Juan Antonio Sicilia

Dr. Juan Antonio Sicilia

Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR)
orcid

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

14Years (2013-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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7 January 2021 in Vaccines
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
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HPHilary Piedrahita-Valdés
Hilary Piedrahita-Valdés
DPDiego Piedrahita
Diego Piedrahita
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
PSPatricia Guillem Guillem Saiz
Patricia Guillem Guillem Saiz
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
FMFrancisco Machío-Regidor
Francisco Machío-Regidor
Vaccine hesitancy was one of the ten major threats to global health in 2019, according to the World Health Organisation. Nowadays, social media has an important role in the spread of information, misinformation, and disinformation about vaccines. Monitoring vaccine-related conversations on social media could help us to identify the factors that contribute to vaccine confidence in each historical period and geographical area. We used a hybrid approach to perform an opinion-mining analysis on 1,499,227 vaccine-related tweets published on Twitter from 1st June 2011 to 30th April 2019. Our algorithm classified 69.36% of the tweets as neutral, 21.78% as positive, and 8.86% as negative. The percentage of neutral tweets showed a decreasing tendency, while the proportion of positive and negative tweets increased over time. Peaks in positive tweets were observed every April. The proportion of positive tweets was significantly higher in the middle of the week and decreased during weekends. Negative tweets followed the opposite pattern. Among users with ≥2 tweets, 91.83% had a homogeneous polarised discourse. Positive tweets were more prevalent in Switzerland (71.43%). Negative tweets were most common in the Netherlands (15.53%), Canada (11.32%), Japan (10.74%), and the United States (10.49%). Opinion mining is potentially useful to monitor online vaccine-related concerns and adapt vaccine promotion strategies accordingly.

24 October 2019 in Electronics
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
JMJuan de Vicente Mohino
Juan de Vicente Mohino
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JSJuan Antonio Sicilia
Juan Antonio Sicilia
The software development environment is focused on reaching functional products in the shortest period by making use of the least amount of resources possible. In this scenario, crucial elements such as software quality or software security are not considered at all, and in most cases, the high value offered to the projects is not taken into account. Nowadays, agile models are booming. They are defined by the way they achieve the interaction and integration of everyone involved in the software life cycle, the advantages of the quick reaction to change, and the implementation of artifacts or deliverables which display the level of progress reached at any time. In this context, it seems clearly necessary to define a new software development model, which prioritizes security aspects at any phase of the software life cycle and takes advantage of the benefits of the agile models. The proposed methodology shows that if security is considered from the beginning, vulnerabilities are easily detected and solved during the time planned for the project, with no extra time nor costs for the client and it increases the possibilities of reaching success in terms of not only functionality but also quality.

1 January 2016 in Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
JSJuan Antonio Sicilia
Juan Antonio Sicilia
QMQuemada Mayoral
Quemada Mayoral
BRBeatriz Royo
Beatriz Royo
DEDavid Escuín
David Escuín

20 December 2020 in Applied Sciences
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Journal Article
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FTFrancesc Mateo Tudela
Francesc Mateo Tudela
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JSJuan Antonio Sicilia
Juan Antonio Sicilia
Ioannis K. ArgyrosIoannis K. Argyros
Ioannis K. Argyros
The design of the techniques and algorithms used by the static, dynamic and interactive security testing tools differ. Therefore, each tool detects to a greater or lesser extent each type of vulnerability for which they are designed for. In addition, their different designs mean that they have different percentages of false positives. In order to take advantage of the possible synergies that different analysis tools types may have, this paper combines several static, dynamic and interactive analysis security testing tools—static white box security analysis (SAST), dynamic black box security analysis (DAST) and interactive white box security analysis (IAST), respectively. The aim is to investigate how to improve the effectiveness of security vulnerability detection while reducing the number of false positives. Specifically, two static, two dynamic and two interactive security analysis tools will be combined to study their behavior using a specific benchmark for OWASP Top Ten security vulnerabilities and taking into account various scenarios of different criticality in terms of the applications analyzed. Finally, this study analyzes and discuss the values of the selected metrics applied to the results for each n-tools combination.

11 January 2021 in IEEE Access
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Journal Article
Open access
SISantiago Ibarra-Fiallos
Santiago Ibarra-Fiallos
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
MIMonserrate Intriago-Pazmiño
Monserrate Intriago-Pazmiño
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JSJuan Antonio Sicilia
Juan Antonio Sicilia
JCJavier Cubo
Javier Cubo
Injection attacks against web applications are still frequent, and organizations like OWASP places them within the Top Ten of security risks to web applications. The main goal of this work is to contribute to the community with the design of an effective protection of web applications against common injection attacks. Our proposal is a validation filter of input fields that is based on OWASP Stinger, a set of regular expressions, and a sanitization process. It validates both fundamental characters (letters, numbers, dot, dash, question marks, and exclamation point) and complex statements (JSON and XML files) for each field. The procedure of deploying the proposed filter is detailed, specifying the sections and contents of the configuration file. In addition, the infrastructure for running the tests is described, including the setting of an attack tool, and the implementation of a controller. The attack tool is used as a security scanner for common injection attacks, and the controller is developed for routing the requests in two steps; first a request is addressed to the filter, and if it is valid, it will redirect to the web application itself. The proposal filter has been tested on three public as well as on a real private web application. An accuracy of 98,4% and an average processing time of 50 ms are achieved, based on wich it is possible to conclude the proposed filter is highly reliable and does not require additional computational resources.

30 July 2021 in IEEE Access
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
CMCarlos Diaz Motero
Carlos Diaz Motero
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JHJavier Bermejo Higuera
Javier Bermejo Higuera
JSJuan Antonio Sicilia
Juan Antonio Sicilia
NGNadia Gámez Gómez
Nadia Gámez Gómez
Organizations use Active Directory Windows service to authenticate users in a network with the extended Kerberos Authentication protocol. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate its resistance to the different types of attacks it can suffer, the best way to detect them and to parameterize it to mitigate the effects of the attacks. This work analyzes the main Kerberos attacks in Active Directory Windows networks, inherent in the design of the protocol and not resolved. For each attack the objective is studied, implementation is developed in a virtual laboratory and detection is analyzed, proposing measures for mitigation and response. Subsequently, they are discussed in a general way and the results of the attacks are analyzed according to some parameters. As conclusions of the work carried out, it should be noted that although the attacks are mostly difficult to implement, their detection is even more complicated, and the damage is very severe so it’s necessary to continuously monitor the logs in these environments to detect them and taking into account strict recommendations for mitigation and response.