Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Sequence-Based Specification Of Embedded Systems, Jason Martin Carter

Doctoral Dissertations

Software has become integral to the control mechanism of modern devices. From transportation and medicine to entertainment and recreation, embedded systems integrate fundamentally with time and the physical world to impact our lives; therefore, product dependability and safety are of paramount importance.

Model-based design has evolved as an effective way to prototype systems and to analyze system function through simulation. This process mitigates the problems and risks associated with embedding software into consumer and industrial products. However, the most difficult tasks remain: Getting the requirements right and reducing them to precise specifications for development, and providing compelling evidence that the …

Static And Dynamic Scheduling For Effective Use Of Multicore Systems, Fengguang Song

Doctoral Dissertations

Multicore systems have increasingly gained importance in high performance computers. Compared to the traditional microarchitectures, multicore architectures have a simpler design, higher performance-to-area ratio, and improved power efficiency. Although the multicore architecture has various advantages, traditional parallel programming techniques do not apply to the new architecture efficiently. This dissertation addresses how to determine optimized thread schedules to improve data reuse on shared-memory multicore systems and how to seek a scalable solution to designing parallel software on both shared-memory and distributed-memory multicore systems.

We propose an analytical cache model to predict the number of cache misses on the time-sharing L2 cache …

Exercise Power Grid Display And Web Interface, Alexander (Alex) Chernetz

Computer Engineering

The 2008-2009 expansion of the Recreation Center at Cal Poly includes three new rooms with cardiovascular fitness equipment. As part of its ongoing commitment to sustainable development, the new machines connect to the main power grid and generate power during a workout. This document explains the process of quantifying and expressing the power generated using two interfaces: an autonomous display designed for a television with a text size and amount of detail adaptable to multiple television sizes and viewing distances, and an interactive, more detailed Web interface accessible with any Java-capable computer system or browser.

An Evaluation Of Potential Technologies For A Web Based Development Environment For Cs1 Students, Manuel Garcia

Computer Science and Software Engineering

The goal of this senior project was to design a web-based integrated development environment that would incorporate Web-CAT. Web-CAT is an automated testing tool designed by Stephen Edwards at Virginia Tech University, to help beginning students learn test-driven development. This tool runs on a server where a professor assigns usernames and passwords to students so they can submit code. This program can assist professors in grading, and students in showing errors in code. The development environment design waskept simple to create less confusion for beginning programming students. This development environment will be online to give all students universal access and …

Finding Words In Alphabet Soup: Inference On Freeform Character Recognition For Historical Scripts, Nicholas Howe, Shaolei Feng, R. Manmatha

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

This paper develops word recognition methods for historical handwritten cursive and printed documents. It employs a powerful segmentation-free letter detection method based upon joint boosting with histograms of gradients as features. Efficient inference on an ensemble of hidden Markov models can select the most probable sequence of candidate character detections to recognize complete words in ambiguous handwritten text, drawing on character n" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size: 16.2px; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; white-space: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; position: relative;">n-gram and physical …

Angular Rigidity In 3d: Combinatorial Characterizations And Algorithms, Audrey Lee-St.John, Ileana Streinu

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Constraint-based CAD software, used by engineers to design sophisticated mechanical systems, relies on a wide range of geometrical constraints. In this paper we focus on one special case: angular constraints in 3D. We give a complete combinatorial characterization for generic minimal rigidity in two new models: line- plane-and-angle and body-and-angle structures. As an immediate consequence, we obtain efficient algorithms for analyzing angular rigidity.

Memory Reconsolidation For Natural Language Processing, Kum Tu, David Cooper, Hava Siegelmann

Hava Siegelmann

We propose a model of memory reconsolidation that can output new sentences with additional meaning after refining information from input sentences and integrating them with related prior experience. Our model uses available technology to first disambiguate the meanings of words and extracts information from the sentences into a structure that is an extension to semantic networks. Within our long-term memory we introduce an action relationships database reminiscent of the way symbols are associated in brain, and propose an adaptive mechanism for linking these actions with the different scenarios. The model then fills in the implicit context of the input and …

Mining Data From Multiple Software Development Projects, Huanjing Wang, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, Kehan Gao, Naeem Seliya

Dr. Huanjing Wang

A large system often goes through multiple software project development cycles, in part due to changes in operation and development environments. For example, rapid turnover of the development team between releases can influence software quality, making it important to mine software project data over multiple system releases when building defect predictors. Data collection of software attributes are often conducted independent of the quality improvement goals, leading to the availability of a large number of attributes for analysis. Given the problems associated with variations in development process, data collection, and quality goals from one release to another emphasizes the importance of …

Short-Wavelength Technology And The Potential For Distributed Networks Of Small Radar Systems, David Mclaughlin, David Pepyne, Brenda Philips, James Kurose, Michael Zink, David Westbrook, Eric Lyons, Eric Knapp, Anthony Hopf, Alfred Defonzo, Robert Contreras, Theodore Djaferis, Edin Insanic, Stephen Frasier, V. Chandrasekar, Francesc Junyent, Nitin Bharadwaj, Yanting Wang, Yuxiang Liu, Brenda Dolan, Kelvin Droegemeier, Jerald Brotzge, Ming Xue, Kevin Kloesel, Keith Brewster, Frederick Carr, Sandra Cruz-Pol, Kurt Hondl, Pavlos Kollias

James Kurose

Dense networks of short-range radars capable of mapping storms and detecting atmospheric hazards are described. Composed of small X-band (9.4 GHz) radars spaced tens of kilometers apart, these networks defeat the Earth curvature blockage that limits today's long-range weather radars and enables observing capabilities fundamentally beyond the operational state-of-the-art radars. These capabilities include multiple Doppler observations for mapping horizontal wind vectors, subkilometer spatial resolution, and rapid-update (tens of seconds) observations extending from the boundary layer up to the tops of storms. The small physical size and low-power design of these radars permits the consideration of commercial electronic manufacturing approaches and …

Mining Data From Multiple Software Development Projects, Huanjing Wang, Taghi M. Khoshgoftaar, Kehan Gao, Naeem Seliya

Computer Science Faculty Publications

A large system often goes through multiple software project development cycles, in part due to changes in operation and development environments. For example, rapid turnover of the development team between releases can influence software quality, making it important to mine software project data over multiple system releases when building defect predictors. Data collection of software attributes are often conducted independent of the quality improvement goals, leading to the availability of a large number of attributes for analysis. Given the problems associated with variations in development process, data collection, and quality goals from one release to another emphasizes the importance of …

Towards Reasoning Pragmatics, Pascal Hitzler

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The realization of Semantic Web reasoning is central to substantiating the Semantic Web vision. However, current mainstream research on this topic faces serious challenges, which force us to question established lines of research and to rethink the underlying approaches.

Security Requirements Engineering-The Reluctant Oxymoron, Michael N. Johnstone

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Security is a focus in many systems that are developed today, yet this aspect of systems development is often relegated when the shipping date for a software product looms. This leads to problems post-implementation in terms of patches required to fix security defects or vulnerabilities. A simplistic answer is that if the code was correct in the first instance, then vulnerabilities would not exist. The reality of a complex software artefact is however, driven by other concerns. Rather than probing programs for coding errors that lead to vulnerabilities, it is perhaps more beneficial to look at the root causes of …

Security Issues Challenging Facebook, S Leitch, M Warren

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The advancement in Internet and bandwidth capability has resulted in a number of new applications to be developed; many of these newer applications are described as being Web 2. A Web 2 application such as Facebook has allowed people around the world to interact together. One of the interesting aspects of Facebook is the use of third parties applications and the interactions that this allows.Not surprisingly, the problems that exist in the real world such as theft, fraud, vandalism also exist in online Web 2 environments. This paper explores and categorises several security issues within the Facebook environment. It contributes …

When You Can't See The Forest For The Domains: Why A Two Forest Model Should Be Used To Achieve Logical Segregation Between Scada And Corporate Networks, Andrew Woodward, Brett Turner

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

The increasing convergence of corporate and control systems networks creates new challenges for the security of critical infrastructure. There is no argument that whilst this connection of what was traditionally an isolated network, to a usually internet enabled corporate network, is unavoidable, segregation must be maintained. One such challenge presented is how to properly and appropriately configure an active directory environment to allow for exchange of required data, but still maintain the security goal of separation of the two networks. This paper argues that while separate domains may seem to achieve this goal, the reality is that a domain is …

Tactical Analysis Of Attack In Physical And Digital Security Incidents:Towards A Model Of Asymmetry, Atif Ahmad

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

Asymmetric warfare is frequently described as a conflict where ‘weaker’ parties aim to offset their relatively inadequate resources by using particular strategies and tactics to their advantage. This research-in-progress paper develops a concept model of asymmetric warfare that represents the leverage available to the ‘weaker’ party over the ‘stronger’ party simply because the former is attacking rather than defending. Points of leverage include choice of timing, location, method of attack, best use of limited resources and time to prepare. The resulting concept model is used to discuss generic defensive strategies that can be applied by ‘stronger’ parties in the physical …

Culture Jamming: From Activism To Hactivism, Kay Hearn, Rachel J. Mahncke, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

A new kind of Internet threat has emerged. Hacking is increasingly being used as a weapon by individuals to promote their political ideologies by engaging in distributed citizen-based warfare. Their aim is to disrupt communications using internet enabled networks and organisations. Examples of these online assaults during 2009 were evident during the Iranian protests and the Melbourne International Film Festival. Such attacks use denial of service techniques and utilised social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube to post links to access hacking instructions. Posts on social networking websites and news stories from a variety of sources online, …

Ascent Of Asymmetric Risk In Information Security: An Initial Evaluation., Tobias Ruighaver, Matthew Warren, Atif Ahmad

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

Dramatic changes in the information security risk landscape over several decades have not yet been matched by similar changes in organizational information security, which is still mainly based on a mindset that security is achieved through extensive preventive controls. As a result, maintenance cost of information security is increasing rapidly, but this increased expenditure has not really made an attack more difficult. The opposite seems to be true, information security attacks have become easier to perpetrate and appear more like information warfare tactics. At the same time, the damage caused by a successful attack has increased significantly and may sometimes …

Proposed Framework For Understanding Information Security Culture And Practices In The Saudi Context, Mohammed Alnatheer, Karen Nelson

Australian Information Security Management Conference

An examination of Information Security (IS) and Information Security Management (ISM) research in Saudi Arabia has shown the need for more rigorous studies focusing on the implementation and adoption processes involved with IS culture and practices. Overall, there is a lack of academic and professional literature about ISM and more specifically IS culture in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the overall aim of this paper is to identify issues and factors that assist the implementation and the adoption of IS culture and practices within the Saudi environment. The goal of this paper is to identify the important conditions for creating an information …

Playing Safe: A Prototype Game For Raising Awareness Of Social Engineering, Michael Newbould, Stephen Furnell

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Social engineering is now a major threat to users and systems in the online context, and it is therefore vital to educate potential victims in order to reduce their susceptibility to the related attacks. However, as with other aspects of security education, this firstly requires a means of getting the user’s attention. This paper presents details of an awarenessraising game that was developed in order to educate users in a more interactive way. A board game approach, combining reference material with themed multiple-choice questions, was implemented as an initial prototype, and evaluated with 21 users. The results suggested that the …

Electronic-Supply Chain Information Security: A Framework For Information, Alizera Bolhari

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Over the last few years, the materials and distribution management has developed into a broader strategic approach known as electronic supply chain management by means of information technology. This paper attempts to visibly describe supply chain management information security concepts which are necessary for managers to know about. So, the depth of information presented in this paper is calibrated for managers, not technical security employees or agents. Global supply chains are exposed to diverse types of risks that rise along with increasing globalization. Electronic supply chains will be more vulnerable from information security (IS) aspect among other types of supply …

Assessment Of Internationalised Domain Name Homograph Attack Mitigation, Peter Hannay, Christopher Bolan

Australian Information Security Management Conference

With the advent of internationalised domains the threat posed by non-english character sets has eventuated. Whilst this phenomenon remains well known in the development and internet industry the actual implementations of popular applications have been tested to determine their resilience to homograph based attack. The research found that most provided features that overcome such attacks, but there remain a few notable exceptions. Should an attacker take advantage of such oversights a victim would likely not be able to spot a fraudulent site or email and thus provide a perfect platform for subsequent attack.

Visuohaptic Simulation Of A Borescope For Aircraft Engine Inspection, Deepak Vembar

All Dissertations

Consisting of a long, fiber optic probe containing a small CCD camera controlled by hand-held articulation interface, a video borescope is used for remote visual inspection of hard to reach components in an aircraft. The knowledge and psychomotor skills, specifically the hand-eye coordination, required for effective inspection are hard to acquire through limited exposure to the borescope in aviation maintenance schools. Inexperienced aircraft maintenance technicians gain proficiency through repeated hands-on learning in the workplace along a steep learning curve while transitioning from the classroom to the workforce.
Using an iterative process combined with focused user evaluations, this dissertation details the …

Examining The Dynamics Of Managing Information Systems Development Projects: A Control Loss Perspective, Ravi Narayanaswamy

All Dissertations

The failure rate of information systems development (ISD) projects continues to pose a big challenge for organizations. The success rate of ISD projects is less then forty percent. Factors such as disagreements and miscommunications among project manager and team members, poor monitoring and intermediary problems contribute to project failure.
Agency theory and leader member exchange (LMX) theories offer potential explanations for project failure. In particular, three monitoring strategies - control strategy, decision rights, and influence tactics were found to be effective in promoting project success. LMX theorists suggest that achieving congruence between the manager and subordinate regarding each other actions …

Enabling Secure Secret Updating For Unidirectional Key Distribution In Rfid-Enabled Supply Chains, Shaoying Cai, Tieyan Li, Changshe Ma, Yingjiu Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In USENIX Security 08, Juels, Pappu and Parno proposed a secret sharing based mechanism to alleviate the key distribution problem in RFID-enabled supply chains. Compared to existing pseudonym based RFID protocols, the secret sharing based solution is more suitable for RFID-enabled supply chains since it does not require a database of keys be distributed among supply chain parties for secure ownership transfer of RFID tags. However, this mechanism cannot resist tag tracking and tag counterfeiting attacks in supply chain systems. It is also not convenient for downstream supply chain parties to adjust the size of RFID tag collections in recovering …

On The Untraceability Of Anonymous Rfid Authentication Protocol With Constant Key-Lookup, Bing Liang, Yingjiu Li, Tieyan Li, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In ASIACCS'08, Burmester, Medeiros and Motta proposed an anonymous RFID authentication protocol (BMM protocol [2]) that preserves the security and privacy properties, and achieves better scalability compared with other contemporary approaches. We analyze BMM protocol and find that some of security properties (especial untraceability) are not fulfilled as originally claimed. We consider a subtle attack, in which an adversary can manipulate the messages transmitted between a tag and a reader for several continuous protocol runs, and can successfully trace the tag after these interactions. Our attack works under a weak adversary model, in which an adversary can eavesdrop, intercept and …

A Neural Network Approach To Border Gateway Protocol Peer Failure Detection And Prediction, Cory B. White

Master's Theses

The size and speed of computer networks continue to expand at a rapid pace, as do the corresponding errors, failures, and faults inherent within such extensive networks. This thesis introduces a novel approach to interface Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) computer networks with neural networks to learn the precursor connectivity patterns that emerge prior to a node failure. Details of the design and construction of a framework that utilizes neural networks to learn and monitor BGP connection states as a means of detecting and predicting BGP peer node failure are presented. Moreover, this framework is used to monitor a BGP network …

Duol: A Double Updating Approach For Online Learning, Peilin Zhao, Steven C. H. Hoi, Rong Jin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In most online learning algorithms, the weights assigned to the misclassified examples (or support vectors) remain unchanged during the entire learning process. This is clearly insufficient since when a new misclassified example is added to the pool of support vectors, we generally expect it to affect the weights for the existing support vectors. In this paper, we propose a new online learning method, termed Double Updating Online Learning, or DUOL for short. Instead of only assigning a fixed weight to the misclassified example received in current trial, the proposed online learning algorithm also tries to update the weight for one …

A Robust Damage Assessment Model For Corrupted Database Systems, Ge Fu, Hong Zhu, Yingjiu Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An intrusion tolerant database uses damage assessment techniques to detect damage propagation scales in a corrupted database system. Traditional damage assessment approaches in a intrusion tolerant database system can only locate damages which are caused by reading corrupted data. In fact, there are many other damage spreading patterns that have not been considered in traditional damage assessment model. In this paper, we systematically analyze inter-transaction dependency relationships that have been neglected in the previous research and propose four different dependency relationships between transactions which may cause damage propagation. We extend existing damage assessment model based on the four novel dependency …

A New Approach For Anonymous Password Authentication, Yanjiang Yang, Jianying Zhou, Jian Weng, Feng Bao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Anonymous password authentication reinforces password authentication with the protection of user privacy. Considering the increasing concern of individual privacy nowadays, anonymous password authentication represents a promising privacy-preserving authentication primitive. However, anonymous password authentication in the standard setting has several inherent weaknesses, making its practicality questionable. In this paper, we propose a new and efficient approach for anonymous password authentication. Our approach assumes a different setting where users do not register their passwords to the server; rather, they use passwords to protect their authentication credentials. We present a concrete scheme, and get over a number of challenges in securing password-protected credentials …

Challenges In Improving Information Security Practice In Australian General Practice, Donald C. Mcdermid, Rachel J. Mahncke, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The status of information security in Australian medical general practice is discussed together with a review of the challenges facing small practices that often lack the technical knowledge and skill to secure patient information by themselves. It is proposed that an information security governance framework is required to assist practices in identifying weaknesses and gaps and then to plan and implement how to overcome their shortcomings through policies, training and changes to processes and management structure.