Communities in PRCR
Select a community to browse its collections.
- Colecciones de la Albizu University
- Colecciones digitales de Atenas College
- Colecciones de los Centros Sor Isolina Ferré
- Materiales utilizados para la certificación.
Recent Submissions
Detecting and Mitigating Behavioral Inference from Smart Home IoT Traffic Metadata
(Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, 2026) Rodríguez De Gracia, Jordy M.; Duffany, Jeffrey
The use of smart home devices in the past years, has grown on the day-to-day basis of a household. These IoT devices encrypt their cloud communications, but metadata like timing, frequency and protocol leak on the network with occupant routines. The purpose of this project is to demonstrate this privacy gap using a real residential network with five commercial IoT devices (iHome smart plugs, WiZ smart bulbs, and a TP-Link KL 125 plug) and then fortify the vulnerability, using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 deployed as an in-network privacy shield referred to as “SecurePlug”. Forty-eight hours of pre-deployment traffic revealed that iHome plugs broadcast UDP heartbeats at an almost constant 1.7 seconds interval, and that WiZ bulbs transmit mDNS announcement bursts containing device fingerprints in plaintext during every state change. A Python inference pipeline extracted 28 behavioral events from this traffic and reconstructed the occupant’s daily routine (wake up, departure, arrival, and sleep) with 75% confidence. The real threat is metadata, not payload content. SecurePlug counters this with three interception layers: random jitter on iHome heartbeats (raising timing variance by 2,500x), jitter on WiZ UDP heartbeats, and full suppression of WiZ mDNS bursts. After 55 hours of shield operation, departure was undetectable on all four captured days, behavioral events dropped 64%, and inference confidence fell from 75% to 62%, insufficient to reconstruct a complete daily profile.
The Dangers of Malware within the Puerto Rican Family Home: Threats, Impacts, and Preventive Measures
(Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, 2026) González Ríos, Joseph R.; Cruz, Alfredo
This paper presents ZeroDay Tech Labs, a bilingual, cybersecurity education platform built for Puerto Rican family homes. The project responds to a practical problem: families depend on phones, laptops, smart televisions, cloud accounts, and online services, but many lack a simple way to recognize malware related risk and act before damage spreads. The platform translates trusted cybersecurity guidance into plain language learning paths, printable actions, and controlled case studies. A pre-use survey of 27 respondents shaped the household focus, while a post-use survey of 20 respondents evaluated confidence, useful components, and practical steps. The paper summarizes the project framework, website implementation, survey evidence, defensive case studies, privacy and accessibility choices, and limitations. The result is an applied educational model that helps families slow down, verify suspicious prompts, choose safer actions, and recover with less panic when cyber threats appear.
Password Security Assessment Tool for Small Businesses
(Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, 2026) Rivera Rivera, Kelmit; Duffany, Jeffrey
Passwords are still the most common method to control access to computer systems, data, networks, and applications. Properly chosen, strong, and managed passwords can be an effective first-line defense against unauthorized access. This project presents the development, implementation, and testing of a password assessment tool that provides a security score based on best practices and guidelines and classifies a password, as either weak, moderate, or strong. The assessment tool, using rule-based logic, computed user’s passwords scores and evaluated them in length, character alteration, variety, dictionary word sequence, repeated characters, and number series and based on these factors is how their classification was given. The tool was tested with sample passwords, results recorded, analyzed, and evaluated to provide recommendations and a guide for increasing password security. The purpose of the research is to increase password security awareness and to provide an easy-to-use password assessment tool for organizations and individuals.
Seguridad en Aplicaciones Web mediante la Implementación de Múltiples Estrategias Defensivas
(Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, 2026) Vega Torres, Ryan E.; Duffany, Jeffrey
Este trabajo presenta una evaluación comparativa de vulnerabilidades en aplicaciones web realizada en un entorno de laboratorio controlado con Kali Linux. Para el análisis se utilizaron OWASP Juice Shop, Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) y OWASP Mutillidae II. Las pruebas incluyeron encabezados de seguridad, inyección SQL, secuencias de comandos en sitios cruzados (XSS), autenticación por fuerza bruta, inyección de comandos y exposición de directorios o endpoints. La evaluación combinó herramientas manuales y automatizadas como OWASP ZAP, Burp Suite, SQLMap, XSStrike, Wfuzz, Gobuster, Dirsearch y comandos de validación en terminal. El enfoque permitió comparar líneas base iniciales con escenarios posteriores a mitigaciones, configuraciones más restrictivas o ajustes en los niveles de seguridad. Los resultados muestran que el uso combinado de herramientas ofrece una visión más completa del comportamiento de cada aplicación y que la defensa en profundidad puede reducir la exposición, aunque no sustituye la corrección de vulnerabilidades internas.
Development of an Educational and Awareness Website Cybersecurity Learning System
(Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico, 2026) Malavé Tripari, Uriel; Cruz, Alfredo
Conventional cybersecurity awareness approaches usually lack sufficient interactivity and practicability, making users susceptible and prone to cyberattacks. To overcome this challenge, this project developed the Cybersecurity Learning System to meet emerging demands for cybersecurity education due to an increase in cyberattacks based on exploiting human errors, such as phishing, social engineering, malicious links, and deception. This web-based educational system was designed and implemented using technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. The website includes educational content modules, interactive exercises, feedback, and visual learning capabilities based on cybersecurity risks, such as phishing, malicious attachments, social network scams, pretexting, and tailgating awareness. The web system was tested to determine its capability in providing cybersecurity education, ease of use, and accessibility. It was found that the platform has effectively provided a structured and user-friendly approach to learning about cybersecurity concepts.