Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Forensically-Enabled Iaas Cloud Computing Architecture, Saad Alqahtany, Nathan Clarke, Steven Furnell, Christoph Reich

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Current cloud architectures do not support digital forensic investigators, nor comply with today’s digital forensics procedures largely due to the dynamic nature of the cloud. Whilst much research has focused upon identifying the problems that are introduced with a cloud-based system, to date there is a significant lack of research on adapting current digital forensic tools and techniques to a cloud environment. Data acquisition is the first and most important process within digital forensics – to ensure data integrity and admissibility. However, access to data and the control of resources in the cloud is still very much provider-dependent and complicated …

Up-Dating Investigation Models For Smart Phone Procedures, Brian Cusack, Raymond Lutui

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

The convergence of services in Smart Technologies such as iPhones, Androids and multiple tablet work surfaces challenges the scope of any forensic investigation to include cloud environments, devices and service media. The analysis of current investigation guidelines suggests that each element in an investigation requires an independent procedure to assure the preservation of evidence. However we dispute this view and review the possibility of consolidating current investigation guidelines into a unified best practice guideline. This exploratory research proposes to fill a gap in digital forensic investigation knowledge for smart technologies used in business environments and to propose a better way …

Listening To Botnet Communication Channels To Protect Information Systems, Brian Cusack, Sultan Almutairi

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Botnets are a weapon of choice for people who wish to exploit information systems for economic advantage. A large percentage of high value commercial targets such as banking transaction systems and human customers are web connected so that access is gained through Internet services. A Botnet is designed to maximise the possibility of an economic success through the low cost of attacks and the high number that may be attempted in any small time unit. In this paper we report exploratory research into the communications of Botnets. The research question was: How do Botnets talk with the command and control …

Lightweight Data Compression In Wireless Sensor Networks Using Huffman Coding, Henry P. Medeiros, Marcos C. Maciel, Richard D. Souza, Marcelo E. Pellenz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

This paper presents a lightweight data compression method for wireless sensor networks monitoring environmental parameters with low resolution sensors. Instead of attempting to devise novel ad hoc algorithms, we show that, given general knowledge of the parameters that must be monitored, it is possible to efficiently employ conventional Huffman coding to represent the same parameter when measured at different locations and time periods. When the data collected by the sensor nodes consists of integer measurements, the Huffman dictionary computed using statistics inferred from public datasets often approaches the entropy of the data. Results using temperature and relative humidity measurements show …

Robust And Resilient State-Dependent Control Of Continuous-Time Nonlinear Systems With General Performance Criteria, Xin Wang, Edwin E. Yaz, James Long

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

A novel state-dependent control approach for continuous-time nonlinear systems with general performance criteria is presented in this paper. This controller is optimally robust for model uncertainties and resilient against control feedback gain perturbations in achieving general performance criteria to secure quadratic optimality with inherent asymptotic stability property together with quadratic dissipative type of disturbance reduction. For the system model, unstructured uncertainty description is assumed, which incorporates commonly used types of uncertainties, such as norm-bounded and positive real uncertainties as special cases. By solving a state-dependent linear matrix inequality at each time, sufficient condition for the control solution can be found …

Uterine Cervical Cancer Histology Image Feature Extraction And Classification, Koyel Banerjee

Masters Theses

"The current study presents the investigation and development of image processing, computational intelligence, fuzzy logic, and statistical techniques for different types of data fusion for a varied range of applications. Raw data, decision level and feature level fusion techniques are explored for detection of pre Cervical cancer (CIN) grades from digital histology images of the cervical epithelium tissues.

In previous research, an automated, localized, fusion-based approach was investigated for classifying squamous epithelium into Normal, CIN1, CIN2, and CIN3 grades of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) based on image analysis. The approach included medial axis determination, vertical segment partitioning as medial axis …

Multi-Objective Border Patrolling Optimization Using Game Theory And Evolutionary Algorithms, Franciso Oswaldo Aguirre

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Border security has evolved significantly since the days when no more than 75 Mounted Guards patrolled the U.S. border in the early 1900's. The border region includes thousands of miles of both land and maritime borders that must be controlled, as well as commercial transportation networks. One of the primary components of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. One of the most typical activities performed by CBP is patrolling the expansive open areas in between official points of entry (POEs) to prohibit illegal entry attempts. Roving patrols are routinely conducted by …

An Intelligent System For High Resolution Radar Systems, Janette C. Briones

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Cognitive radio is a recent, novel approach that integrates machine perception software into wireless systems. The term cognitive radio was first used by Joe Mitola. The concept and the term cognitive radio quickly caught the attention and interest of many in the communications field. Cognitive radios are capable of making decisions and selecting or modifying the operating parameters of a radio. Given these capabilities, it is feasible to build a cognitive radar system as introduced by Simon Haykin in 2006. Cognitive radar, as described by Haykin, is an intelligent system that must be aware of its environment, uses prior knowledge, …

Simulation Supported Estimation Of End-To-End Transmission Parameters In Non-Viral Gene Delivery, Beata Wysocki, Timothy M. Martin, Tadeusz A. Wysocki, Angela K. Pannier

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Communications, in general, involve delivery of information from a source to a sink. At nano-scale, an example of a man-made communications involving interfacing with biological systems at intra-cellular level is non-viral gene delivery. From a telecommunications engineering perspective, important end-to-end parameters of such a system are: the endto- end delay, system capacity, and packet loss rate. There are neither known methods to estimate those parameters theoretically nor they are ready available from standard measurements. The paper provides estimates for those parameters based on the simulation of non-viral gene delivery system based on the queuing theory. The simulator used has bee

Hands-On Homework Or Laboratory Development For Distance Learning Students In Programmable Logical Controller (Plc), Cheng Y. Lin, Yuzhong Shen, Mileta Tomovic

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

When teaching PLC classes in the distance-education (DE) program, one of the main problems is to provide hands-on experience to students. This is because students can only use design software to complete their homework and lab problems without being able to touch PLCs or wire ladder logic diagrams. In this paper, the authors develop a virtual laboratory to help DE students gain hands-on wiring experience in the automation control classes. The development significantly shortens the gap on the issue of hands-on experience between on-campus students and DE students. To increase the performance of safety and effectiveness, on-campus students can also …

Efficient Anonymous Biometric Matching In Privacy-Aware Environments, Ying Luo

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Video surveillance is an important tool used in security and environmental monitoring, however, the widespread deployment of surveillance cameras has raised serious privacy concerns. Many privacy-enhancing schemes have been recently proposed to automatically redact images of selected individuals in the surveillance video for protection. To identify these individuals for protection, the most reliable approach is to use biometric signals as they are immutable and highly discriminative. If misused, these characteristics of biometrics can seriously defeat the goal of privacy protection. In this dissertation, an Anonymous Biometric Access Control (ABAC) procedure is proposed based on biometric signals for privacy-aware video surveillance. …

A Hypernet Architecture, Shufeng Huang

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Network virtualization is becoming a fundamental building block of future Internet architectures. By adding networking resources into the “cloud”, it is possible for users to rent virtual routers from the underlying network infrastructure, connect them with virtual channels to form a virtual network, and tailor the virtual network (e.g., load application-specific networking protocols, libraries and software stacks on to the virtual routers) to carry out a specific task. In addition, network virtualization technology allows such special-purpose virtual networks to co-exist on the same set of network infrastructure without interfering with each other.

Although the underlying network resources needed to support …

A Federated Architecture For Heuristics Packet Filtering In Cloud Networks, Ibrahim M. Waziri Jr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The rapid expansion in networking has provided tremendous opportunities to access an unparalleled amount of information. Everyone connects to a network to gain access and to share this information. However when someone connects to a public network, his private network and information becomes vulnerable to hackers and all kinds of security threats. Today, all networks needs to be secured, and one of the best security policies is firewall implementation.

Firewalls can be hardware or cloud based. Hardware based firewalls offer the advantage of faster response time, whereas cloud based firewalls are more flexible. In reality the best form of firewall …

Neuromodulation Based Control Of Autonomous Robots On A Cloud Computing Platform, Cameron Muhammad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, the advancement of neurobiologically plausible models and computer networking has resulted in new ways of implementing control systems on robotic platforms. The work presents a control approach based on vertebrate neuromodulation and its implementation on autonomous robots in the open-source, open-access environment of robot operating system (ROS). A spiking neural network (SNN) is used to model the neuromodulatory function for generating context based behavioral responses of the robots to sensory input signals. The neural network incorporates three types of neurons- cholinergic and noradrenergic (ACh/NE) neurons for attention focusing and action selection, dopaminergic (DA) neurons for rewards- and …

A Collaborated Process With A Wireless Autonomous Vehicle At It's Center, Thomas B. Stout, Steve C. Hsiung

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Developing partnerships between high schools, community colleges and universities is critical for the successful transitions to a lifelong STEM careers. How do you develop these partnerships? The sharing of a technology platform such as autonomous vehicles can bridge the gap by using a common core group of materials. Collaborations between teachers and faculty indifferent schools that share common interests in teaching control systems and robotics technology can be an excellent start. The university as catalyst in the process by designing the curriculum, system hardware and software then through the common interest deploying them in the high schools and community college. …

Towards A Set Of Metrics To Guide The Generation Of Fake Computer File Systems, Ben Whitham

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

Fake file systems are used in the field of cyber deception to bait intruders and fool forensic investigators. File system researchers also frequently generate their own synthetic document repositories, due to data privacy and copyright concerns associated with experimenting on real-world corpora. For both these fields, realism is critical. Unfortunately, after creating a set of files and folders, there are no current testing standards that can be applied to validate their authenticity, or conversely, reliably automate their detection. This paper reviews the previous 30 years of file system surveys on real world corpora, to identify a set of discrete measures …

The Impact Of Custom Rom Backups On Android External Storage Erasure, Haydon Hope, Peter Hannay

Australian Digital Forensics Conference

The Android operating system is the current market leader on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. The core operating system is open source and has a number of developers creating variants of this operating system. These variants, often referred to as custom ROMs are available for a wide number of mobile devices. Custom ROMs provide a number of features, such as enhanced control over the operating system, variation in user interfaces and so on. The process of installing custom ROMs is often accomplished through the use of a ROM manager application. Such applications often provide mechanisms to back …

Human-Robot Interaction For Multi-Robot Systems, Bennie Lewis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Designing an effective human-robot interaction paradigm is particularly important for complex tasks such as multi-robot manipulation that require the human and robot to work together in a tightly coupled fashion. Although increasing the number of robots can expand the area that the robots can cover within a bounded period of time, a poor human-robot interface will ultimately compromise the performance of the team of robots. However, introducing a human operator to the team of robots, does not automatically improve performance due to the difficulty of teleoperating mobile robots with manipulators. The human operator’s concentration is divided not only among multiple …

Sps: An Sms-Based Push Service For Energy Saving In Smartphone's Idle State, Erich Dondyk

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite of all the advances in smartphone technology in recent years, smartphones still remain limited by their battery life. Unlike other power hungry components in the smartphone, the cellular data and Wi-Fi interfaces often continue to be used even while the phone is in the idle state to accommodate unnecessary data traffic produced by some applications. In addition, bad reception has been proven to greatly increase energy consumed by the radio, which happens quite often when smartphone users are inside buildings. In this paper, we present a Short message service Push based Service (SPS) to save unnecessary power consumption when …

Software-Based Instrumentation For Analysis Of Electrostatic Discharge Effects, Antonio James Sabatini

Masters Theses

”Failures caused by electrostatic discharge (ESD) compromise the reliability of embedded systems. Peripherals such as the universal serial bus (USB) are particularly vulnerable, as isolating them to avoid electromagnetic interference would defy their purpose - facilitating communication with and/or by the embedded system. Better understanding the propagation of failures that result from ESD can facilitate defensive development of hardware and software for embedded systems, but is hampered by the lack of non-invasive and lightweight instrumentation techniques.

The original contribution of this thesis is the design and development of software-based instrumentation for monitoring the reaction of the USB peripheral of an …