Engineering Commons^™

Network Security Toolkit Including Heuristic Solutions For Trust System Placement And Network Obfuscation, Gabriel H. Greve

Theses and Dissertations

For Part I, a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network consists of a group stations and substations in a portion of the power grid. The use of Internet technology in SCADA communications as well as other factors has caused vulnerabilities. One idea to help mitigate this risk is to strategically place trust nodes to compartmentalize and secure the SCADA systems without disturbing its finely honed processes. The trust nodes combine firewall and intrusion detection technology to provide more secure communication. An optimal solution to this problem has already been developed using a mixed-integer linear programming model. Because the problem …

Sports-Tool, Bryant Ung

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Creating events and finding people to play sports is a hard thing to do. The solution to this problem is to provide a web based interactive site that allows people to create and join different type of events and interact with each other by creating teams.

Self-Stabilizing Leader Election In Dynamic Networks, Hema Piniganti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The leader election problem is one of the fundamental problems in distributed computing. It has applications in almost every domain. In dynamic networks, topology is expected to change frequently. An algorithm A is self-stabilizing if, starting from a completely arbitrary configuration, the network will eventually reach a legitimate configuration.

Note that any self-stabilizing algorithm for the leader election problem is also an algorithm for the dynamic leader election problem, since when the topology of the network changes, we can consider that the algorithm is starting over again from an arbitrary state. There are a number of such algorithms in the …

Dynamic Distributed Programming And Applications To Swap Edge Problem, Feven Z. Andemeskel

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Link failure is a common reason for disruption in communication networks. If communication between processes of a weighted distributed network is maintained by a spanning tree T, and if one edge e of T fails, communication can be restored by finding a new spanning tree, T’. If the network is 2-edge connected, T’ can always be constructed by replacing e by a single edge, e’, of the network. We refer to e’ as a swap edge of e.

The best swap edge problem is to find the best choice of e’, that is, that e which causes the new spanning …

Self-Stabilizing Group Membership Protocol, Mahesh Subedi

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In this thesis, we consider the problem of partitioning a network into groups of bounded diameter.

Given a network of processes X and a constant D, the group partition problem is the problem of finding a D-partition of X, that is, a partition of X into disjoint connected subgraphs, which we call groups, each of diameter no greater than D. The minimal group partition problem is to find a D-partition {G1, ... Gm} of X such that no two groups can be combined; that is, for any Gi and Gj, where i ≠ j, either Gi U Gj is disconnected …

Design And Implementation Of User Level Socket Application Programming Interface With Socket Splitting And Mediation, Scott Walter Holzer

Master's Theses

Over the past few decades, the size and scope of the Internet has grown exponentially. In order to maintain support for legacy clients, new applications and services have been limited by dependence on traditional sockets and TCP, which provide no support for modifying endpoints after connection setup. This forces applications to implement their own logic to reroute communications to take advantage of composable services or handle failover. Some solutions have added socket operations that allow for endpoints to be redirected on the fly, but these have been limited in scope to handling failover and load balancing.

We present two new …

Improving The Quality Of Service And Security Of Military Networks With A Network Tasking Order Process, Matthew D. Compton

Theses and Dissertations

This research presents a Network Tasking Order process that collects mission plans, network capabilities, and historical records to build a Network Tasking Order (NTO). The NTO document directs the form and usage of the network, much like an Air Tasking Order (ATO) directs the usage of air power. The NTO process is fleshed out with the content and format of the NTO given herein for the first time. Tools such as topology control algorithms are then shown through simulation to improve the quality of service of the network by finding favorable ways to connect the assets identified during the NTO …

Reputation-Based Internet Protocol Security: A Multilayer Security Framework For Mobil Ad Hoc Networks, Timothy H. Lacey

Theses and Dissertations

This research effort examines the theory, application, and results for a Reputation-based Internet Protocol Security (RIPSec) framework that provides security for an ad-hoc network operating in a hostile environment. In RIPSec, protection from external threats is provided in the form of encrypted communication links and encryption-wrapped nodes while internal threats are mitigated by behavior grading that assigns reputations to nodes based on their demonstrated participation in the routing process. Network availability is provided by behavior grading and round-robin multipath routing. If a node behaves faithfully, it earns a positive reputation over time. If a node misbehaves (for any number of …

Applying Image Matching To Video Analysis, Adam J. Behring

Theses and Dissertations

Dealing with the volume of multimedia collected on a daily basis for intelligence gathering and digital forensics investigations requires significant manual analysis. A component of this problem is that a video may be reanalyzed that has already been analyzed. Identifying duplicate video sequences is difficult due to differences in videos of varying quality and size. This research uses a kd-tree structure to increase image matching speed. Keypoints are generated and added to a kd-tree of a large dimensionality (128 dimensions). All of the keypoints for the set of images are used to construct a global kd-tree, which allows nearest neighbor …

Hijacking User Uploads To Online Persistent Data Repositories For Covert Data Exfiltration, Curtis P. Barnard

Theses and Dissertations

As malware has evolved over the years, it has gone from harmless programs that copy themselves into other executables to modern day botnets that perform bank fraud and identity theft. Modern malware often has a need to communicate back to the author, or other machines that are also infected. Several techniques for transmitting this data covertly have been developed over the years which vary significantly in their level of sophistication. This research creates a new covert channel technique for stealing information from a network by piggybacking on user-generated network traffic. Specifically, steganography drop boxes and passive covert channels are merged …

Cyber Profiling For Insider Threat Detection, Akaninyene Walter Udoeyop

Masters Theses

Cyber attacks against companies and organizations can result in high impact losses that include damaged credibility, exposed vulnerability, and financial losses. Until the 21st century, insiders were often overlooked as suspects for these attacks. The 2010 CERT Cyber Security Watch Survey attributes 26 percent of cyber crimes to insiders. Numerous real insider attack scenarios suggest that during, or directly before the attack, the insider begins to behave abnormally. We introduce a method to detect abnormal behavior by profiling users. We utilize the k-means and kernel density estimation algorithms to learn a user’s normal behavior and establish normal user profiles based …

Reasonable Number Of Issuing Original Bill Of Lading, Zhongming Ren

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Attaining Realistic Simulations Of Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks, Derek J. Huber

Theses and Dissertations

Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) are comprised of wireless systems that communicate without the assistance of centrally managed routers or base stations. MANET research and development has increased due to computing technologies offering smaller, faster, smarter, and more power efficient platforms to operate on. Largely the testing and evaluation of new and existing MANET protocols has resided in simulation environments. This is due in part to the complexities and expenses incurred when conducting real world tests. Many researchers have come to recognize that these current simulations tend to assume away critical components of the MANET domain. These assumptions are made either …

Performance Evaluation Of A Field Programmable Gate Array-Based System For Detecting And Tracking Peer-To-Peer Protocols On A Gigabit Ethernet Network, Brennon D. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Recent years have seen a massive increase in illegal, suspicious, and malicious traffic traversing government and military computer networks. Some examples include illegal file distribution and disclosure of sensitive information using the BitTorrent file sharing protocol, criminals and terrorists using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies to communicate, and foreign entities exfiltrating sensitive data from government, military, and Department of Defense contractor networks. As a result of these growing threats, the TRacking and Analysis for Peer-to-Peer (TRAPP) system was developed in 2008 to detect BitTorrent and VoIP traffic of interest. The TRAPP system, designed on a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro Field …

Snmp Integration Into The Cygnet Scada System, Paul Fake

Computer Engineering

The SNMP Remote Device is a CygNet-integrated software device that can communicate (read-only) with any managed network hardware. It has the ability to retrieve any managed object, requiring only a host name or IP, a community name (password), and the object identifier (OID). This Remote Device is fully-integrated into the CygNet SCADA system. Users can create the device in the DDS service, create a Point for each managed object, map the Points to UDCs, store data into the Points, and schedule the retrieval of data.

Characterization Of The Rfx400 For Use In Software Defined Radio, Edward Adams

Computer Engineering

While software defined radio is an extremely flexible technology that is fairly rarely used, as a single purpose radio is much cheaper, it provides an excellent means of learning RF and communications skills through the lens of digital electronics, and it would behoove a Cal Poly student interested in these areas to take on a project in software defined radio. This project aims to lower the barrier to entry for future students to undertake such a project. The use of an up-converter/down-converter is documented for future students to interface with.

Rfid Asset Tracking And Digital Check-Out System, Jeffrey (Jeff) Migliore

Computer Engineering

An asset tracking and digital check-out system was developed using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and a Single Board Computer (SBC). A RFID reader was used as a check point to process transactions. The RFID reader was attached to the SBC via USB. The SBC is integrated into a network via Ethernet and hosts a web graphical user interface (GUI) frontend for users to view transactions and query availability of assets. A MYSQL database was used for the backend storage of data.

Specifically, this system was designed to track tool assets. Many modern companies have employees sharing limited resources. The common …

Bluetooth "Clicker": Response Pads For Large Classes, Using Bluetooth Devices, Dana Goyette

Computer Engineering

When teaching classes with many students, many teachers opt to use “Clicker” devices to electronically poll students. This project aims to replace these “Clicker” devices with standard Bluetooth devices. The overall goal of this project is to create a framework for two-way communications between a base station and multiple remote devices.

Design And Usability Of Social Networking Web Sites, Robert Pessagno

Graphic Communication

This study began by designing the layout of a new social networking Web site and putting it to practical use. A team of computer science students at Cal Poly developed this social networking site for their senior project, and called it Friend Riot. The new and innovative features that Friend Riot consists of set it apart from other popular social networking Web sites, but its interface was lacking a good design. When the new design was implemented, it was tested against the competition: Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effects that Web design …

Ofdm Simulation In Matlab, Paul Guanming Lin

Electrical Engineering

The objective of this project is to demonstrate the concept and feasibility of an OFDM system, and investigate how its performance is changed by varying some of its major parameters. This objective is met by developing a MATLAB program to simulate a basic OFDM system. From the process of this development, the mechanism of an OFDM system can be studied; and with a completed MATLAB program, the characteristics of an OFDM system can be explored.

Touch Screen Sound Controller, James Fenley, Jonathan Law

Electrical Engineering

The Touch Screen Sound Controller sets out to explore the use of a touch screen as a sound control interface for the disk jockey profession. In addition, the project aims to provide an alternate means of transferring audio data by way of TCP/IP communications as opposed to MIDI. By applying our method, a user may stream pulse-code modulated data from a server onto a client’s RAM via an Ethernet connection. A 32bit, 200MHz ARM9 microprocessor addresses data from the RAM and proceeds with executing DSP instructions from the user. The connection between the touch screen and the central microprocessor is …

Http 1.2: Distributed Http For Load Balancing Server Systems, Graham M. O'Daniel

Master's Theses

Content hosted on the Internet must appear robust and reliable to clients relying on such content. As more clients come to rely on content from a source, that source can be subjected to high levels of load. There are a number of solutions, collectively called load balancers, which try to solve the load problem through various means. All of these solutions are workarounds for dealing with problems inherent in the medium by which content is served thereby limiting their effectiveness. HTTP, or Hypertext Transport Protocol, is the dominant mechanism behind hosting content on the Internet through websites. The entirety of …

Digital Signaling Processor Resource Management For Small Office Phone Systems, John T. Gilkeson

Master's Theses

Contemporary small office phone systems are specialized computers that connect a variety of phones within the office and to the local phone company. These systems use digital signaling processors (DSPs) to convert signals from analog to digital and vice-versa. Many different types of applications run on the DSPs and different businesses have varying application needs. Given the systems have limited amounts of DSP resources and growing numbers of applications for a phone system, an administrator needs a way to configure the uses of resources based on their individual business needs.

This thesis provides an overview of a system for configuring …

Hidra: Hierarchical Inter-Domain Routing Architecture, Bryan Clevenger

Master's Theses

As the Internet continues to expand, the global default-free zone (DFZ) forwarding table has begun to grow faster than hardware can economically keep pace with. Various policies are in place to mitigate this growth rate, but current projections indicate policy alone is inadequate. As such, a number of technical solutions have been proposed. This work builds on many of these proposed solutions, and furthers the debate surrounding the resolution to this problem. It discusses several design decisions necessary to any proposed solution, and based on these tradeoffs it proposes a Hierarchical Inter-Domain Routing Architecture - HIDRA, a comprehensive architecture with …

Pretty Lights, Nicholas (Nick) Delmas, Matthew (Matt) Maniaci

Computer Engineering

Digital media players often include a visualization component that allows a user to watch a visualization synchronized to their music or videos. This project uses the visualization plugin API of an existing media playback program (WinAmp) but it displays its visuals using physical LED lights. Instead of outputting visuals to the computer screen, data is sent over USB to a micro controller that runs the LED lights. This project aims to give users a more visceral visual experience than traditional visualizations on the computer screen.

A Secure On-Line Credit Card Transaction Method Based On Kerberos Authentication Protocol, Jung Eun Kim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Nowadays, electronic payment system is an essential part of modern business. Credit cards or debit cards have been widely used for on-site or remote transactions, greatly reducing the need for inconvenient cash transactions. However, there have been a huge number of incidents of credit card frauds over the Internet due to the security weakness of electronic payment system. A number of solutions have been proposed in the past to prevent this problem, but most of them were inconvenient and did not satisfy the needs of cardholders and merchants at the same time.

In this thesis, we present a new secure …

Providing Location Security In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, Gongjun Yan

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Location is fundamental information in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs). Almost all VANET applications rely on location information. Therefore it is of importance to ensure location information integrity, meaning that location information is original (from the generator), correct (not bogus or fabricated) and unmodified (value not changed). We present validation mechanisms to provide location integrity for VANETs. In the initial mechanism, we assume that all vehicles are equipped with a radar, a GPS receiver, and a transceiver. Since radar has a limited radar range and transceiver has a limited transmission range, we build network cells as a security unit as well …

Reputation-Based Trust For A Cooperative, Agent-Based Backup Protection Scheme For Power Networks, John F. Borowski

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research explores integrating a reputation-based trust mechanism with an agent-based backup protection system to improve the performance of traditional backup relay methods that are currently in use in power transmission systems. Integrating agent technology into relay protection schemes has been previously proposed to clear faults more rapidly and to add precision by enabling the use of adaptive protection methods. A distributed, cooperative trust system such as that used in peer-to-peer file sharing networks has the potential to add an additional layer of defense in a protection system designed to operate with greater autonomy. This trust component enables agents …

Handshaking Protocols And Jamming Mechanisms For Blind Rendezvous In A Dynamic Spectrum Access Environment, Aaron A. Gross

Theses and Dissertations

Blind frequency rendezvous is an important process for bootstrapping communications between radios without the use of pre-existing infrastructure or common control channel in a Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) environment. In this process, radios attempt to arrive in the same frequency channel and recognize each other’s presence in changing, under-utilized spectrum. This paper refines existing blind rendezvous techniques by introducing a handshaking algorithm for setting up communications once two radios have arrived in the same frequency channel. It then investigates the effect of different jamming techniques on blind rendezvous algorithms that utilize this handshake. The handshake performance is measured by determining …

Analysis Of A Rumor Routing Protocol With Limited Packet Lifetimes, Peter R. Francik

Theses and Dissertations

Wireless sensor networks require specialized protocols that conserve power and minimize network traffic. Therefore, it is vitally important to analyze how the parameters of a protocol affect these metrics. In doing so, a more efficient protocol can be developed. This research evaluates how the number of nodes in a network, time between generated agents, lifetime of agents, number of agent transmissions, time between generated queries, lifetime of queries, and node transmission time affect a modified rumor routing protocol for a large-scale, wireless sensor network. Furthermore, it analyzes how the probability distribution of certain protocol parameters affects the network performance. The …