Computer Sciences Commons^™

Adaptive Security-Aware Scheduling For Packet Switched Networks Using Real-Time Multi-Agent Systems, Ma'en Saleh Saleh

Dissertations

Conventional real-time scheduling algorithms are in care of timing constraints; they don’t pay any attention to enhance or optimize the real-time packet’s security performance. In this work, we propose an adaptive security-aware scheduling with congestion control mechanism for packet switching networks using real-time agentbased systems. The proposed system combines the functionality of real-time scheduling with the security service enhancement, where the real-time scheduling unit uses the differentiated-earliest-deadline-first (Diff-EDF) scheduler, while the security service enhancement scheme adopts a congestion control mechanism based on a resource estimation methodology.

The security service enhancement unit was designed based on two models: singlelayer and weighted …

Ifalcon: A Neural Architecture For Hierarchical Planning, Budhitama Subagdja, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hierarchical planning is an approach of planning by composing and executing hierarchically arranged predefined plans on the fly to solve some problems. This approach commonly relies on a domain expert providing all semantic and structural knowledge. One challenge is how the system deals with incomplete ill-defined knowledge while the solution can be achieved on the fly. Most symbolic-based hierarchical planners have been devised to allow the knowledge to be described expressively. However, in some cases, it is still difficult to produce the appropriate knowledge due to the complexity of the problem domain especially if the missing knowledge must be acquired …

Stochastic Dominance In Stochastic Dcops For Risk-Sensitive Applications, Nguyen Duc Thien, William Yeoh, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Distributed constraint optimization problems (DCOPs) are well-suited for modeling multi-agent coordination problems where the primary interactions are between local subsets of agents. However, one limitation of DCOPs is the assumption that the constraint rewards are without uncertainty. Researchers have thus extended DCOPs to Stochastic DCOPs (SDCOPs), where rewards are sampled from known probability distribution reward functions, and introduced algorithms to find solutions with the largest expected reward. Unfortunately, such a solution might be very risky, that is, very likely to result in a poor reward. Thus, in this paper, we make three contributions: (1) we propose a stricter objective for …

Delayed Observation Planning In Partially Observable Domains, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Janusz Marecki

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Traditional models for planning under uncertainty such as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) or Partially Observable MDPs (POMDPs) assume that the observations about the results of agent actions are instantly available to the agent. In so doing, they are no longer applicable to domains where observations are received with delays caused by temporary unavailability of information (e.g. delayed response of the market to a new product). To that end, we make the following key contributions towards solving Delayed observation POMDPs (D-POMDPs): (i) We first provide an parameterized approximate algorithm for solving D-POMDPs efficiently, with desired accuracy; and (ii) We then propose …

Prioritized Shaping Of Models For Solving Dec-Pomdps, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, William Yeoh, Prasanna Velagapudi, Paul Scerri

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

An interesting class of multi-agent POMDP planning problems can be solved by having agents iteratively solve individual POMDPs, find interactions with other individual plans, shape their transition and reward functions to encourage good interactions and discourage bad ones and then recompute a new plan. D-TREMOR showed that this approach can allow distributed planning for hundreds of agents. However, the quality and speed of the planning process depends on the prioritization scheme used. Lower priority agents shape their models with respect to the models of higher priority agents. In this paper, we introduce a new prioritization scheme that is guaranteed to …

Cuda Web Api Remote Execution Of Cuda Kernels Using Web Services, Massimo J. Becker

Master's Theses

Massively parallel programming is an increasingly growing field with the recent introduction of general purpose GPU computing. Modern graphics processors from NVIDIA and AMD have massively parallel architectures that can be used for such applications as 3D rendering, financial analysis, physics simulations, and biomedical analysis. These massively parallel systems are exposed to programmers through in- terfaces such as NVIDIAs CUDA, OpenCL, and Microsofts C++ AMP. These frame- works expose functionality using primarily either C or C++. In order to use these massively parallel frameworks, programs being implemented must be run on machines equipped with massively parallel hardware. These requirements limit …

Digital Evidence Education In Schools Of Law, Aaron Alva, Barbara Endicott-Popovsky

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

An examination of State of Connecticut v. Julie Amero provides insight into how a general lack of understanding of digital evidence can cause an innocent defendant to be wrongfully convicted. By contrast, the 101-page opinion in Lorraine v. Markel American Insurance Co. provides legal precedence and a detailed consideration for the admission of digital evidence. An analysis of both cases leads the authors to recommend additions to Law School curricula designed to raise the awareness of the legal community to ensure such travesties of justice, as in the Amero case, don’t occur in the future. Work underway at the University …

A Case Study Of The Challenges Of Cyber Forensics Analysis Of Digital Evidence In A Child Pornography Trial, Richard Boddington

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Perfunctory case analysis, lack of evidence validation, and an inability or unwillingness to present understandable analysis reports adversely affect the outcome course of legal trials reliant on digital evidence. These issues have serious consequences for defendants facing heavy penalties or imprisonment yet expect their defence counsel to have clear understanding of the evidence. Poorly reasoned, validated and presented digital evidence can result in conviction of the innocent as well as acquittal of the guilty. A possession of child pornography Case Study highlights the issues that appear to plague case analysis and presentation of digital evidence relied on in these odious …

After Five Years Of E-Discovery Missteps: Sanctions Or Safe Harbor?, Milton Luoma, Vicki Luoma

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In 2003 the Zubulake case became the catalyst of change in the world of e-discovery. In that case Judge Shira Scheindlin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York set guidelines for e-discovery that served as the basis for amending the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) in December 2006. The amendments incorporated a number of concepts that were described by Judge Scheindlin in the Zubulake case. ( Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC, 2003) Since the Zubulake case and the FRCP amendments, numerous cases have interpreted these rules changes, but one of the main points …

Multi-Parameter Sensitivity Analysis Of A Bayesian Network From A Digital Forensic Investigation, Richard E. Overill, Echo P. Zhang, Kam-Pui Chow

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

A multi-parameter sensitivity analysis of a Bayesian network (BN) used in the digital forensic investigation of the Yahoo! email case has been performed using the principle of ‘steepest gradient’ in the parameter space of the conditional probabilities. This procedure delivers a more reliable result for the dependence of the posterior probability of the BN on the values used to populate the conditional probability tables (CPTs) of the BN. As such, this work extends our previous studies using singleparameter sensitivity analyses of BNs, with the overall aim of more deeply understanding the indicative use of BNs within the digital forensic and …

Facilitating Forensics In The Mobile Millennium Through Proactive Enterprise Security, Andrew R. Scholnick

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This work explores the impact of the emerging mobile communication device paradigm on the security-conscious enterprise, with regard to providing insights for proactive Information Assurance and facilitation of eventual Forensic analysis. Attention is given to technology evolution in the areas of best practices, attack vectors, software and hardware performance, access and activity monitoring, and architectural models.

Keywords: Forensics, enterprise security, mobile communication, best practices, attack vectors.

Cloud Forensics Investigation: Tracing Infringing Sharing Of Copyrighted Content In Cloud, Yi-Jun He, Echo P. Zhang, Lucas C.K. Hui, Siu Ming Yiu, K.P. Chow

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Cloud Computing is becoming a significant technology trend nowadays, but its abrupt rise also creates a brand new front for cybercrime investigation with various challenges. One of the challenges is to track down infringing sharing of copyrighted content in cloud. To solve this problem, we study a typical type of content sharing technologies in cloud computing, analyze the challenges that the new technologies bring to forensics, formalize a procedure to get digital evidences and obtain analytical results based on the evidences to track down illegal uploader. Furthermore, we propose a reasoning model based on the probability distribution in a Bayesian …

Ipad2 Logical Acquisition: Automated Or Manual Examination?, Somaya Ali, Sumaya Alhosani, Farah Alzarooni, Ibrahim Baggili

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Due to their usage increase worldwide, iPads are on the path of becoming key sources of digital evidence in criminal investigations. This research investigated the logical backup acquisition and examination of the iPad2 device using the Apple iTunes backup utility while manually examining the backup data (manual examination) and automatically parsing the backup data (Lantern software - automated examination). The results indicate that a manual examination of the logical backup structure from iTunes reveals more digital evidence, especially if installed application data is required for an investigation. However, the researchers note that if a quick triage is needed of an …

A Fuzzy Hashing Approach Based On Random Sequences And Hamming Distance, Frank Breitinger, Harald Baier

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Hash functions are well-known methods in computer science to map arbitrary large input to bit strings of a fixed length that serve as unique input identifier/fingerprints. A key property of cryptographic hash functions is that even if only one bit of the input is changed the output behaves pseudo randomly and therefore similar files cannot be identified. However, in the area of computer forensics it is also necessary to find similar files (e.g. different versions of a file), wherefore we need a similarity preserving hash function also called fuzzy hash function. In this paper we present a new approach for …

The Xbox 360 And Steganography: How Criminals And Terrorists Could Be "Going Dark", Ashley Podhradsky, Rob D’Ovidio, Cindy Casey

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Video game consoles have evolved from single-player embedded systems with rudimentary processing and graphics capabilities to multipurpose devices that provide users with parallel functionality to contemporary desktop and laptop computers. Besides offering video games with rich graphics and multiuser network play, today's gaming consoles give users the ability to communicate via email, video and text chat; transfer pictures, videos, and file;, and surf the World-Wide-Web. These communication capabilities have, unfortunately, been exploited by people to plan and commit a variety of criminal activities. In an attempt to cover the digital tracks of these unlawful undertakings, anti-forensic techniques, such as steganography, …

Double-Compressed Jpeg Detection In A Steganalysis System, Jennifer L. Davidson, Pooja Parajape

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The detection of hidden messages in JPEG images is a growing concern. Current detection of JPEG stego images must include detection of double compression: a JPEG image is double compressed if it has been compressed with one quality factor, uncompressed, and then re-compressed with a different quality factor. When detection of double compression is not included, erroneous detection rates are very high. The main contribution of this paper is to present an efficient double-compression detection algorithm that has relatively lower dimensionality of features and relatively lower computational time for the detection part, than current comparative classifiers. We use a model-based …

Toward Alignment Between Communities Of Practice And Knowledge-Based Decision Support, Jason Nichols, David Biros, Mark Weiser

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The National Repository of Digital Forensics Information (NRDFI) is a knowledge repository for law enforcement digital forensics investigators (LEDFI). Over six years, the NRDFI has undertaken significant design revisions in order to more closely align the architecture of the system with theory addressing motivation to share knowledge and communication within ego-centric groups and communities of practice. These revisions have been met with minimal change in usage patterns by LEDFI community members, calling into question the applicability of relevant theory when the domain for knowledge sharing activities expands beyond the confines of an individual organization to a community of practice. When …

A Proposal For Incorporating Programming Blunder As Important Evidence In Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison Test, P. Vinod Bhattathiripad

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper investigates an unexplored concept in Cyber Forensics, namely, a Programming Blunder. Programming Blunder is identified as a variable or a code segment or a field in a database table, which is hardly used or executed in the context of the application or the user’s functionality. Blunder genes can be found in many parts of any program. It is the contention of this paper that this phenomenon of blunders needs to be studied systematically from its very genetic origins to their surface realizations in contrast to bugs and flaws, especially in view of their importance in software copyright infringement …

Update On The State Of The Science Of Digital Evidence Examination, Fred Cohen

Annual ADFSL Conference on Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This paper updates previous work on the level of consensus in foundational elements of digital evidence examination. Significant consensus is found present only after definitions are made explicit, suggesting that, while there is a scientific agreement around some of the basic notions identified, the use of a common language is lacking.

Keywords: Digital forensics examination, terminology, scientific methodology, testability, validation, classification, scientific consensus

A Scalable Inline Cluster Deduplication Framework For Big Data Protection, Yinjin Fu, Hong Jiang, Nong Xiao

School of Computing: Technical Reports

Cluster deduplication has become a widely deployed technology in data protection services for Big Data to satisfy the requirements of service level agreement (SLA). However, it remains a great challenge for cluster deduplica- tion to strike a sensible tradeoff between the conflicting goals of scalable dedu- plication throughput and high duplicate elimination ratio in cluster systems with low-end individual secondary storage nodes. We propose Σ-Dedupe, a scalable inline cluster deduplication framework, as a middleware deployable in cloud da- ta centers, to meet this challenge by exploiting data similarity and locality to op- timize cluster deduplication in inter-node and intra-node scenarios, …

The Interacting Multiple Models Algorithm With State-Dependent Value Assignment, Rastin Rastgoufard

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The value of a state is a measure of its worth, so that, for example, waypoints have high value and regions inside of obstacles have very small value. We propose two methods of incorporating world information as state-dependent modifications to the interacting multiple models (IMM) algorithm, and then we use a game's player-controlled trajectories as ground truths to compare the normal IMM algorithm to versions with our proposed modifications. The two methods involve modifying the model probabilities in the update step and modifying the transition probability matrix in the mixing step based on the assigned values of different target states. …

An Enhanced Self-Adaptive Mapreduce Scheduling Algorithm, Xiaoyu Sun

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

MapReduce is a framework for processing huge amounts of data in a distributed environment and Hadoop is Apache’s open source implementation of MapReduce, which is widely used. However, Hadoop’s performance is currently limited by its default task scheduler, which assumes that cluster nodes are homogeneous when estimating the task progress and choosing slow tasks for re-execution. In practice, the homogeneity assumption does not always hold. Longest Approximate Time to End (LATE) is a scheduling algorithm that takes heterogeneity into account. It, however, still depends on a static method to estimate the task execution time. As a result, neither Hadoop default …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2012, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Senior Design Experience

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the Senior Design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. Working in teams, the senior design project encourages students to use everything learned in the engineering and computer design programs to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

Beyond the classroom...

Because of the requirement to work in teams, students also build good communication skills, presentation skills and even business writing skills. They also have to source …

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Spring 2018, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge. The senior design competition helps focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects on …

A Multi-Modal Sensing And Communication Platform For Continental-Scale Migratory Bird Tracking, David J. Anthony

Department of Computer Electronics and Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis presents a novel platform for tracking migratory birds on a continental scale. Cellular technology is used to augment the short-range radios that have traditionally been used in wireless sensor networks. The platform utilizes multiple sensors, including a GPS and solid state compass. By using these sensors, the platform is capable of not only tracking a bird’s migration path, but also provides information on a bird’s behavior during its life-cycle. Testing methodology utilizing simulations and aspect-oriented programming is used to reveal faults in the platform prior to deployment on wild animals. In collaboration with the International Crane Foundation, and …

Probabilistic Qos Analysis In Wireless Sensor Networks, Yunbo Wang

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Emerging applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) require real-time quality of service (QoS) guarantees to be provided by the network. Traditional analysis work only focuses on the first-order statistics, such as the mean and the variance of the QoS performance. However, due to unique characteristics of WSNs, a cross-layer probabilistic analysis of QoS performance is essential. In this dissertation, a comprehensive cross-layer probabilistic analysis framework is developed to investigate the probabilistic evaluation and optimization of QoS performance provided by WSNs. In this framework, the distributions of QoS performance metrics are derived, which are natural tools to discover the probabilities to …

Perceptions Measurement Of Professional Certifications To Augment Buffalo State College Baccalaureate Technology Programs, As A Representative American Postsecondary Educational Institution, Christopher N. Brown

Industrial Technology Theses

The purpose of this study was to assess, measure, and analyze whether voluntary, nationally-recognized professional certification credentials were important to augment technology programs at Buffalo State College (BSC), as a representative postsecondary baccalaureate degree-granting institution offering technology curricula. Six BSC undergraduate technology programs were evaluated within the scope of this study: 1.) Computer Information Systems; 2.) Electrical Engineering, Electronics; 3.) Electrical Engineering, Smart Grid; 4.) Industrial Technology; 5.) Mechanical Engineering; and 6.) Technology Education. This study considered the following three aspects of the problem: a.) postsecondary technology program enrollment and graduation trends; b.) the value/awareness of professional certifications to employers …

Extending The Hybridthread Smp Model For Distributed Memory Systems, Eugene Anthony Cartwright Iii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Memory Hierarchy is of growing importance in system design today. As Moore's Law allows system designers to include more processors within their designs, data locality becomes a priority. Traditional multiprocessor systems on chip (MPSoC) experience difficulty scaling as the quantity of processors increases. This challenge is common behavior of memory accesses in a shared memory environment and causes a decrease in memory bandwidth as processor numbers increase. In order to provide the necessary levels of scalability, the computer architecture community has sought to decentralize memory accesses by distributing memory throughout the system. Distributed memory offers greater bandwidth due to decoupled …

Spatial Queries In Wireless Broadcast Environments [Keynote Speech], Kyriakos Mouratidis

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Wireless data broadcasting is a promising technique for information dissemination that exploits the computational capabilities of mobile devices, in order to enhance the scalability of the system. Under this environment, the data are continuously broadcast by the server, interleaved with some indexing information for query processing. Clients may tune in the broadcast channel and process their queries locally without contacting the server. In this paper we focus on spatial queries in particular. First, we review existing methods on this topic. Next, taking shortest path computation as an example, we showcase technical challenges arising in this processing model and describe techniques …

Cogtool-Helper: Leveraging Gui Functional Testing Tools To Generate Predictive Human Performance Models, Amanda Swearngin

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Numerous tools and techniques for human performance modeling have been introduced in the field of human-computer interaction. With such tools comes the ability to model legacy applications. Models can be used to compare design ideas to existing applications, or to evaluate products against those of competitors. One such mod- eling tool, CogTool, allows user interface designers and analysts to mock up design ideas, demonstrate tasks, and obtain human performance predictions for those tasks. This is one step towards a simple and complete analysis process, but it still requires a large amount of manual work. Graphical user interface (GUI) testing tools …