Approaches to overcome security risks and threats in online learning applications
Adri Jovin John Joseph, Marikkannan Mariappan · 2023
The COVID-19 pandemic affected educators and students on a very large scale globally. School education and higher education were affected drastically as educational institutions and universities were forced to close due to the global pandemic. It was because of online learning applications that education got back on track. Online learning happens through different modes, whether through massive open online courses, through virtual meeting platforms or open online learning platforms. The utilization of web and mobile learning applications has increased exponentially in recent years following the COVID pandemic. With the growth in the usage of online learning applications, the threat posed toward the end users of online learning applications has also increased in recent years. Most online learning applications are web applications. Therefore, online learning applications are susceptible to all types of security attacks as described by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). Some commonly identified attacks on online learning platforms are: buffer overflow, eavesdropping of the network, guessing of user passwords, a replay of cookies, credential stealing, privilege promotion, unauthorized access, trapdoor mechanisms, spamming, tunnelling, a replay of sessions by outsiders, man-in-the-middle attack, HTTP manipulation, manipulation of cookies, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and information disclosure among others. These are carried out viathe online learning platform and have a direct impact on the educator and learner. Service providers face a lot of threats. It is reported that most online learning service providers have faced distributed denial of service attacks in recent years. This has raised a major concern in the usage of online learning platforms specifically when the assessments are time-bound. Apart from these, phishing attacks have also increased in recent years, especially the imitation of online learning platforms of universities and major online learning platform providers. Many end users have been affected due to these attacks. This chapter presents a detailed review of the threats faced in the usage of online learning applications, the risk classification, and the impact on the end users. It also presents various possible approaches that can be followed to prevent and mitigate the risks of using online learning applications.