Computer Engineering Commons^™

Reinforcement Learning And Hidden Markov Models For Simulating And Analyzing Social Engineering Attacks., Bharkavi Sachithanandam

Master's Projects

The advent of the internet has revolutionized communication and connectivity on a global scale. Now every computer is connected to the internet. Although this technological advancement has made human life easier, this has also led to an increase in sophisticated methods of exploitation. Social Engineering is such a prominent threat to the human community. Social engineering attackers manipulate the victim into giving away sensitive details. Understanding the dynamics of social engineering is crucial for developing measures to help individuals and organizations avoid falling prey to these deceptive tactics. Hence it is essential to understand the attackers. Thus gaining insight into …

Optimizing Web Design Code Generation: A Comparative Study Of Finetuning, Pretrained Models, And Rag (Retrieval Augmented Generation), Srinivas Rao Chavan

Master's Projects

Website Creation is revolutionized by automated code generation, reducing the development effort, speeding the production process, and ensuring consistency in design. Automated web design code generation has emerged as a transformative tool bridging the gap between design and development. In this research, a website design tool is developed and used to create visual layouts, exporting them as JSON designs. These JSON outputs were then transformed into textual prompts, optimized using established HCI principles and UI/UX rules to ensure consistency, visual hierarchy, aesthetics and minimalistic design, accessibility, user-friendly navigation and flexibility. These generated prompts were fed into large language models for …

Teaching Children Programming Concepts Through Video Games, Kayla Musleh

Master's Projects

Children have a tendency to lose focus when they are presented with something that does not entertain them or tailor to their personal interests; such as studying [1], [3], [10]. The research performed for this project focuses on studying how much more children can comprehend and focus on learning educational material if they are learning through playing a video game rather than being taught information directly in a typical classroom manner. For this study I created a computer game designed to introduce educational subjects such as mathematics and programming concepts to the child playing the game. By completing the tasks …

Exploring Fluctuations In Working Memory Load Through Pupillometry Using Gabor Image Deletion Tasks, Neenu Antony

Master's Projects

Van der Wel & Van Steenbergen mention that there has been a surge in pupillometry research in the past two decades, particularly in the area of task-evoked pupil dilation in the context of cognitive control tasks. The goal of most of these studies has been focused on finding a link between pupil dilation and effort exerted by an individual [10]. The review by authors Van der Wel & Van Steenbergen, aimed to assess the potential of pupil dilation as an indicator of effort rather than task complexity. Their analysis revealed that heightened task demands in domains such as updating, switching, …

Malware Detection Using Qr And Aztec Code Representations, Atharva Khadilkar

Master's Projects

In recent years, the use of image-based techniques for malware detection has gained prominence, with numerous studies demonstrating the efficacy of deep learning approaches such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) in classifying images derived from executable files. In this paper, we consider an innovative method that relies on an image conversion process that consists of transforming executable files into QR and Aztec codes. These codes capture structural patterns in a format that may enhance the learning capabilities of CNNs. We design and implement CNN architectures tailored to the unique properties of these codes and apply them to a comprehensive analysis …

Enhancing Medical Chatbots With Image Diagnosis, Swatisri Chavali

Master's Projects

Medical chatbots, at the conjunction of artificial intelligence and healthcare, are the very cornerstone of a transformative force in diagnostic capabilities and communication channels for healthcare professionals. The history of this journey, from early chatbot models to sophisticated systems, is born out of a relentless pursuit of accuracy and contextual understanding. This proposal acknowledges the critical role played by NLTK in raising the interpretability and communicative capabilities of intelligent systems, meeting challenges that arise from varying writing styles and accommodating the standards of the medical field. The integration of NLTK is a linchpin, bridging the gap between sophisticated technological architectures …

Satellite Handover Optimization Using Predicted Satellite-To-Base-Station Proximity, Pranathi Kunadi

Master's Projects

Modern telecommunications heavily rely on Satellite communication networks to provide global coverage, especially in remote areas which link the whole world in a loop. Conventional handover algorithms methods rely on fixed and predefined rules and thresholds predefined statically to make a handover decision. However, these static handover algorithms may become inefficient under the changing conditions of the network. Therefore, it would be useful to measure the proximity order of satellites to the specific base station. Consequently, the assessed relative proximity helps in optimizing the handovers proactively inside related coverage areas. This results in the service quality and the delays in …

Fake Malware Generation Using Gans As Api Calls, Saieswar Reddy Vaka

Master's Projects

With malware threats on the rise, they have also grown more complicated and subtle. Consequently, incorporating cutting-edge machine learning into cybersecurity defenses has never been more crucial. Nevertheless, building resilient machine-learning models is a significant challenge due to the need for existing diversified and complete malware datasets. This project will relieve this difficulty by employing a Generative

Adversarial Network (GAN) to develop artificial malware samples featuring an Appli- cation Programming Interface (API) call series. While traditional generative modeling

has primarily been limited to image-based fields, we offer an “outside the box” domain – malware signature generation – as an API …

Ensemble Model With Meta-Learning For Ddos Attack Classification In Sdn, Ankith Indrakumar

Master's Projects

In response to the security threats posed by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, this paper presents an intrusion detection framework with a high-accuracy multi-class classification model. In addition to detecting the existence of DDoS attacks, our framework aims to identify the type of attack (e.g., protocol or message type) so that the system can select the most appropriate countermeasure against the DDoS type. We leverage a meta-learner to build an ensemble model of multiple machine learning models such as LSTM, RF, and KNN to enhance detection and classification accuracy. Tested on the CIC-DDoS 2019 dataset, the proposed model achieves …

Frame Rate Enhancement Using Gans: A Deep Learning Approach, Shanmukah Sri Harsha Anivilla

Master's Projects

Videos are sequences of frames that are displayed continuously within a time frame, which creates the illusion. FPS is defined as the number of frames per second, and is crucial to determine the smoothness of motion or scene changes in the video. To improve the appearance of the videos, we can a technique called Frame Rate Enhancement. This is an approach to augment generated frames between pairs of frames using Generative Adversarial Networks. There are a few traditional techniques using Convolution Neural Networks and Optical Flow based methods, but they create unwanted artifacts such as blurring or ghosting and might …

Multimodal Emotion Detection In Conversations And Dialogues: A Fusion Model Approach, Abhinay Jatoth

Master's Projects

Emotion recognition is gaining traction due to its wide range of potential applications across different fields. With the rise of social media, chat platforms, and voice assistants, there is a vast increase in data through which humans implicitly and explicitly carry emotional cues. With new algorithms being developed for understanding the nuances of human language and emotion, businesses can tailor more personalized and empathetic service. Sentiment analysis, expresses a positive, negative, or neutral viewpoint laid the foundation of Emotion classification. Emotion classification in conversations represents the most advanced stage of classification. It is also challenging due to the existence and …

J-Cag: Java Comment Analysis & Generation - A Sublime Text Plugin Powered By Gpt, Linh Le

Master's Projects

Developers are notoriously disinterested in writing and maintaining comments for their code. The J-CAG plugin automates code analysis and comment generation to save developer time and improve code quality. The project utilizes the Generative Pretrained Transformer model to analyze and provide users with constructive feedback on JavaDoc comments and functions. Embedded within Sublime Text, J-CAG is designed to provide developers with useful advice. It can also generate JavaDoc comments based on the function itself, reducing the time developers spend on writing documentation. The plugin integrates seamlessly with Sublime Text, offering an intuitive interface. With positive results in comment analysis and …

Extending A Graphical User Interface For Evidential Reasoning, Vaidehi Sanjay Joshi

Master's Projects

Systems like Capri are used for large-scale graph modeling and integration and PyGrapher aims to do that in a simplified manner. This project is an extension of PyGrapher which was a tool created by previous students at the university. The enhancements include adding customizable default parameters for nodes and edges, automating JSON conversion, and enabling real-time highlighting. These features specifically aim to improve usability, streamline workflows, and provide interactive feedback for the users. The enhancement of the project also added additional and rigorous testing of the platform's compatibility and user interaction. It demonstrates significant improvements in functionality and user experience. …

Deep-Learning Approaches To Predict Remaining Useful Life Of Hard Disks, Rohan Mohapatra

Master's Projects

On a daily basis, data centers process huge volumes of data using inexpensive hard disks. Data stored in these disks serve a range of critical functional needs from financial, and healthcare to aerospace. As such, premature disk failure and consequent loss of data can be catastrophic. To mitigate the risk of failures, cloud storage providers perform condition-based monitoring and replace hard disks before they fail. By estimating the remaining useful life (RUL) of hard disk drives, one can predict the time-to-failure of a particular device and replace it at the right time, ensuring maximum utilization whilst reducing operational costs. We …

Echo: A Browser Extension That Runs Experimental Javascript, Prayuj Pillai

Master's Projects

Narcissus is a JavaScript interpreter written in JavaScript. While it is a good engine for experimenting with JavaScript’s design, it does not integrate easily into the browser. This project introduces ‘‘Echo’’, a browser add-on designed to execute Narcissus JavaScript files and scripts within web browsers. The project explores the performance of the Narcissus interpreter against native browser JavaScript engines and benchmarks the results, showcasing the trade-offs in running an experimental engine—the Narcissus interpreter—on the browser versus native JavaScript. Additionally, as a proof of concept, we implement taint tracking, a capability meant to boost security by preventing sensitive data from being …

A Framework For Scientific Data Indexing, Searching And Sharing, Apoorva Mohite

Master's Projects

Scientific data continues to grow. Wildfire simulation experiments performed by the WIRC team at SJSU have generated over 138 TB of data so far and it is expected to keep growing. It becomes difficult for researchers to search through that data to find the data of their interest. This data is stored on an HPC cluster that external users do not have access to. The WIRC team also conducts experiments and publishes their research, but the size of data makes it difficult to share these datasets. This project introduces a novel solution to indexing scientific data, searching through the data …

Adversarial Attacks And Defense Mechanisms In Multivariate Time-Series Forecasting For Applications In Smart And Connected Infrastructures, Pooja Krishan

Master's Projects

The advent of deep learning models has revolutionized the industry over the past decade, leading to the widespread proliferation of smart devices and infrastructures. They play a crucial role in safety-critical applications like self-driving cars and medical image analysis, sustainable technologies like power consumption prediction, and in health monitoring tools to replace industrial equipment like hard disk drives, semiconductor chips, and lithium-ion batteries. But these indispensable deep learning models can be easily fooled to give incorrect predictions with utmost conviction, leading to catastrophic failures in applications where safety is of utmost importance, and resulting in the wastage of resources in …

Fine-Tuning Large Language Models For Folder Structure Generation, Likhith Nemani

Master's Projects

Starting a new project is a significant challenge in the software development world. Building a new project skeleton and configurations will require vast amounts of time and effort. This project aims to overcome the difficulty presented by this challenge using advanced large language models, specifically fine-tuning LLMs. Our initial focus with the implementation is to use the powerful capabilities of advanced modern models to simplify and accelerate the complicated process of getting new projects started. The solution process begins with a user posting a README file to a predetermined repository. This README file then is used as a source for …

Domain Expert Bot, Amrutha Dondemadahalli Ramegowda

Master's Projects

The fast growth of artificial intelligence in human-computer interaction has been aided significantly by the introduction of conversational AI systems. This project presents a Domain Expert Bot, a multi-domain conversational bot built with advanced NLP techniques incorporated through Sentence-BERT and MapReduce to allow the bot to analyze and comprehend challenging user queries on various topics. The bot can converse on different subjects ranging from technology topics to healthcare, environment, politics, and casual discussions. It excels in understanding deep language contexts and efficiently processes large datasets, ensuring prompt and accurate responses. Furthermore, it uses advanced ranking algorithms to perform real- time …

Credit Score-Based Lending System On The Ethereum Platform, Mayuri Shimpi

Master's Projects

Traditional banking systems act as intermediaries, assessing risks and profiting from interest rate differentials. Credit scores, provided by trusted bureaus, are commonly used to evaluate the creditworthiness of borrowers. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a significant and innovative medium due to their decentralized nature, operating without reliance on a central authority, such as a government.

This report describes a project to implement the Autonomous Lending system on the Ethereum Platform (ALOE), as proposed in [1], aiming to seamlessly integrate traditional credit scoring methodologies for evaluating a borrower's risk of default. The objective of this project report is to establish a robust …

Emulating Human Personality With Large Language Models Through Contextual Prompts And Fine-Tuning, Mrunal Zambre

Master's Projects

The quest for AI systems that can mirror the intricate aspects of human emotion and personality is crucial for enhancing their performance. This project delves into the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to mimic the Big Five personality traits in human-written essays by utilizing contextual prompts and fine-tuning methods. Diverging from traditional research in this domain, this project explores smaller, open-source LLMs, including LLaMA 2 7B chat, LLaMA 2 13B chat, and Vicuna v.15 13B, to assess their potential in personality prediction tasks, thereby making high-level personality emulation more accessible and practical for application integration. Through meticulous prompt engineering, …

Secured Data Storage Management With Deduplication In Cloud Computing, Ganesh Regoti

Master's Projects

In the cloud era, cloud storage has become a major service and the security of data and user privacy algorithms are becoming of great importance. This way, we make sure that the encrypted data is kept in the cloud storage. But, the challenges follow: First, storing encrypted data may result in ineffective utilization of cloud resources as in the provision of encrypted data, redundancy cannot be provided. Access control to the encrypted data is difficult as the underlying data is hidden and there is no metric with which the decision to share among users can be easily taken. Deduplication is …

Ranking-Based Hashtag Recommendation With Collaborative And Content-Based Filtering, Fei Pan

Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is recommending relevant hashtags for users using both Collaborative Filtering (CF) and Content-based filtering with Twitter dataset. The Twitter dataset was collected by leveraging Twitter API v2. After data preprocessing, 40,806 tweets posted by 278 users with 3,107 hashtags from 01/01/2022 to 04/30/2022 are used for model training and testing. For CF models, we will mainly focus on generating embeddings to learn about user and hashtag latent factors and finally predict a probability for unseen hashtags with most possibility will be ranked as topK items for corresponding users. In this project, Matrix Factorization (MF), Neural …

Ml-Based User Identification Through Mouse Dynamics, Rakshit Gupta

Master's Projects

User authentication and identification plays a crucial role in ensuring the security and integrity of digital systems. Traditional authentication methods, such as passwords and biometrics, have inherent limitations that can compromise system security. This research proposes a novel approach to user authentication by leveraging machine learning techniques and behavioral biometrics, specifically mouse dynamics. The primary objective is to develop a sophisticated framework that can accurately identify individuals based on their unique mouse behavior patterns. The study explores and compares multiple deep learning architectures, including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), Long Short-Term Memory networks (LSTM), and Transformer models, to generate embeddings from …

Analysis And Application Of Adaptive Ml Algorithms For Malware Classification, Rashmi Boddukuri

Master's Projects

Malware classification is the process of distinguishing malware samples into categories of malware families that it is associated with and remains a critical step in the process of mitigating malware-related threats. In recent years, machine learning techniques have emerged as a powerful tool for such malware classification tasks. In this study, we explore the application of adaptive machine learning models to malware classification in order to analyze and determine how they compare in performance to similar but non-adaptive algorithms. The results achieved in this study share insight into the strengths and limitations of adaptive learning models when applied towards malware …

Domain Switch On Sentiment Analysis Using Gradient Reversal Layer, Hemish Veeraboina

Master's Projects

Switching domains in sentiment analysis presents the challenge of transferring learned knowledge from one context to another without the need to label data. Traditional methods often struggle when dealing with differences in data distribution a problem known as the domain shift issue. To tackle this using Gradient Reversal Layers (GRL) has emerged as a solution for adapting to different domains in an unsupervised learning setting. This study introduces an enhancement to the standard GRL approach by incorporating a sigmoid function that gradually adjusts how intensely domain adaptation occurs during training. This upgraded GRL technique ensures controlled learning outcomes making it …

Ai-Driven Credit Card Fraud Detection With Enhanced User Interaction, Toshi Bhat

Master's Projects

This thesis describes the development and testing of a unique system for detecting credit card fraud. The system employs graph neural networks (GNNs) and a real-time user interaction platform. The primary goal of this study is to use advanced machine learning methods and interactive technologies to improve fraud detection accuracy and the speed with which users can receive assistance. GraphSAGE, a type of GNN, was trained on a simulated set of credit card transactions, allowing the system to detect and predict fraud very accurately. Simulating a real-world transaction scenario is an important aspect of the project. In this case, the …

Optimized Community Detection Across Distributed Heterogeneous Servers, Akash Narang

Master's Projects

The exploration of community detection is crucial across various fields, including marketing, and biological research. This area has evolved from non-overlapping communities to recognize nodes as part of multiple overlapping communities. Current research continues to uncover these dynamics. The main challenge is identifying overlapping communities in graphs with billions of nodes and edges. This paper aims to enhance methodologies for community detection in parallel for unprecedentedly large and complex networks. We introduce the HeteroNodesAdapter algorithm, which supports heterogeneous worker nodes and optimized load distribution in graph stream processing. Additionally, we propose the TailBalancedCommunitySize algorithm to find an optimum community size, …

Adaptive Bounded-Confidence Model For Opinion Maximization, Jacob Ortiz

Master's Projects

Social networks have become a significant source of information due to their easy accessibility, low cost, and ability to spread information quickly. Opinions are crucial in shaping our communication and decision-making processes, and our social connections significantly influence them. We model opinions as continuous values from 0 to 1, i.e., 0 means strong disagree and 1 means strong agree. Each agent has an initial opinion as well as a confidence about her opinion and through interactions with the other agents both are updated. Opinion maximization has gained popularity due to social media’s growing impact on our daily lives, where we …

Influence Maximization Using Triadic Closures, Communities, And Quotas, Matthew Fu

Master's Projects

Online social networks have exploded in popularity in the last decade. In addition, traditional advertising methods such as television advertising have greatly decreased. This allows companies to utilize viral marketing more effectively. With viral marketing, companies can spread information on a product to a social network by reaching out to a small group of early adopters, who will go on to inform the people around them of the product. The problem is selecting the early adopters that can maximize the spread of influence. The Influence Maximization (IM) problem is finding a social network’s most influential (early adopters) starting nodes, called …