Engineering Commons^™

Improving Remote Homology Detection Using A Sequence Property Approach, Gina Marie Cooper

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the structure and function of proteins is a key part of understanding biological systems. Although proteins are complex biological macromolecules, they are made up of only 20 basic building blocks known as amino acids. The makeup of a protein can be described as a sequence of amino acids. One of the most important tools in modern bioinformatics is the ability to search for biological sequences (such as protein sequences) that are similar to a given query sequence. There are many tools for doing this (Altschul et al., 1990, Hobohm and Sander, 1995, Thomson et al., 1994, Karplus and Barrett, …

Design And Performance Analysis Of A Secure Proces-Sor Scan-Sp With Crypto-Biometric Capabilities, Raghudeep Kannavara

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Secure computing is gaining importance in recent times as computing capability is increasingly becoming distributed and information is everywhere. Prevention of piracy and digital rights management has become very important. Information security is mandatory rather than an additional feature. Numerous software techniques have been proposed to provide certain level of copyright and intellectual property protection. Techniques like obfuscation attempt to transform the code into a form that is harder to reverse engineer. Tamper-proofing causes a program to malfunction when it detects that it has been modified. Software watermarking embeds copyright notice in the software code to allow the owners of …

Semantic And Role-Based Access Control For Data Grid Systems, Vineela Muppavarapu

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A Grid is an integration infrastructure for sharing and coordinated use of diverseresources in dynamic, distributed virtual organizations (VOs). A Data Grid is an architecture for the access, exchange, and sharing of data in the Grid environment. Distributed data resources can be diverse in their formats, schema, quality, access mechanisms, ownership, access policies, and capabilities. In recent years, several organizations have started utilizing Grid technologies to deploy data-intensive and/or computation-intensive applications. As more and more organizations are sharing data resources and participating in Data Grids, the complexity and heterogeneity of the systems is increasing constantly, but their management techniques are …

A Cryptanalysis Methodology For The Reverse Engineering Of Encrypted Information In Images, Allan Anthony Rwabutaza

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Security is an important issue related to the storage and communication of data and information. In data and information security, cryptography and steganography are two of the most common security techniques. On one hand, there is cryptography, which is the secret communication between two parties by message scrambling on the sender's side and message unscrambling on the receiver's side so that only the intended receiver gets the secret message. On the other hand, there is steganography, which is the hiding of information in a medium in such a way that no one other than the sender or the intended receiver …

Graduate Accounting Students' Perception Of It Forensics: A Multi-Dimensional Analysis, Grover S. Kearns

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Forensics and information technology (IT) have become increasingly important to accountants and auditors. Undergraduate accounting students are introduced to general IT topics but discussion of forensic knowledge is limited. A few schools have introduced an undergraduate major in forensic accounting. Some graduate schools offer accounting students an emphasis in forensic or fraud accounting that includes instruction in forensics and information technology. When students do not view the IT topics as being equally important to their careers as traditional accounting topics, these attitudes may reduce the quality of the course. In an effort to assess student attitudes, a survey of 46 …

Continuous Fraud Detection In Enterprise Systems Through Audit Trail Analysis, Peter J. Best, Pall Rikhardsson, Mark Toleman

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Enterprise systems, real time recording and real time reporting pose new and significant challenges to the accounting and auditing professions. This includes developing methods and tools for continuous assurance and fraud detection. In this paper we propose a methodology for continuous fraud detection that exploits security audit logs, changes in master records and accounting audit trails in enterprise systems. The steps in this process are: (1) threat monitoringsurveillance of security audit logs for ‘red flags’, (2) automated extraction and analysis of data from audit trails, and (3) using forensic investigation techniques to determine whether a fraud has actually occurred. We …

Defining A Forensic Audit, G. S. Smith, D. L. Crumbley

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Disclosures about new financial frauds and scandals are continually appearing in the press. As a consequence, the accounting profession's traditional methods of monitoring corporate financial activities are under intense scrutiny. At the same time, there is recognition that principles-based GAAP from the International Accounting Standards Board will become the recognized standard in the U.S. The authors argue that these two factors will change the practices used to fight corporate malfeasance as investigators adapt the techniques of accounting into a forensic audit engagement model.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Visualisation Of Honeypot Data Using Graphviz And Afterglow, Craig Valli

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This research in progress paper explores the use of Graphviz and Afterglow for the analysis of data emanating from a honeypot system. Honeypot systems gather a wide range of data that is often difficult to readily search for patterns and trends using conventional log file analysis techniques. The data from the honeypots has been statically extracted and processed through Afterglow scripts to produce inputs suitable for use by the DOT graph based tools contained within Graphviz. This paper explores some of the benefits and drawbacks of currently using this type of approach.

Correlating Orphaned Windows Registry Data Structures, Damir Kahvedžić, Tahar Kechadi

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Recently, it has been shown that deleted entries of the Microsoft Windows registry (keys) may still reside in the system files once the entries have been deleted from the active database. Investigating the complete keys in context may be extremely important from both a Forensic Investigation point of view and a legal point of view where a lack of context can bring doubt to an argument. In this paper we formalise the registry behaviour and show how a retrieved value may not maintain a relation to the part of the registry it belonged to and hence lose that context. We …

The Impact Of Hard Disk Firmware Steganography On Computer Forensics, Iain Sutherland, Gareth Davies, Nick Pringle, Andrew Blyth

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The hard disk drive is probably the predominant form of storage media and is a primary data source in a forensic investigation. The majority of available software tools and literature relating to the investigation of the structure and content contained within a hard disk drive concerns the extraction and analysis of evidence from the various file systems which can reside in the user accessible area of the disk. It is known that there are other areas of the hard disk drive which could be used to conceal information, such as the Host Protected Area and the Device Configuration Overlay. There …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Insecurity By Obscurity: A Review Of Soho Router Literature From A Network Security Perspective, Patryk Szewczyk, Craig Valli

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Because of prevalent threats to SoHo based ADSL Routers, many more devices are compromised. Whilst an end-user may be at fault for not applying the appropriate security mechanisms to counter these threats, vendors should equally share the blame. This paper reveals that the lack of security related content and poor overall design could impact on end-users’ interpretation and willingness to implement security controls on their ADSL router. It argues that whilst the number of threats circulating the Internet is increasing, vendors are not improving their product literature.

Electronic Forms-Based Computing For Evidentiary Analysis, Andy Luse, Brian Mennecke, Anthony M. Townsend

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The paperwork associated with evidentiary collection and analysis is a highly repetitive and time-consuming process which often involves duplication of work and can frequently result in documentary errors. Electronic entry of evidencerelated information can facilitate greater accuracy and less time spent on data entry. This manuscript describes a general framework for the implementation of an electronic tablet-based system for evidentiary processing. This framework is then utilized in the design and implementation of an electronic tablet-based evidentiary input prototype system developed for use by forensic laboratories which serves as a verification of the proposed framework. The manuscript concludes with a discussion …

To License Or Not To License Revisited: An Examination Of State Statutes Regarding Private Investigators And Digital Examiners, Thomas Lonardo, Doug White, Alan Rea

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this update to the previous year's study, the authors examine statutes that regulate, license, and enforce investigative functions in each US state. After identification and review of Private Investigator licensing requirements, the authors find that very few state statutes explicitly differentiate between Private Investigators and Digital Examiners. After contacting all state agencies the authors present a distinct grouping organizing state approaches to professional Digital Examiner licensing. The authors conclude that states must differentiate between Private Investigator and Digital Examiner licensing requirements and oversight.

Online Child Sexual Abuse: The French Response, Mohamed Chawki

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Online child sexual abuse is an increasingly visible problem in society today. The introduction, growth and utilization of information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs) have been accompanied by an increase in illegal activities. With respect to cyberspace the Internet is an attractive environment to sex offenders. In addition to giving them greater access to minors, extending their reach from a limited geographical area to victims all around the world, it allows criminals to alter or conceal their identities. Sexual predators, stalkers, child pornographers and child traffickers can use various concealment techniques to make it more difficult for investigators to identify them …

A Synopsis Of Proposed Data Protection Legislation In Sa, Francis S. Cronjé

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Privacy International1 made the following statement regarding South Africa’s financial sector in its 2005 world survey: “South Africa has a well-developed financial system and banking infrastructure. Despite the sophistication of the financial sector, the privacy of financial information is weakly regulated by a code of conduct for banks issued by the Banking Council.” This extract highlights some of the problems South Africa are experiencing with its current status on privacy as viewed from an International perspective. In recent years the International society has stepped up its efforts in creating a global village wherein the individual could be assured of having …

Telecommunications Liberalisation In Africa: Proposed Regulatory Model For The Sadc Region, Z. N. Jobodwana

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The liberalisation of the telecommunication industry in Africa, and the further development of the region’s physical infrastructure was accompanied by the further development of Africa’s information, communication and technology infrastructure. Competition within the industry stimulated heavy economic investment in other sectors of the economy. The outcome of liberalisation also included the establishment of community-based structures that continue to enable communities to manage their own development and gain access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in an unprecedented manner. The telecommunication infrastructure further stimulated the fast development of other related services, for example, ecommerce and mobile commerce (m-commerce), e-government, internet banking, …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Analyzing The Impact Of A Virtual Machine On A Host Machine, Greg Dorn, Chris Marberry, Scott Conrad, Philip Craiger

Publications

As virtualization becomes more prevalent in the enterprise and in personal computing, there is a great need to understand the technology as well as its ramifications for recovering digital evidence. This paper focuses on trace evidence related to the installation and execution of virtual machines (VMs) on a host machine. It provides useful information regarding the types and locations of files installed by VM applications, the processes created by running VMs and the structure and identity of VMs, ancillary files and associated artifacts.

Modelling Situation Awareness For Context‐Aware Decision Support, Yu-Hong Feng, Teck-Hou Teng, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Situation awareness modelling is popularly used in the command and control domain for situation assessment and decision support. However, situation models in real-world applications are typically complex and not easy to use. This paper presents a Context-aware Decision Support (CaDS) system, which consists of a situation model for shared situation awareness modelling and a group of entity agents, one for each individual user, for focused and customized decision support. By incorporating a rule-based inference engine, the entity agents provide functions including event classification, action recommendation, and proactive decision making. The implementation and the performance of the proposed system are demonstrated …

Dynamic Adaptation Of Joint Transmission Power And Contention Window In Vanet, Danda B. Rawat, Gongjun Yan, Dimitrie C. Popescu, Michele C. Weigle, Stephan Olariu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we propose an algorithm for joint adaptation of transmission power and contention window to improve the performance of vehicular network in a cross layer approach. The high mobility of vehicles in vehicular communication results in the change in topology of the Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) dynamically, and the communication link between two vehicles might remain active only for short duration of time. In order for VANET to make a connection for long time and to mitigate adverse effects due to high and fixed transmission power, the proposed algorithm adapts transmission power dynamically based on estimated local traffic …

Seasonal Adaptation Of Vegetation Color In Satellite Images For Flight Simulations, Yuzhong Shen, Jiang Li, Vamsi Mantena, Srinivas Jakkula

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Automatic vegetation identification plays an important role in many applications including remote sensing and high performance flight simulations. This paper proposes a novel method that identifies vegetative areas in satellite images and then alters vegetation color to simulate seasonal changes based on training image pairs. The proposed method first generates a vegetation map for pixels corresponding to vegetative areas, using ISODATA clustering and vegetation classification. The ISODATA algorithm determines the number of clusters automatically. We then apply morphological operations to the clustered images to smooth the boundaries between clusters and to fill holes inside clusters. Six features are then computed …

Parameter Optimization For Image Denoising Based On Block Matching And 3d Collaborative Filtering, Ramu Pedada, Emin Kugu, Jiang Li, Zhanfeng Yue, Yuzhong Shen, Josien P.W. Pluim (Ed.), Benoit M. Dawant (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Clinical MRI images are generally corrupted by random noise during acquisition with blurred subtle structure features. Many denoising methods have been proposed to remove noise from corrupted images at the expense of distorted structure features. Therefore, there is always compromise between removing noise and preserving structure information for denoising methods. For a specific denoising method, it is crucial to tune it so that the best tradeoff can be obtained. In this paper, we define several cost functions to assess the quality of noise removal and that of structure information preserved in the denoised image. Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm 2 (SPEA2) …

Hierarchical Routing In Manets Using Simple Clustering, Adam Carnine

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis presents both a review of current MANET routing protocols and a new MANET routing algorithm. The routing protocols reviewed include representative samples from the three primary forms of routing found in MANETS: proactive routing, reactive routing and hybrid routing. Secure algorithms are given special treatment in the review. In addition several protocol enhancements are discussed.

The proposed routing protocol is designed to support networks of a medium size, containing over 200 nodes but less than 3,000 nodes. The design is intentionally simple to allow ease of implementation in comparison with other MANET protocols that provide similar functionality.

A Subspace Projection Methodology For Nonlinear Manifold Based Face Recognition, Praveen Sankaran

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

A novel feature extraction method that utilizes nonlinear mapping from the original data space to the feature space is presented in this dissertation. Feature extraction methods aim to find compact representations of data that are easy to classify. Measurements with similar values are grouped to same category, while those with differing values are deemed to be of separate categories. For most practical systems, the meaningful features of a pattern class lie in a low dimensional nonlinear constraint region (manifold) within the high dimensional data space. A learning algorithm to model this nonlinear region and to project patterns to this feature …

High-Performance Broadcast And Multicast Protocols For Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks, Jun Wang

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Recently, wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have attracted much attention. A vast amount of unicast, multicast and broadcast protocols has been developed for WMNs or mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). First of all, broadcast and multicast in wireless networks are fundamentally different from the way in which wired networks function due to the well-known wireless broadcast/multicast advantage. Moreover, most broadcast and multicast protocols in wireless networks assume a single-radio single-channel and single-rate network model, or a generalized physical model, which does not take into account the impact of interference. This dissertation focuses on high-performance broadcast and multicast protocols designed for multi-radio …

Equational Coalgebraic Logic, Alexander Kurz, Raul Leal

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Coalgebra develops a general theory of transition systems, parametric in a functor T; the functor T specifies the possible one-step behaviours of the system. A fundamental question in this area is how to obtain, for an arbitrary functor T, a logic for T-coalgebras. We compare two existing proposals, Moss’s coalgebraic logic and the logic of all predicate liftings, by providing one-step translations between them, extending the results in [21] by making systematic use of Stone duality. Our main contribution then is a novel coalgebraic logic, which can be seen as an equational axiomatization of Moss’s logic. The three logics are …

A Novel Ep Approach For Multi-Area Economic Dispatch With Multiple Fuel Options, P. S. Manoharan, P. S. Kannan, V. Ramanathan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper presents a novel approach to multi-area economic dispatch problems with multiple fuel options using a hybrid evolutionary programming method. The objective is to minimize the operation cost of the entire system while satisfying the tie line constraints. In this paper, EP-LMO (Evolutionary Programming with Levenberg-Marquardt Optimization) technique is proposed to solve multi-area economic dispatch problems with multiple fuel options. The EP-LMO is developed in such a way that a simple evolutionary programming (EP) is applied as a base level search to find the direction of the optimal global region. And Levenberg-Marquardt Optimization (LMO) method is used as a …

Electronic Differential With Direct Torque Fuzzy Control For Vehicle Propulsion System, Kada Hartani, Mohamed Bourahla, Yahia Miloud, Mohamed Sekour

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

We model an electronic differential that will offer the best vehicle stability on a curved road. The proposed traction system consists of two permanent magnet synchronous (PMS) machines that ensure the drive of two back-driving wheels. The contribution of each wheel to the advance of the vehicle is represented by an element conveying the accumulation of mechanical coupling. The proposed control structure is based on the direct torque fuzzy control for each wheel-motor. Different simulations have been carried out: vehicle driven ons straight road, vehicle driven on straight road with slope, and vehicle driven over a road curved left and …