The prevalence of human interactive components of serious system breaches continues to be a problem for every organization. Humans are the biggest vulnerability in any security system; helping people identify social engineering attempts over the phone will be cheaper and more effective than yet another technological implementation. At minimum it will add an important and necessary layer to defense in depth. Forensic linguistics is the study of language as evidence for the law. It is a relatively new field and has not previously been applied to cybersecurity. Linguistic analysis uncovers several features of language interaction in a limited data set (recorded IRS phone scammers) that begin to answer how forensic linguistics could assist in cybersecurity defense. This presentation will briefly introduce and explain polar tag questions, topic control, question deferral, and irregular narrative constructions in IRS scam phone calls, and offer some starting points for identifying such linguistic properties during the course of a phone call to help improve defense at the human level. We think this is only the beginning of applying forensic linguistics to cybersecurity.
Dr. Judith Tabron has presented at national conferences on academic computingtopics and published on global popular culture; joining the facultyparticipants in the Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment, andStrategic Analysis at Hofstra University, her research interests have turnedto forensic linguistics and cybersecurity. She is a member of the Long Islandchapter of Infragard, and chair of the New York State chapter of the AmericanCouncil on Education's Women's Network (NYSACEWN).