakistan should address the unemployment problem—which facilitates recruitment for the terrorist organizations.     

Entrepreneurial orientation and generic competitive strategies for emerging SMEs: Financial and nonfinancial performance perspective

In the competitive markets, business ventures have not only emphasized financial performance but nonfinancial performance has also become the need of the day due to its significant role in increasing customers. However, minor attention is given to the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, business strategy and nonfinancial performance of emerging small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This study scrutinizes the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation (i.e., innovativeness, risk‐taking, and proactiveness) and each of generic competitive strategies (i.e., differentiation and cost leadership) on the performance (financial and nonfinancial) of emerging SMEs. We surveyed 373 SMEs operating in Pakistan through a structured questionnaire. For the data analysis and hypotheses testing, we used AMOS.21. The findings display that innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk‐taking significantly improve financial performance while insignificantly impact nonfinancial performance. Differentiation and cost leadership strategies significantly spur financial as well as nonfinancial performance of SMEs. This study advises that top managers of SMEs in the emerging economies need to maintain a focus on entrepreneurial activities and formulate unique competitive strategies to attain higher performance. This research further recommends policymakers to initiate entrepreneurship programs for SMEs to configure entrepreneurial posture of the businessmen. Further recommendations have stated.     

Attitudes of Jordanian society toward wife abuse

The authors conducted an exploratory study among a convenience sample of 260 Jordanian men and women, using self-administered open and closed questions to examine the participants' approach toward wife abuse. In general, there was high awareness of wife abuse and the different types of abuse (mainly physical and psychological), a general tendency to oppose wife abuse, a tendency to blame the victim for abuse, and a lesser tendency to blame the abuse on the husband, marital problems, as well as familial and societal conditions. There was also a strong tendency to consider wife abuse a personal and familial issue rather than a social and legal problem. Therefore, the preferred method for coping with wife abuse and violence was the expectation that the abused wife should change her behavior and assume responsibility to change her husband followed by resorting to informal agents (family or community or religious figures). Less preferred coping methods included confronting the husband and expressing desire to break up or separate and resorting to formal agents (social welfare programs, counseling, legal system), as a last resort in cases of repeated abuse and severe physical violence. The implications of these findings for future research, interventions, and policy formulation are discussed.