Computer Engineering Commons^™

Improving Developers' Understanding Of Regex Denial Of Service Tools Through Anti-Patterns And Fix Strategies, Sk Adnan Hassan, Zainab Aamir, Dongyoon Lee, James C. Davis, Francisco Servant

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Regular expressions are used for diverse purposes, including input validation and firewalls. Unfortunately, they can also lead to a security vulnerability called ReDoS (Regular Expression Denial of Service), caused by a super-linear worst-case execution time during regex matching. Due to the severity and prevalence of ReDoS, past work proposed automatic tools to detect and fix regexes. Although these tools were evaluated in automatic experiments, their usability has not yet been studied; usability has not been a focus of prior work. Our insight is that the usability of existing tools to detect and fix regexes will improve if we complement them …

An Analysis Of Modern Password Manager Security And Usage On Desktop And Mobile Devices, Timothy Oesch

Doctoral Dissertations

Security experts recommend password managers to help users generate, store, and enter strong, unique passwords. Prior research confirms that managers do help users move towards these objectives, but it also identified usability and security issues that had the potential to leak user data or prevent users from making full use of their manager. In this dissertation, I set out to measure to what extent modern managers have addressed these security issues on both desktop and mobile environments. Additionally, I have interviewed individuals to understand their password management behavior.

I begin my analysis by conducting the first security evaluation of the …

A Study Of Factors That Influence Symbol Selection On Augmentative And Alternative Communication Devices For Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder, William Todd Dauterman

CCE Theses and Dissertations

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), 1 in 59 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) each year. Given the complexity of ASD and how it is manifested in individuals, the execution of proper interventions is difficult. One major area of concern is how individuals with ASD who have limited communication skills are taught to communicate using Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices (AAC). AACs are portable electronic devices that facilitate communication by using audibles, signs, gestures, and picture symbols. Traditionally, Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) are the primary facilitators of AAC devices and help establish the language individuals with …

A User Study Of A Wearable System To Enhance Bystanders’ Facial Privacy, Alfredo J. Perez, Sherali Zeadally, Scott Griffith, Luis Y. Matos Garcia, Jaouad A. Mouloud

Information Science Faculty Publications

The privacy of users and information are becoming increasingly important with the growth and pervasive use of mobile devices such as wearables, mobile phones, drones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Today many of these mobile devices are equipped with cameras which enable users to take pictures and record videos anytime they need to do so. In many such cases, bystanders’ privacy is not a concern, and as a result, audio and video of bystanders are often captured without their consent. We present results from a user study in which 21 participants were asked to use a wearable system called …

Usability Evaluation Of A Web-Based Ontology Browser: The Case Of Tsont, Türkan Karakuş Yilmaz, Umut Durak, Hali̇t Oğuztüzün, Kürşat Çağiltay

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

As the use of ontologies expands, their visualization is becoming increasingly important. In this study, an ontology browser for visualizing the Trajectory Simulation ONTology (TSONT) was evaluated in terms of usability by considering its subdimensions, which are effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction. The methodology employed in this study for evaluating an ontology browser is reported along with the results of the evaluation. The TSONT browser is a tree-type ontology browser created to allow developers to visualize TSONT. Six flight simulation programmers with at least one year of experience participated in the study. The participants were given usability tasks and their …

Coffee: Context Observer For Fast Enthralling Entertainment, Anthony M. Lenz

Master's Theses

Desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and the Kinect, oh my! With so many devices available to the average consumer, the limitations and pitfalls of each interface are becoming more apparent. Swimming in devices, users often have to stop and think about how to interact with each device to accomplish the current tasks at hand. The goal of this thesis is to minimize user cognitive effort in handling multiple devices by creating a context aware hybrid interface. The context aware system will be explored through the hybridization of gesture and touch interfaces using a multi-touch coffee table and the next-generation Microsoft Kinect. …

An Empirical Study Of Open Source Software Usability: The Industrial Perspective, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz, Faheem Ahmed

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the use of open source projects by common novice users; Open Source Software (OSS) is thus no longer a reserved arena for software developers and computer gurus. Although user-centered designs are gaining popularity in OSS, usability is still not considered as one of the prime objectives in many design scenarios. In this paper, we analyze industry users’ perception of usability factors, including understandability, learnability, operability and attractiveness, on OSS usability. The research model of this empirical study establishes the relationship between the key usability factors and OSS usability from industrial perspective. In …

Contributors’ Preference In Open Source Software Usability: An Empirical Study, Arif Raza, Luiz Fernando Capretz

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

The fact that the number of users of open source software (OSS) is practically un-limited and that ultimately the software quality is determined by end user’s experience, makes the usability an even more critical quality attribute than it is for proprietary software. With the sharp increase in use of open source projects by both individuals and organizations, the level of usability and related issues must be addressed more seriously. The research model of this empirical investigation studies and establishes the relationship between the key usability factors from contributors’ perspective and OSS usability. A data set of 78 OSS contributors that …