Computer Sciences Commons^™

Steganography: Forensic, Security, And Legal Issues, Merrill Warkentin, Ernst Bekkering, Mark B. Schmidt

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Steganography has long been regarded as a tool used for illicit and destructive purposes such as crime and warfare. Currently, digital tools are widely available to ordinary computer users also. Steganography software allows both illicit and legitimate users to hide messages so that they will not be detected in transit. This article provides a brief history of steganography, discusses the current status in the computer age, and relates this to forensic, security, and legal issues. The paper concludes with recommendations for digital forensics investigators, IT staff, individual users, and other stakeholders.

Towards A Metric For The Assessment Of Safety Critical Control Systems, Oscar R. Gonzalez, Jorge R. Chavez-Fuentes, W. Steven Gray

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

There is a need for better integration of the fault tolerant and the control designs for safety critical systems such as aircraft. The dependability of current designs is assessed primarily with measures of the interconnection of fault tolerant components: the reliability function and the mean time to failure. These measures do not directly take into account the interaction of the fault tolerant components with the dynamics of the aircraft. In this paper, a first step to better integrate these designs is made. It is based on the observation that unstable systems are intrinsically unreliable and that a necessary condition for …

A Distributed Reconstruction Of Ekg Signals, Gabriel Cordova

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In this Thesis the parallel computing methodology is applied to an algorithm used in the reconstruction of electrocardiographic (EKG) measurements. The reconstructions are being performed to obtain a better understanding of the source and behavior of the electrical activity that generates the EKG measurements. The contribution of this Thesis is to identify and eliminate inefficiencies present in the current reconstruction algorithm. Additionally, this Thesis reduces the computation times of the EKG reconstruction by applying distributed computing through the use of Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). Lastly, it provides an analysis of the speed-up and efficiency of the distribution implemented using parallel …

Evolutionary Methodology For Optimization Of Image Transforms Subject To Quantization Noise, Michael Ray Peterson

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Lossy image compression algorithms sacrifice perfect imagereconstruction in favor of decreased storage requirements. Modelossy compression schemes, such as JPEG2000, rely upon the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to achieve high levels of compression while minimizing the loss of information for image reconstruction. Some compression applications require higher levels of compression than those achieved through application of the DWT and entropy coding. In such lossy systems, quantization provides high compression rates at the cost of increased distortion. Unfortunately, as the amount of quantization increases, the performance of the DWT for accurate image reconstruction deteriorates. Previous research demonstrates that a genetic algorithm can …

Evaluation Of An Image Processing Algorithm For Scene Change Detection, Daniel Flores

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Despite the efforts to reduce traffic accidents by government entities and automobile manufactures, the numbers of accidents are not considerably reduced. An evaluation of an algorithm based on the fly's eye is done on this research applying its principles to detect scene change on images for printed circuit boards providing initial steps to implement this algorithm on vehicular traffic to keep track of objects moving on the field for collision avoidance purposes. The effectiveness of the algorithm is addressed through a comparison of its performance with that found in experimental data.

Remote Forensics May Bring The Next Sea Change In E-Discovery: Are All Networked Computers Now Readily Accessible Under The Revised Federal Rules Of Civil Procedure?, Joseph J. Schwerha, Scott Inch

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The recent amendments to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure created a two-tiered approach to discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”). Responding parties must produce ESI that is relevant, not subject to privilege, and reasonably accessible. However, because some methods of storing ESI, such as on magnetic backup tapes and within enormous databases, require substantial cost to access and search their contents, the rules permit parties to designate those repositories as “not reasonably accessible” because of undue burden or cost. But even despite the difficulty in searching for ESI, the party’s duty to preserve potentially responsive evidence …

A Framework To Support Spatial, Temporal And Thematic Analytics Over Semantic Web Data, Matthew Steven Perry

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Spatial and temporal data are critical components in many applications. This is especially true in analytical applications ranging from scientific discovery to national security and criminal investigation. The analytical process often requires uncovering and analyzing complex thematic relationships between disparate people, places and events. Fundamentally new query operators based on the graph structure of Semantic Web data models, such as semantic associations, are proving useful for this purpose. However, these analysis mechanisms are primarily intended for thematic relationships. This dissertation proposes a framework built around the RDF data model for analysis of thematic, spatial and temporal relationships between named entities. …

Algorithmic Techniques Employed In The Isolation Of Codon Usage Biases In Prokaryotic Genomes, Douglas W. Raiford Iii

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

While genomic sequencing projects are an abundant source of information for biological studies ranging from the molecular to the ecological in scale, much of the information present may yet be hidden from casual analysis. One such information domain, trends in codon usage, can provide a wealth of information about an organism's genes and their expression. Degeneracy in the genetic code allows more than one triplet codon to code for the same amino acid, and usage of these codons is often biased such that one or more of these synonymous codons is preferred. Isolation of translational efficiency bias can have important …

Energy Efficient Image Video Sensor Networks, Paul Anthony Bender

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Image Video Sensor Networks are emerging applications for sensor network technologies. The relatively large size of the data collected by image video sensors presents new challenges for the sensor network in terms of energy consumption and channel capacity. We address each of these issues through the use of a high density network deployment utilizing some nodes as dedicated relay nodes.

A high density network allows network nodes to reduce their transmission power. This reduction in transmission power allows each node to conserve power and simultaneously increases the potential for spatially concurrent transmissions within the network, resulting in improved network throughputs. …

Biomedical Circuits And Systems Dedicated For Sensing And Neurostimulation: Case Study On Urinary Bladder Dysfunctions, Mohamad Sawan, Aguibou Ba, Faycal Mounaim, Jacques Corcos, Mostafa Elhilali

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper covers circuits and systems techniques for the construction of high reliability biosensing and neurostimulation smart medical devices. Such microsystems are dedicated for interconnections through the peripheral neural systems. Case study related to applications such as bladder control is discussed. Available electrical neurostimulation techniques for the rehabilitation of urinary bladder functions do not allow an adequate voiding due to dyssynergia between the bladder and the sphincter. A new implantable stimulator, built with commercially available electronic components, was designed to overcome these difficulties. The proposed system performs two types of stimulations: Selective Stimulation for bladder voiding and Permanent Stimulation to …

Pattern Synthesis With Uniform Circular Arrays For The Reduction Of Wcdma Intercell Interference, Mohammed Al-Husseini, Elias Yaacoub, Karim Y. Kabalan, Ali El-Hajj

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The deployment of advanced antenna arrays at the base stations of cellular systems is a key technique in reducing intercell interference, and thus increasing the number of served users. Uniform circular arrays (UCAs) provide 360 degrees of coverage, their patterns are steering-invariant and their sidelobe levels are controllable. This paper investigates the use of UCAs having specially synthesized patterns at the base stations of WCDMA cellular systems. The decrease in the ratio of intercell interference to intracell power resulting from the use of these arrays in a beam-steering scheme will be assessed, and the advantages and disadvantages of each pattern …

Distance Relaying Algorithm For Double-Circuit Transmission Line With Compensation For Reactance Effect Under Standard Availability Of Measurements, Jan Izykowski, Marcin Bozek

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper deals with non-pilot distance protection of a double-circuit transmission line. Negative impact of the reactance effect, appearing in measuring a fault loop impedance, on operation of the relay is discussed. An adaptive algorithm allowing one to prevent the relay from mis- or mal-operation caused by the reactance effect is introduced. The algorithm is designed for a standard availability of measurements from one end of the double-circuit line, i.e. when three-phase voltage and current from the faulted line circuit, and additionally zero-sequence current from the healthy line circuit, are provided as the relay input signals. The algorithm is based …

From Engineering Electromagnetics To Electromagnetic Engineering: Using Computational Electromagnetics For Synthesis Problems, Anton G. Tijhuis, Martijn C. Van Beurden, Bastiaan P. De Hon, Hubregt J. Visser

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a two-stage approach is proposed for using computational electromagnetics in antenna engineering. First, stochastic optimization techniques are used in combination with approximate models. Second, line-search techniques are combined with full-wave modeling. For the first stage, we show an illustrative example. The second stage is considered in detail; both the acceleration of the underlying field computations and the implementation of the optimization are discussed.

A Summary Of Recent Developments On Metamaterial-Based And Metamaterial-Inspired Efficient Electrically Small Antennas, Aycan Erentok, Richard W. Ziolkowski

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper summarizes our recent research efforts to realize efficient electrically small antenna (EESA) systems based on ideal analytical and numerical metamaterial-based antenna systems, and physically realized metamaterial-inspired antenna designs. Our theoretical and numerical studies of the radiation and resonance behaviors of the proposed metamaterial-based EESA systems, as well as our efforts to conceptualize structures which might be used to build them, have led to the discovery of several realizable metamaterial-inspired EESA systems. The measurement results confirm the numerical performance predictions.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Developing A Process Model For The Forensic Extraction Of Information From Desktop Search, Timothy Pavlic, Jill Slay, Benjamin Turnbull

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Desktop search applications can contain cached copies of files that were deleted from the file system. Forensic investigators see this as a potential source of evidence, as documents deleted by suspects may still exist in the cache. Whilst there have been attempts at recovering data collected by desktop search applications, there is no methodology governing the process, nor discussion on the most appropriate means to do so. This article seeks to address this issue by developing a process model that can be applied when developing an information extraction application for desktop search applications, discussing preferred methods and the limitations of …

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Guide To Computer Forensics And Investigations (3rd Ed.), Keyu Jiang, Ruifeng Xuan

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of Windows-Based Computer Forensics Application Software Running On A Macintosh, Gregory H. Carlton

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The two most common computer forensics applications perform exclusively on Microsoft Windows Operating Systems, yet contemporary computer forensics examinations frequently encounter one or more of the three most common operating system environments, namely Windows, OS-X, or some form of UNIX or Linux. Additionally, government and private computer forensics laboratories frequently encounter budget constraints that limit their access to computer hardware. Currently, Macintosh computer systems are marketed with the ability to accommodate these three common operating system environments, including Windows XP in native and virtual environments. We performed a series of experiments to measure the functionality and performance of the two …

Data Mining Techniques In Fraud Detection, Rekha Bhowmik

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The paper presents application of data mining techniques to fraud analysis. We present some classification and prediction data mining techniques which we consider important to handle fraud detection. There exist a number of data mining algorithms and we present statistics-based algorithm, decision treebased algorithm and rule-based algorithm. We present Bayesian classification model to detect fraud in automobile insurance. Naïve Bayesian visualization is selected to analyze and interpret the classifier predictions. We illustrate how ROC curves can be deployed for model assessment in order to provide a more intuitive analysis of the models.

Book Review: Challenges To Digital Forensic Evidence, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This issue presents the fifth Book Review column for the JDFSL. It is an experiment to broaden the services that the journal provides to readers, so we are anxious to get your reaction. Is the column useful and interesting? Should we include more than one review per issue? Should we also review products? Do you have suggested books/products for review and/or do you want to write a review? All of this type of feedback -- and more -- is appreciated. Please feel free to send comments to Gary Kessler ([email protected]) or Glenn S. Dardick ([email protected]).

Book Review: The Dotcrime Manifesto: How To Stop Internet Crime, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

The 2007 Analysis Of Information Remaining On Disks Offered For Sale On The Second Hand Market, Andy Jones, Craig Valli, Glenn S. Dardick, Iain Sutherland

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

All organisations, whether in the public or private sector, increasingly use computers and other devices that contain computer hard disks for the storage and processing of information relating to their business, their employees or their customers. Individual home users also increasingly use computers and other devices containing computer hard disks for the storage and processing of information relating to their private, personal affairs. It continues to be clear that the majority of organisations and individual home users still remain ignorant or misinformed of the volume and type of information that is stored on the hard disks that these devices contain …

To License Or Not To License: An Examination Of State Statutes Regarding Private Investigators And Digital Examiners, Thomas Lonardo, Doug White, Alan Rea

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In this paper the authors examine statutes that regulate, license, and enforce investigative functions in each US state. After identification and review of Private Investigator licensing requirements, the authors find that very few state statutes explicitly differentiate between Private Investigators and Digital Examiners. After contacting all state agencies the authors present a distinct grouping organizing state approaches to professional Digital Examiner licensing. The authors conclude that states must differentiate between Private Investigator and Digital Examiner licensing requirements and oversight.

The Forensics Aspects Of Event Data Recorders, Jeremy S. Daily, Nathan Singleton, Elizabeth Downing, Gavin W. Manes

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

The proper generation and preservation of digital data from Event Data Recorders (EDRs) can provide invaluable evidence to automobile crash reconstruction investigations. However, data collected from the EDR can be difficult to use and authenticate, complicating the presentation of such information as evidence in legal proceedings. Indeed, current techniques for removing and preserving such data do not meet the court’s standards for electronic evidence. Experimentation with an EDR unit from a 2001 GMC Sierra pickup truck highlighted particular issues with repeatability of results. Fortunately, advances in the digital forensics field and memory technology can be applied to EDR analysis in …

Data Security Measures In The It Service Industry: A Balance Between Knowledge & Action, N. Mlitwa, Y. Kachala

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

That “knowledge is power” is fast becoming a cliché within the intelligentsia. Such power however, depends largely on how knowledge itself is exchanged and used, which says a lot about the tools of its transmission, exchange, and storage. Information and communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in this respect. As a networked tool, it enables efficient exchanges of video, audio and text data beyond geographical and time constraints. Since this data is exchanged over the worldwide web (www), it can be accessible by anyone in the world using the internet. The risk of unauthorised access, interception, modification, or even …

Book Review: Mac Os X, Ipod, And Iphone Forensic Analysis Dvd Toolkit, Gary C. Kessler

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Apple's hold on the personal computer marketplace started dwindling on August 12, 1981, the day that the IBM PC was introduced. As an Apple ][+ bigot myself, I refused to touch a PC for some years. But I was also a command line bigot, so when the first Macintosh was introduced in 1983 and hermetically sealed the operating system from users, I did not go out and buy one. In fact, like many of my era, I did eventually end up on the PC side which, ironically, let me do many of the things that my trusty Apple ][+ had …

Nonlinear Random Response Of Large-Scale Sparse Finite Element Plate Bending Problems, Swati Chokshi

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Acoustic fatigue is one of the major design considerations for skin panels exposed to high levels of random pressure at subsonic/supersonic/hypersonic speeds. The nonlinear large deflection random response of the single-bay panels aerospace structures subjected to random excitations at various sound pressure levels (SPLs) is investigated. The nonlinear responses of plate analyses are limited to determine the root-mean-square displacement under uniformly distributed pressure random loads. Efficient computational technologies like sparse storage schemes and parallel computation are proposed and incorporated to solve large-scale, nonlinear large deflection random vibration problems for both types of loading cases: (1) synchronized in time and (2) …

Rapid Prototyping For Virtual Environments, Emre Baydogan

Electrical & Computer Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Development of Virtual Environment (VE) applications is challenging where application developers are required to have expertise in the target VE technologies along with the problem domain expertise. New VE technologies impose a significant learning curve to even the most experienced VE developer. The proposed solution relies on synthesis to automate the migration of a VE application to a new unfamiliar VE platform/technology. To solve the problem, the Common Scene Definition Framework (CSDF) is developed, that serves as a superset/model representation of the target virtual world. Input modules are developed to populate the framework with the capabilities of the virtual world …

Generalized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman Formulation-Based Neural Network Control Of Affine Nonlinear Discrete-Time Systems, Zheng Chen, Jagannathan Sarangapani

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we consider the use of nonlinear networks towards obtaining nearly optimal solutions to the control of nonlinear discrete-time (DT) systems. The method is based on least squares successive approximation solution of the generalized Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (GHJB) equation which appears in optimization problems. Successive approximation using the GHJB has not been applied for nonlinear DT systems. The proposed recursive method solves the GHJB equation in DT on a well-defined region of attraction. The definition of GHJB, pre-Hamiltonian function, HJB equation, and method of updating the control function for the affine nonlinear DT systems under small perturbation assumption are proposed. …