IPV Spyware Discovery (ISDi) Tool

Digi­tal inse­cu­rity in the face of targe­ted, persis­tent attacks incre­a­singly leaves victims in debi­li­ta­ting or even life-thre­a­te­ning situ­a­ti­ons. We propose an appro­ach to helping victims, what we call clini­cal compu­ter secu­rity, and explore it in the context of inti­mate part­ner violence (IPV). IPV is wides­pread and abusers exploit tech­no­logy to track, harass, inti­mi­date, and other­wise harm their victims. We report on the itera­tive design, refi­ne­ment, and deploy­ment of a consul­ta­tion service that we crea­ted to help IPV victims obtain in-person secu­rity help from a trai­ned tech­no­lo­gist. To do so we crea­ted and tested a range of new tech­ni­cal and non-tech­ni­cal tools that syste­ma­tize the disco­very and inves­ti­ga­tion of the compli­ca­ted, multi­mo­dal digi­tal attacks seen in IPV. An initial field study with 44 IPV survi­vors showed how our proce­du­res and tools help victims disco­ver account compro­mise, exploi­ta­ble miscon­fi­gu­ra­ti­ons, and poten­tial spyware.