Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Rebalancing Shared Mobility Systems By User Incentive Scheme Via Reinforcement Learning, Matthew Brian Schofield

Theses and Dissertations

Shared mobility systems regularly suffer from an imbalance of vehicle supply within the system, leading to users being unable to receive service. If such imbalance problems are not mitigated some users will not be serviced. There is an increasing interest in the use of reinforcement learning (RL) techniques for improving the resource supply balance and service level of systems. The goal of these techniques is to produce an effective user incentivization policy scheme to encourage users of a shared mobility system to slightly alter their travel behavior in exchange for a small monetary incentive. These slight changes in user behavior …

Stock Markets Performance During A Pandemic: How Contagious Is Covid-19?, Yara Abushahba

Theses and Dissertations

Background and Motivation: The coronavirus (“COVID-19”) pandemic, the subsequent policies and lockdowns have unarguably led to an unprecedented fluid circumstance worldwide. The panic and fluctuations in the stock markets were unparalleled. It is inarguable that real-time availability of news and social media platforms like Twitter played a vital role in driving the investors’ sentiment during such global shock.

Purpose:The purpose of this thesis is to study how the investor sentiment in relation to COVID-19 pandemic influenced stock markets globally and how stock markets globally are integrated and contagious. We analyze COVID-19 sentiment through the Twitter posts and investigate its …

Long Distance Bluetooth Low Energy Exploitation On A Wireless Attack Platform, Stephanie L. Long

Theses and Dissertations

In the past decade, embedded technology, known as the Internet of Things, has expanded for many uses. The smart home infrastructure has drastically grown to include networked refrigerators, lighting systems, speakers, watches, and more. This increase in the use of wireless protocols provides a larger attack surface for cyber actors than ever before. Wireless loT traffic is susceptible for sniffing by an attacker. The attack platform skypie is upgraded to incorporate Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon collection for pattern-of-life data, as well as device characteristic enumeration and potential characteristic modification. This platform allows an attacker to mount the skypie to …

Infiniband Network Monitoring: Challenges And Possibilities, Kyle D. Hintze

Theses and Dissertations

Within the realm of High Performance Computing, the InfiniBand Architecture is among the leading interconnects used today. Capable of providing high bandwidth and low latency, InfiniBand is finding applications outside the High Performance Computing domain. One of these is critical infrastructure, encompassing almost all essential sectors as the work force becomes more connected. InfiniBand is not immune to security risks, as prior research has shown that common traffic analyzing tools cannot effectively monitor InfiniBand traffic transmitted between hosts, due to the kernel bypass nature of the IBA in conjunction with Remote Direct Memory Access operations. If Remote Direct Memory Access …

Enumerating And Locating Bluetooth Devices For Casualty Recovery In A First-Responder Environment, Justin M. Durham

Theses and Dissertations

It is difficult for first-responders to quickly locate casualties in an emergency environment such as an explosion or natural disaster. In order to provide another tool to locate individuals, this research attempts to identify and estimate the location of devices that would likely be located on or with a person. A variety of devices, such as phones, smartwatches, and Bluetooth-enabled locks, are tested in multiple environments and at various heights to determine the impact that placement and interference played in locating the devices. The hypothesis is that most Bluetooth devices can be successfully enumerated quickly, but cannot be accurately located …

Automated Network Exploitation Utilizing Bayesian Decision Networks, Graeme M. Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) is the process of using tactics and techniques to penetrate computer systems and networks in order to achieve desired effects. It is currently a manual process requiring significant experience and time that are in limited supply. This thesis presents the Automated Network Discovery and Exploitation System (ANDES) which demonstrates that it is feasible to automate the CNE process. The uniqueness of ANDES is the use of Bayesian decision networks to represent the CNE domain and subject matter expert knowledge. ANDES conducts multiple execution cycles, which build upon previous action results. Cycles begin by modeling the current …

Exploring Fog Of War Concepts In Wargame Scenarios, Dillon N. Tryhorn

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores fog of war concepts through three submitted journal articles. The Department of Defense and U.S. Air Force are attempting to analyze war scenarios to aid the decision-making process; fog modeling improves realism in these wargame scenarios. The first article "Navigating an Enemy Contested Area with a Parallel Search Algorithm" [1] investigates a parallel algorithm's speedup, compared to the sequential implementation, with varying map configurations in a tile-based wargame. The parallel speedup tends to exceed 50 but in certain situations. The sequential algorithm outperforms it depending on the configuration of enemy location and amount on the map. The …

Remote Monitoring Of Memory Data Structures For Malware Detection In A Talos Ii Architecture, Robert A. Willburn

Theses and Dissertations

New forms of malware, namely xC;leless malware and rootkits, pose a threat to traditional anti-malware. In particular, Rootkits have the capacity to obscure the present state of memory from the user space of a target machine. If thishappens, anti-malware running in the user space of an axB;ected machine cannot be trusted to operate properly. To combat this threat, this research proposes the remote monitoring of memory from a second, secure processor runningOpenBMC, serving as a baseboard management controller for a POWER9 processor, which is assumed vulnerable to exploitation. The baseboard management controller includes an application called pdbg, used for debugging …