Computer Sciences Commons^™

Maine It Workforce Skills Management : A Study For The Maine State Department Of Labor, David F. Bantz Phd, C. Daniel Paradis, Glenn Wilson

Faculty Publications

Executive Summary:

From August 2010 to February 2011 personnel from Information and Innovation at the University of Southern Maine have conducted a study of IT skills needed, possessed and taught in Maine. The goals of this study were to provide fine-grained information to the Maine state Department of Labor to facilitate their workforce development activities.

This study concerns the skills sought after by employers, possessed by unemployed and employed workers and taught in education and training establishments with a "bricks and mortar" presence in Maine. It relied on data created by third parties and by study personnel. Anecdotal evidence was …

Back Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Masthead

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Mandated Government Regulations In Healthcare: Is Healthcare It Overregulated? A Post Mandate Study, Mark Albright

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Over the past decade, healthcare organizations have been subjected to many federally mandated statutes to comply with. Three of the biggest statutes over the last decade are the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Red Flag Rules, and the Health Information Technology for Clinical Health (HITECH). These mandates deal directly with the security of electronic patient information. To date, many entities have provided estimations of cost of compliance. Some have provided quantitative models to calculate the return of IT investments. Very few have attempted to look retrospectively and determine the level of and barriers to compliance. This quantitative …

Voice Commands To Control Recording Sessions, J. Marty Goddard

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science - Technical Reports

In this report, the music recording workflow is described, with support for voice commands. Natural command grammars are proposed, allowing the user to name items, and issue commands on items identified by name. Recognition accuracy is examined within the contexts of single-phrase commands, and of versatile command grammars which enable the referring to items by name.

Propeller: A Scalable Metadata Organization For A Versatile Searchable File System, Lei Xu, Hong Jiang, Xue Liu, Lei Tian, Yu Hua, Jian Hu

School of Computing: Technical Reports

The exponentially increasing amount of data in file systems has made it increasingly important for users, administrators and applications to be able to fast retrieve files using file-search services, instead of replying on the standard file system API to traverse the hierarchical namespaces.  The quality of the file-search services  is significantly affected by the file-indexing overhead, the file-search performance and the accuracy of search results.  Unfortunately, the existing file-search solutions either are so poorly scalable that their performance degrades unacceptably when the systems scale up, or incur so much crawling delays that they produce acceptably inaccurate results.  We believe that …

K-Out-Of-N Oblivious Transfer Based On Homomorphic Encryption And Solvability Of Linear Equations, Mummoorthy Murugesan, Wei Jiang, Ahmet Erhan Nergiz, Serkan Uzunbaz

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Oblivious Transfer (OT) is an important cryptographic tool, which has found its usage in many crypto protocols, such as Secure Multiparty Computations, Certified E-mail and Simultaneous Contract Signing. in this paper, we propose three k-out-of-n OT (OTkn) protocols based on additive homomorphic encryption. Two of these protocols prohibit malicious behaviors from a receiver. We also achieve efficient communication complexity bounded by O(l·n) in bits, where l is the size of the encryption key. the computational complexity is comparable to the most efficient existing protocols. Due to the semantic security property, the sender cannot get receiver's selection. When the receiver tries …

Targeting Fpga-Based Processors For An Implementation-Driven Compiler Construction Course, D. Brian Larkins, William M. Jones

Computing Sciences

This paper describes the adaptation of a modern compiler construction course to target an FPGA-based hardware platform used throughout our computer science curriculum. One of the significant challenges in teaching using modern hardware platforms is the inordinate complexity of commonly used systems. To avoid this, many compiler courses target a less complex platform implemented via a simulator or a higher-level virtual or abstract hardware platform. To avoid the complexity of a modern superscalar multicore architecture and to improve the kinesthetic experience of students implementing the course compiler, we have provided a framework and runtime support for using an FPGA-based RISC …

Integrating Digital Logic Design And Assembly Programming Using Fpgas In The Classroom, William M. Jones, D. Brian Larkins

Computing Sciences

Rising Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) market volumes combined with increasing industrial popularity have driven prices down and improved capability to the point that FPGA hardware and development environments afford academia the unique opportunity to embrace this technology not only in specialized graduate-level courses, but also across many of the courses of a traditional undergraduate computer science curriculum.

We have begun adapting several of our undergraduate computer science courses and associated laboratories to make use of FPGAs as a common platform of instruction. In this paper, we illustrate how to make use of FPGAs in courses that cover digital logic …

Finding Good Paths: Applications Of Least Cost Caloric Path Computations, Zoë J. Wood, Greg Hoffman, Mark Wazny

Computer Science and Software Engineering

As you walk around during your daily life, you commonly make path finding decisions based on the world around you. For example, when you are walking in the outdoors, you take the path of least resistance over a terrain. We present two applications which demonstrate the importance of using the least cost caloric cost path computation in two different domain settings. One application uses the popular Google Earth API to explore the use of least cost caloric path computations to create an interactive path-finding tool. The second tool uses least cost caloric path computations to enhance crowd simulations in the …

Identifying And Implementing The Underlying Operators For Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Based Metabolomics Data Analysis, Ashwin Manjunatha, Ajith H. Ranabahu, Paul E. Anderson, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

The science of metabolomics is a relatively young field that requires intensive signal processing and multivariate data analysis for interpretation of experimental results. The lack of integration and standardization for metabolomics compounded by the complexity of the experimental data has lead to a fragmented research community. While efforts have been undertaken to approach these problems, the efforts to develop a set of standards for reporting processing and analysis procedures has stalled.

In this paper, we propose a set of fundamental operators for nuclear magnetic resonance(NMR) based metabolomics. These operators are implementation independent, and can be used to easily and precisely …

Catch, Clean, And Release: A Survey Of Obstacles And Opportunities For Network Trace Sanitization, Keren Tan, Jihwang Yeo, Michael E. Locasto, David Kotz

Dartmouth Scholarship

Network researchers benefit tremendously from access to traces of production networks, and several repositories of such network traces exist. By their very nature, these traces capture sensitive business and personal activity. Furthermore, network traces contain significant operational information about the target network, such as its structure, identity of the network provider, or addresses of important servers. To protect private or proprietary information, researchers must “sanitize” a trace before sharing it. \par In this chapter, we survey the growing body of research that addresses the risks, methods, and evaluation of network trace sanitization. Research on the risks of network trace sanitization …

Georgia Knowledge Repository: Potential For The State, Marlee Givens

Giving Undergraduate Research a Worldwide Voice: Institutional Repositories as Publishers

A presentation on the Georgia Knowledge Repository, a search engine of Georgia-based institutional repositories.

More information at http://www.library.gatech.edu/gkr/

Underfunded And Understaffed: A Ground-Level View Of Ir Creation In Difficult Times, John Davison

Giving Undergraduate Research a Worldwide Voice: Institutional Repositories as Publishers

A discussion of the creation of OhioLINK, the institutional repository system for the Ohio University system.

More information at http://drc.ohiolink.edu/

Easy To Find: Creating Query-Based Multi-Document Summaries To Enhance Web Search, Rani Majed Qumsiyeh

Theses and Dissertations

Current web search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, rank the set of documents S retrieved in response to a user query Q and display each document with a title and a snippet, which serves as an abstract of the corresponding document in S. Snippets, however, are not as useful as they are designed for, i.e., to assist search engine users to quickly identify results of interest, if they exist, without browsing through the documents in S, since they (i) often include very similar information and (ii) do not capture the main content of the corresponding documents. …

Intermediate Representations For Controllers In Chip Generators, Kyle Kelley, Megan Wachs, Andrew Danowitz, Pete Stevenson, Stephen Richardon, Mark Horowitz

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Creating parameterized “chip generators” has been proposed as one way to decrease chip NRE costs. While many approaches are available for creating or generating flexible data path elements, the design of flexible controllers is more problematic. The most common approach is to create a microcoded engine as the controller, which offers flexibility through programmable table-based lookup functions. This paper shows that after “programming” the hardware for the desired application, or applications, these flexible controller designs can be easily converted to efficient fixed (or less programmable) solutions using partial evaluation capabilities that are already present in most synthesis tools.

A Multi Agent System For Flow-Based Intrusion Detection Using Reputation And Evolutionary Computation, David Hancock

Theses and Dissertations

The rising sophistication of cyber threats as well as the improvement of physical computer network properties present increasing challenges to contemporary Intrusion Detection (ID) techniques. To respond to these challenges, a multi agent system (MAS) coupled with flow-based ID techniques may effectively complement traditional ID systems. This paper develops: 1) a scalable software architecture for a new, self-organized, multi agent, flow-based ID system; and 2) a network simulation environment suitable for evaluating implementations of this MAS architecture and for other research purposes. Self-organization is achieved via 1) a reputation system that influences agent mobility in the search for effective vantage …

Malicious And Malfunctioning Node Detection Via Observed Physical Layer Data, Tyler J. Hardy

Theses and Dissertations

There are many mechanisms that can cause inadequate or unreliable information in sensor networks. A user of the network might be interested in detecting and classifying specific sensors nodes causing these problems. Several network layer based trust methods have been developed in previous research to assess these issues; in contrast this work develops a trust protocol based on observations of physical layer data collected by the sensors. Observations of physical layer data are used for decisions and calculations, and are based on just the measurements collected by the sensors. Although this information is packaged and distributed on the network layer, …

Holistic Network Defense: Fusing Host And Network Features For Attack Classification, Jenny W. Ji

Theses and Dissertations

This work presents a hybrid network-host monitoring strategy, which fuses data from both the network and the host to recognize malware infections. This work focuses on three categories: Normal, Scanning, and Infected. The network-host sensor fusion is accomplished by extracting 248 features from network traffic using the Fullstats Network Feature generator and from the host using text mining, looking at the frequency of the 500 most common strings and analyzing them as word vectors. Improvements to detection performance are made by synergistically fusing network features obtained from IP packet flows and host features, obtained from text mining port, processor, logon …

An Architecture For Improving Timeliness And Relevance Of Cyber Incident Notifications, James L. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes a communications architecture to deliver timely and relevant cyber incident notifications to dependent mission stakeholders. This architecture, modeled in Unified Modeling Language (UML), eschews the traditional method of pushing notifications via message as dictated in Air Force Instruction 33-138. It instead shifts to a pull or publish and subscribe method of making notifications. Shifting this paradigm improves the notification process by empowering mission owners to identify those resources on which they depend for mission accomplishment, provides a direct conduit between providing and dependent mission owners for notifications when an incident occurs, and provides a shared representation for …

Evaluating Information Assurance Control Effectiveness On An Air Force Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (Scada) System, Jason R. Nielsen

Theses and Dissertations

Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are increasingly being connected to corporate networks which has dramatically expanded their attack surface to remote cyber attack. Adversaries are targeting these systems with increasing frequency and sophistication. This thesis seeks to answer the research question addressing which Information Assurance (IA) controls are most significant for network defenders and SCADA system managers/operators to focus on in order to increase the security of critical infrastructure systems against a Stuxnet-like cyber attack. This research applies the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) IA controls to an attack tree modeled on a remote Stuxnet-like cyber …

Defensive Cyber Battle Damage Assessment Through Attack Methodology Modeling, Ryan T. Ostler

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the growing sophisticated capabilities of advanced persistent cyber threats, it is necessary to understand and accurately assess cyber attack damage to digital assets. This thesis proposes a Defensive Cyber Battle Damage Assessment (DCBDA) process which utilizes the comprehensive understanding of all possible cyber attack methodologies captured in a Cyber Attack Methodology Exhaustive List (CAMEL). This research proposes CAMEL to provide detailed knowledge of cyber attack actions, methods, capabilities, forensic evidence and evidence collection methods. This product is modeled as an attack tree called the Cyber Attack Methodology Attack Tree (CAMAT). The proposed DCBDA process uses CAMAT to analyze …

Android Protection System: A Signed Code Security Mechanism For Smartphone Applications, Jonathan D. Stueckle

Theses and Dissertations

This research develops the Android Protection System (APS), a hardware-implemented application security mechanism on Android smartphones. APS uses a hash-based white-list approach to protect mobile devices from unapproved application execution. Functional testing confirms this implementation allows approved content to execute on the mobile device while blocking unapproved content. Performance benchmarking shows system overhead during application installation increases linearly as the application package size increases. APS presents no noticeable performance degradation during application execution. The security mechanism degrades system performance only during application installation, when users expect delay. APS is implemented within the default Android application installation process. Applications are hashed …

Spear Phishing Attack Detection, David T. Merritt

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses the problem of identifying email spear phishing attacks, which are indicative of cyber espionage. Spear phishing consists of targeted emails sent to entice a victim to open a malicious file attachment or click on a malicious link that leads to a compromise of their computer. Current detection methods fail to detect emails of this kind consistently. The SPEar phishing Attack Detection system (SPEAD) is developed to analyze all incoming emails on a network for the presence of spear phishing attacks. SPEAD analyzes the following file types: Windows Portable Executable and Common Object File Format (PE/COFF), Adobe Reader, …

Software And Critical Technology Protection Against Side Channel Analysis Through Dynamic Hardware Obfuscation, John R. Bochert

Theses and Dissertations

Side Channel Analysis (SCA) is a method by which an adversary can gather information about a processor by examining the activity being done on a microchip though the environment surrounding the chip. Side Channel Analysis attacks use SCA to attack a microcontroller when it is processing cryptographic code, and can allow an attacker to gain secret information, like a crypto-algorithm's key. The purpose of this thesis is to test proposed dynamic hardware methods to increase the hardware security of a microprocessor such that the software code being run on the microprocessor can be made more secure without having to change …

Kernelized Locality-Sensitive Hashing For Fast Image Landmark Association, Mark A. Weems

Theses and Dissertations

As the concept of war has evolved, navigation in urban environments where GPS may be degraded is increasingly becoming more important. Two existing solutions are vision-aided navigation and vision-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). The problem, however, is that vision-based navigation techniques can require excessive amounts of memory and increased computational complexity resulting in a decrease in speed. This research focuses on techniques to improve such issues by speeding up and optimizing the data association process in vision-based SLAM. Specifically, this work studies the current methods that algorithms use to associate a current robot pose to that of one previously …

Measuring The Utility Of A Cyber Incident Mission Impact Assessment (Cimia) Process For Mission Assurance, Christy L. Peterson

Theses and Dissertations

Information is a critical asset on which virtually all modern organizations depend upon to meet their operational mission objectives. Military organizations, in particular, have embedded Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) into their core mission processes as a means to increase their operational efficiency, exploit automation, improve decision quality, and shorten the kill chain. However, the extreme dependence upon ICT results in an environment where a cyber incident can result in severe mission degradation, or possibly failure, with catastrophic consequences to life, limb, and property. These consequences can be minimized by maintaining real-time situational awareness of mission critical resources so appropriate …

Appearance-Design Interfaces And Tools For Computer Cinematography: Evaluation And Application, William B. Kerr

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

We define appearance design as the creation and editing of scene content such as lighting and surface materials in computer graphics. The appearance design process takes a significant amount of time relative to other production tasks and poses difficult artistic challenges. Many user interfaces have been proposed to make appearance design faster, easier, and more expressive, but no formal validation of these interfaces had been published prior to our body of work. With a focus on novice users, we present a series of investigations into the strengths and weaknesses of various appearance design user interfaces. In particular, we develop an …

Semantically-Enhanced Information Extraction, Hisham Assal, John Seng, Franz Kurfess, Emily Schwarz, Kym Pohl

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Information Extraction using Natural Language Processing (NLP) produces entities along with some of the relationships that may exist among them. To be semantically useful, however, such discrete extractions must be put into context through some form of intelligent analysis. This paper1,2 offers a two-part architecture that employs the statistical methods of traditional NLP to extract discrete information elements in a relatively domain-agnostic manner, which are then injected into an inference-enabled environment where they can be semantically analyzed. Within this semantic environment, extractions are woven into the contextual fabric of a user-provided, domain-centric ontology where users together with user-provided logic can …