Computer Engineering Commons^™

Automated Man-In-The-Middle Attack Against Wi‑Fi Networks, Martin Vondráček, Jan Pluskal, Ondřej Ryšavý

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Currently used wireless communication technologies suffer security weaknesses that can be exploited allowing to eavesdrop or to spoof network communication. In this paper, we present a practical tool that can automate the attack on wireless security. The developed package called wifimitm provides functionality for the automation of MitM attacks in the wireless environment. The package combines several existing tools and attack strategies to bypass the wireless security mechanisms, such as WEP, WPA, and WPS. The presented tool can be integrated into a solution for automated penetration testing. Also, a popularization of the fact that such attacks can be easily automated …

A Sketch-Based Rapid Modeling Method For Crime Scene Presentation, Pu Ren, Wuyang Shui, Jin Liu, Yachun Fan, Wenshuo Zhao, Mingquan Zhou

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The reconstruction of crime scene plays an important role in digital forensic application. This article integrates computer graphics, sketch-based retrieval and virtual reality (VR) techniques to develop a low-cost and rapid 3D crime scene presentation approach, which can be used by investigators to analyze and simulate the criminal process. First, we constructed a collection of 3D models for indoor crime scenes using various popular techniques, including laser scanning, image-based modeling and geometric modeling. Second, to quickly obtain an object of interest from the 3D model database, a sketch-based retrieval method was proposed. Finally, a rapid modeling system that integrates our …

Evaluating Classifiers' Optimal Performances Over A Range Of Misclassification Costs By Using Cost-Sensitive Classification, Ramy Al-Saffar

LSU Master's Theses

We believe that using the classification accuracy is not enough to evaluate the performances of classification algorithms. It can be misleading due to overlooking an important element which is the cost if classification is inaccurate. Furthermore, the Receiver Operational Characteristic (ROC) is one of the most popular graphs used to evaluate classifiers performances. However, one of the biggest ROC’s shortcomings is the assumption of equal costs for all misclassified data. Therefore, our goal is to reduce the total cost of decision making by selecting the classifier that has the least total misclassification cost. Nevertheless, the exact misclassification cost is usually …

A Bayesian Network Based Adaptability Design Of Product Structures For Function Evolution, Shaobo Li, Yongming Wu, Yan-Xia Xu, Jie Hu, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Structure adaptability design is critical for function evolution in product families, in which many structural and functional design factors are intertwined together with manufacturing cost, customer satisfaction, and final market sales. How to achieve a delicate balance among all of these factors to maximize the market performance of the product is too complicated to address based on traditional domain experts’ knowledge or some ad hoc heuristics. Here, we propose a quantitative product evolution design model that is based on Bayesian networks to model the dynamic relationship between customer needs and product structure design. In our model, all of the structural …

Investigation Of Lstm Based Prediction For Dynamic Energy Management In Chip Multiprocessors, Milad Ghorbani Moghaddam, Wenkai Guan, Cristinel Ababei

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of using long short-term memory (LSTM) instead of Kalman filtering to do prediction for the purpose of constructing dynamic energy management (DEM) algorithms in chip multi-processors (CMPs). Either of the two prediction methods is employed to estimate the workload in the next control period for each of the processor cores. These estimates are then used to select voltage-frequency (VF) pairs for each core of the CMP during the next control period as part of a dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) technique. The objective of the DVFS technique is to reduce energy consumption …

Estimating Defensive Cyber Operator Decision Confidence, Markus M. Borneman

Theses and Dissertations

As technology continues to advance the domain of cyber defense, signature and heuristic detection mechanisms continue to require human operators to make judgements about the correctness of machine decisions. Human cyber defense operators rely on their experience, expertise, and understanding of network security, when conducting cyber-based investigations, in order to detect and respond to cyber alerts. Ever growing quantities of cyber alerts and network traffic, coupled with systemic manpower issues, mean no one has the time to review or change decisions made by operators. Since these cyber alert decisions ultimately do not get reviewed again, an inaccurate decision could cause …

Assessing The Competing Characteristics Of Privacy And Safety Within Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, Jacob W. Connors

Theses and Dissertations

The introduction of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication has the promise of decreasing vehicle collisions, congestion, and emissions. However, this technology places safety and privacy at odds; an increase of safety applications will likely result in the decrease of consumer privacy. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has proposed the Security Credential Management System (SCMS) as the back end infrastructure for maintaining, distributing, and revoking vehicle certificates attached to every Basic Safety Message (BSM). This Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) scheme is designed around the philosophy of maintaining user privacy through the separation of functions to prevent any one subcomponent from identifying …

Assured Android Execution Environments, Brandon P. Froberg

Theses and Dissertations

Current cybersecurity best practices, techniques, tactics and procedures are insufficient to ensure the protection of Android systems. Software tools leveraging formal methods use mathematical means to assure both a design and implementation for a system and these methods can be used to provide security assurances. The goal of this research is to determine methods of assuring isolation when executing Android software in a contained environment. Specifically, this research demonstrates security properties relevant to Android software containers can be formally captured and validated, and that an implementation can be formally verified to satisfy a corresponding specification. A three-stage methodology called "The …

Digital Forensics Event Graph Reconstruction, Daniel J. Schelkoph

Theses and Dissertations

Ontological data representation and data normalization can provide a structured way to correlate digital artifacts. This can reduce the amount of data that a forensics examiner needs to process in order to understand the sequence of events that happened on the system. However, ontology processing suffers from large disk consumption and a high computational cost. This paper presents Property Graph Event Reconstruction (PGER), a novel data normalization and event correlation system that leverages a native graph database to improve the speed of queries common in ontological data. PGER reduces the processing time of event correlation grammars and maintains accuracy over …

Cyber Data Anomaly Detection Using Autoencoder Neural Networks, Spencer A. Butt

Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense requires a secure presence in the cyber domain to successfully execute its stated mission of deterring war and protecting the security of the United States. With potentially millions of logged network events occurring on defended networks daily, a limited staff of cyber analysts require the capability to identify novel network actions for security adjudication. The detection methodology proposed uses an autoencoder neural network optimized via design of experiments for the identification of anomalous network events. Once trained, each logged network event is analyzed by the neural network and assigned an outlier score. The network events with …

Cybersecurity Assessment And Mitigation Stochastic Model, Matthew W. Davis

Theses and Dissertations

With numerous cybersecurity incidents and vulnerability concerns in an increasingly contested cyber warfighting environment, the Department of Defense (DoD) has mandated cybersecurity assessment and authorization of all major weapon systems (MWS) before their use. In response to this direction, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) created the Platform Information Technology Assessment and Authorization (PIT A&A) Process. Modeled after the NIST Risk Management Framework (RMF), this process applies a risk-based approach to cybersecurity with the goal of identifying risks and mitigating vulnerabilities in MWS. Within this work, a stochastic model of the PIT A&A Process is presented with an …

Progressive Network Deployment, Performance, And Control With Software-Defined Networking, Daniel J. Casey

Theses and Dissertations

The inflexible nature of traditional computer networks has led to tightly-integrated systems that are inherently difficult to manage and secure. New designs move low-level network control into software creating software-defined networks (SDN). Augmenting an existing network with these enhancements can be expensive and complex. This research investigates solutions to these problems. It is hypothesized that an add-on device, or "shim" could be used to make a traditional switch behave as an OpenFlow SDN switch while maintaining reasonable performance. A design prototype is found to cause approximately 1.5% reduction in throughput for one ow and less than double increase in latency, …

Evaluation Of Resiliency In A Wide-Area Backup Protection System Via Model Checking, Kolby H. Elliot

Theses and Dissertations

Modern civilization relies heavily on having access to reliable power sources. Recent history has shown that present day protection systems are not adequate. Numerous backup protection (BP) systems have been proposed to mitigate the impact of primary protection system failures. Many of these novel BP systems rely on autonomous agents communicating via wide-area networks. These systems are highly complex and their control logic is based on distributed computing. Model checking has been shown to be a powerful tool in analyzing the behavior of distributed systems. In this research the model checker SPIN is used to evaluate the resiliency of an …

Bandwidth Analysis Of A Tightly-Packed Crossed-Dipole Array For Satellite Communications, Lawrence J. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

A bandwidth analysis of a tightly-packed crossed-dipole array antenna is presented in this thesis. A parametric study is described which varies the element spacing in the array and the resulting change in the terminal impedances is reported. The increased mutual coupling seen by the elements as a result of smaller element spacings is shown to minimize the variation in the value of the elements terminal currents across a 0.3 GHz to 3.0 GHz frequency range. This small variation in current translates into a minimal variation in the terminal impedances for a fixed excitation voltage. This is shown to be an …

Assessment Of Structure From Motion For Reconnaissance Augmentation And Bandwidth Usage Reduction, Jonathan B. Roeber

Theses and Dissertations

Modern militaries rely upon remote image sensors for real-time intelligence. A typical remote system consists of an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, with an attached camera. A video stream is sent from the UAV, through a bandwidth-constrained satellite connection, to an intelligence processing unit. In this research, an upgrade to this method of collection is proposed. A set of synthetic images of a scene captured by a UAV in a virtual environment is sent to a pipeline of computer vision algorithms, collectively known as Structure from Motion. The output of Structure from Motion, a three-dimensional model, is then assessed in …

Market Basket Analysis With Shortened Web Link Click Data, James C. Gallagher

Theses and Dissertations

Market research is an indispensable part of an organization's ability to understand market dynamics in an area. Over the past 20 years data collection and analysis through Knowledge Discovery through Databases (KDD) has arisen to supplement the traditional methods of surveys and focus groups. Market Basket Analysis is an area of KDD that identifies associations between commonly purchased items. As social media use has grown, link shortening companies help users share links in a constrained space environment and, in exchange, collect data about each user when a link is clicked. This research applies market basket analysis techniques with graph mining …

An Analysis Of Multi-Domain Command And Control And The Development Of Software Solutions Through Devops Toolsets And Practices, Mason R. Bruza

Theses and Dissertations

Multi-Domain Command and Control (MDC2) is the exercise of command and control over forces in multiple operational domains (namely air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace) in order to produce synergistic effects in the battlespace, and enhancing this capability has become a major focus area for the United States Air Force (USAF). In order to meet demands for MDC2 software, solutions need to be acquired and/or developed in a timely manner, information technology infrastructure needs to be adaptable to new software requirements, and user feedback needs to drive iterative updates to fielded software. In commercial organizations, agile software development methodologies and …

Quality Of Service Impacts Of A Moving Target Defense With Software-Defined Networking, Samuel A. Mayer

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the impact a defensive network technique implemented with software-defined networking has upon quality of service experienced by legitimate users. The research validates previous work conducted at AFIT to verify claims of defensive efficacy and then tests network protocols in common use (FTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP, RTP, SMTP, and SSH) on a network that uses this technique. Metrics that indicate the performance of the protocols under test are reported with respect to data gathered in a control network. The conclusions of these experiments enable network engineers to determine if this defensive technique is appropriate for the quality of …

Internet Of Things For A Smart Transportation System, Ahmed Yahya Awad

Theses and Dissertations

Today, school buses transport millions of students to and from schools. Therefore, the safety of school students is still a hot topic and the most imperative issue. The evolution of wireless location-based services has created consumer requests for the availability of global positioning systems (GPS) in urban and indoor environments. Nowadays, there is a requirement to improve a monitoring system for the school bus, that monitors its location and speed. This work investigates two different ways to track the vehicle through ordinary GPS or Assisted-GPS (A-GPS). A-GPS improves startup performance (time-to-first-fix (TTFF)), of a GPS satellite-based positioning system in the …

Broadband Plasmonic-Enhanced Forward And Backward Multiplex Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering Microscopy, Baoshan Guo, Lan Jiang, Yanhong Hua, Xin Li, Tianhong Cui, Yongfeng Lu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) microscopy is an attractive technique for label-free biochemical-specific characterization of biological specimens. However, it has very low sensitivity in monitoring and imaging molecules present in extremely low concentrations or at fast speeds. To improve this sensitivity, especially for multiplex CARS, the intensity of the pump beam and broadband Stokes beam should be enhanced simultaneously. Therefore, the gold shell particle and gold surface are demonstrated to enhance the forward and backward CARS, respectively. Results show that a signal enhancement factor of ∼25;000 can be achieved for the gold surface and an even higher enhancement factor can …

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Engineering And Computer Science, Spring 2018, Buenaventura "Ven" Basco

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Foreword: Special Section On Electrical Contacts, Ronald A. Coutu Jr., Ravi Mahajan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Welcome to the Special Topics Section dedicated to the 2016 Holm Conference on Electrical Contacts. This Special Section contains six high-quality papers that comprehensively describe the state of the art and potential future directions for topics of great interest to our readers. The Editor-in-Chief (EIC), in consultation with the other EICs, Associate Editors (AEs), and domain experts, selects the topics for the Special Sections, and a Guest Editor or AE (GE/AE), who is a leading expert in the technical area, and then directs the solicitation and peer review of the papers. In cases where the GE/AE is also an author, …

An Analysis Of Project Setup And Organization In Software, Adam Fitzgibbon

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The setup of a software project can greatly influence how efficiently software can be built. In this paper, I will be discussing my experiences with various software projects and their setups. These experiences will be used as a basis to draw conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of specific project setups in certain situations.

Because of the complexity of building software, there isn’t a project setup that works optimally for solving every type of software-based problem. The best approach is to know what variations would best fit the situation and make design decisions from there.

Qtsac: An Energy-Efficient Mac Protocol For Delay Minimization In Wireless Sensor Networks, Yuxin Liu, Kaoru Ota, Kuan Zhang, Ming Ma, Naixue Xiong, Anfeng Liu, Jun Long

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Millions of sensors are deployed to monitor the smart grid. They consume huge amounts of energy in the communication infrastructure. Therefore, the establishment of an energy-efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for sensor nodes is challenging and urgently needed. The Quorum-based MAC protocol independently and adaptively schedules nodes’ wake-up times and decreases idle listening and collisions, thereby increasing the network throughput and extending the network lifetime. A novel Quorum time slot adaptive condensing (QTSAC)-based MAC protocol is proposed for achieving delay minimization and energy efficiency for the wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Compared to previous protocols, the QTSAC-based MAC protocol has …

Policy-Preferred Paths In As-Level Internet Topology Graphs, Mehmet Engin Tozal

Theory & Applications of Graphs

Using Autonomous System (AS) level Internet topology maps to determine accurate AS-level paths is essential for network diagnostics, performance optimization, security enforcement, business policy management and topology-aware application development. One significant drawback that we have observed in many studies is simplifying the AS-level topology map of the Internet to an undirected graph, and then using the hop distance as a means to find the shortest paths between the ASes. A less significant drawback is restricting the shortest paths to only valley-free paths. Both approaches usually inflate the number of paths between ASes; introduce erroneous paths that do not conform to …

Aspie: A Framework For Active Sensing And Processing Of Complex Events In The Internet Of Manufacturing Things, Shaobo Li, Weixing Chen, Jie Hu, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Rapid perception and processing of critical monitoring events are essential to ensure healthy operation of Internet of Manufacturing Things (IoMT)-based manufacturing processes. In this paper, we proposed a framework (active sensing and processing architecture (ASPIE)) for active sensing and processing of critical events in IoMT-based manufacturing based on the characteristics of IoMT architecture as well as its perception model. A relation model of complex events in manufacturing processes, together with related operators and unified XML-based semantic definitions, are developed to effectively process the complex event big data. A template based processing method for complex events is further introduced to conduct …

Keep It Simple, Keep It Safe - Research On The Impacts Of Increasing Complexity Of Modern Enterprise Applications, Shawn Ware, David Phillips

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

As the Cybersecurity program within UNO continues to adapt to the ever-changing world of information systems and information security, the Cybersecurity Capstone has recently become an active, community-involvement project, where real-world organizations can receive valuable, useful research and information from students on their way towards a degree. This presentation encompasses two such projects from the Cybersecurity Capstone, looking at how modern, more complex systems can often increase system vulnerability.

Quantifying Static And Dynamic Stability Using Mobile Sensors, Mason Schleu

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Quantifying Static and Dynamic Stability Using Mobile Sensors

Balance disorders burden over 35% of Americans, causing substantial impact on quality of life due to psychological and physical hardships associated with poor balance. Balance disorder can affect all individuals, and range in seriousness from slight dizziness to the inability to safely walk from place to place. Elderly adults are most susceptible to the dangers of poor balance, where injuries from falling are a prevalent and grave concern. Balance disorders are often assessed only after the event of a fall or injury, warranting the need for a readily available, at home balance …

Plant Identification Using Tensorflow, Kody G. Dangtongdee

Computer Engineering

Exploring the diverse nature that is available in San Luis Obispo is one of my favorite activities, however, I often am frustrated that I am unable to identify or learn more about the plants that I appreciate. This project is an attempt at using the concepts of neural networks to create an image classifier which can identify plants. Machine learning is one of the biggest topics in computer science at the moment, and its many uses make it a topic that will continue to be researched for a very long time. Convolutional neural networks are a popular realm of machine …

Affective Computing For Emotion Detection Using Vision And Wearable Sensors, Alphonsus Keary

PhDs

The research explores the opportunities, challenges, limitations, and presents advancements in computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions (Picard, 1997). The field is referred to as Affective Computing (AC) and is expected to play a major role in the engineering and development of computationally and cognitively intelligent systems, processors and applications in the future. Today the field of AC is bolstered by the emergence of multiple sources of affective data and is fuelled on by developments under various Internet of Things (IoTs) projects and the fusion potential of multiple sensory affective data streams. The core focus of …