Computer Sciences Commons^™

Masthead

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Back Matter

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Iexplore: A Provenance-Based Application For Exploring Biomedical Knowledge, Vinh Nguyen, Olivier Bodenreider, Thomas Rindflesch, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Using Agile Software Development Practices Within The Medical Device Industry, Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey

Conference papers

Non-safety critical software developers have been reaping the benefits of adopting agile practices for a number of years. However, developers of safety critical software often have concerns about adopting Agile practices. Through a literature review this research identified the perceived barriers to following agile practices when developing medical device software. A questionnaire based survey was also conducted with medical device software developers in Ireland to determine what the actual barriers are to adopting agile practices. In addition a comparison is performed between the perceived and actual barriers and the results are reported.

Massively Distributed Authorship Of Academic Papers, Bill Tomlinson, Joel Ross, Paul Andre, Eric P.S. Baumer, Donald J. Patterson, Joseph Corneli, Martin Mahaux, Syavash Nobarany, Marco Lazzari, Birgit Penzenstadler, Andrew W. Torrance, David J. Callele, Gary M. Olson, Six Silberman, Marcus Ständer, Fabio Romancini Palamedi, Albert Ali Salah, Eric Morrill, Xavier Franch, Florian Mueller, Joseph Kaye, Rebecca W. Black, Marisa L. Cohn, Patrick C. Shih, Johanna Brewer, Nitesh Goyal, Pirjo Näkki, Jeff Huang, Nilufar Baghaei, Craig Saper

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

Wiki-like or crowdsourcing models of collaboration can provide a number of benefits to academic work. These techniques may engage expertise from different disciplines, and potentially increase productivity. This paper presents a model of massively distributed collaborative authorship of academic papers. This model, developed by a collective of thirty authors, identifies key tools and techniques that would be necessary or useful to the writing process. The process of collaboratively writing this paper was used to discover, negotiate, and document issues in massively authored scholarship. Our work provides the first extensive discussion of the experiential aspects of large-scale collaborative research.

Indy R&D: Doing Hci Research Off The Beaten Path, Amanda Williams, Johanna Brewer

Computer Science: Faculty Publications

This panel discusses independent research and development in HCI. We focus on possible models for Indy R&D operations, supporting infrastructures, practical methods, and taking advantage of academic skills in the transition. Panel participants have experience in several different models of funding, conducting, and disseminating results from independent research. We will provide the audience with practical tips to help them decide if Indy R&D is right for them, and if so, help them do it. © 2012 Authors.

Integrating Agile Practices With A Medical Device Sdlc., Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey, Minna Pikkarainen

Conference papers

The rate at which agile software development practices are being adopted is growing rapidly. Agile software development practices and methodologies appear to offer the silver bullet which can solve the problems associated with following plan driven software development lifecycles. Agile software development practices offer the possibility of achieving lower development costs, increased efficiency and improved software quality. However, there is currently a low rate of publicly available information that suggests there is widespread adoption of agile practices within the medical device software domain. This is largely due to the fact that software developed for medical devices includes challenges not faced …

Modeling And Design Of Entity Identity Information In Entity Resolution Systems, Yinle Zhou

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation describes and defines a new area of research called entity identity information management (EIIM) and shows that it is an extension and further elaboration of the Stanford Entity Resolution Framework (SERF). EIIM is defined as the collection and management of identity information with the goal of sustaining entity identity integrity, a fundamental data quality requirement for master data. Following the design science research methodology, the dissertation includes a formal mathematical model for describing EIIM. It also includes a discussion of how EIIM design choices affect the implementation of EIIM systems in terms of system efficiency and effectiveness. In …

Technique And Cue Selection For Graphical Presentation Of Generic Hyperdimensional Data, Lee Mont Howard

Theses and Dissertations

The process of visualizing n-D data presents the user with four problems: finding a hyperdimensional graphics package capable of rendering n-D data, finding a suitable presentation technique supported by the package that allows insight to be gained, using the provided user interface to interact with the presentation technique to explore the information in the data, and finding a way to share the information gained with others. Many graphics packages have been written to solve the first problem. However, existing packages do not sufficiently solve the other three problems. A hyperdimensional graphics package that sufficiently solves all these problems simplifies the …

Automated Content-Based Video Analysis And Management, Engin Mendi

Theses and Dissertations

Rapid expansion in the use of digital videos as an information source has led to a significant increase in the availability and the amount of video data. Multimedia applications use and generate large volume of complex video data sets. Since manual indexing, searching, browsing, and retrieval of relevant information are both computationally expensive and time consuming, efficient and reasonable mechanisms that can perform these operations are needed. This dissertation sorts out the challenges of video processing for automated content-based video analysis and management. More specifically, the work presented here include temporal video segmentation to partition video sequences into shots, extracting …

Analysis And Design Tools For Structured Feedback Systems, Anurag Rai

Theses and Dissertations

As we begin to analyze and construct extremely complex systems, a theory for understanding and designing the underlying architecture becomes very important. To move in the direction of a precise theory of architecture, this thesis will provide some concrete tools to analyze and design complex systems with a given network structure. The first main result of this thesis analyzes the vulnerability of a system and shows that a system's vulnerability depends on its network structure. We will consider destabilization attacks acting on a single link in a system's logical interconnection structure. The concept of a vulnerable link is characterized and …

The ∑Iq Methodology: An Information Quality Perspective On Oil Data, Yusuf Yiliyasi

Theses and Dissertations

Information quality (IQ) theories and frameworks have been increasingly studied and applied in various organizations to assess, improve and monitor the quality of their information products. Yet information quality problems remain pervasive in many organizations, industries and government institutions. For example various governmental as well as non-governmental organizations, institutions, and companies collect, compile and distribute information products in order to satisfy the needs of information consumers in the energy industry. What are the qualities of their information products? How do they collect or disseminate their data products? Why do information quality problems exist and how are the problems created? How …

W3c Semantic Sensor Networks: Ontologies, Applications, And Future Directions, Cory Andrew Henson

Kno.e.sis Publications

Plenary Talk discussing the W3C Semantic Sensor Network, including the ontology, applications, and future directions.

Innovation Rules: A Method For Identifying Disruptive Innovation Opportunities?, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Innovation Rules or innovation evolution paths are described in this paper as a mechanism for identifying disruptive innovation opportunities. A generic structure of an Innovation Rule is first introduced followed by a discussion using specific instance of an Innovation Rule. The application of Innovation Rules for the discovery of disruptive innovation opportunities is presented next. Two methods that use Innovation Rules as the basis for identifying disruptive innovation opportunities are described next, one for market pull and the other one for technology push. A framework for dealing with Innovation Rules that represent both big and small disruptions is discussed next. …

Foundations Of Inference, Kevin H. Knuth, John Skilling

Physics Faculty Scholarship

We present a simple and clear foundation for finite inference that unites and significantly extends the approaches of Kolmogorov and Cox. Our approach is based on quantifying lattices of logical statements in a way that satisfies general lattice symmetries. With other applications such as measure theory in mind, our derivations assume minimal symmetries, relying on neither negation nor continuity nor differentiability. Each relevant symmetry corresponds to an axiom of quantification, and these axioms are used to derive a unique set of quantifying rules that form the familiar probability calculus. We also derive a unique quantification of divergence, entropy and information.

On The Automatic Recognition Of Human Activities Using Heterogeneous Wearable Sensors, Oscar David Lara Yejas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Delivering accurate and opportune information on people's activities and behaviors has become one of the most important tasks within pervasive computing. Its wide spectrum of potential applications in medical, entertainment, and tactical scenarios, motivates further

research and development of new strategies to improve accuracy, pervasiveness, and eciency.

This dissertation addresses the recognition of human activities (HAR) with wearable sensors in three main regards: In the rst place, physiological signals have been incorporated as a new source of information to improve the recognition accuracy achieved by conventional approaches, which rely on accelerometer signals solely. A new HAR system, Centinela, was born …

Mobile Spatial Interaction In The Future Internet Of Things, James Carswell, Junjun Yin

Conference papers

Research and development of mobile information systems in the Future Internet of Things is about delivering technologies built around management and access to real-time heterogeneous datasets. Analyzing these enormous volumes of disparate data on mobile devices requires context-aware smart applications and services. 3DQ (Three Dimensional Query) is our novel mobile spatial interaction (MSI) prototype for data mining and analysis on today’s location and orientation aware “smartphones” within such 3D sensor web environments. Our application tailors a military style threat dome query calculation using MSI with “hidden query removal” functionality to reduce information overload and heighten situation awareness on these commercial …

A Location-Aware Architecture Supporting Intelligent Real-Time Mobile Applications, Sean J. Barbeau

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents LAISYC, a modular location-aware architecture for intelligent real-time mobile applications that is fully-implementable by third party mobile app developers and supports high-precision and high-accuracy positioning systems such as GPS. LAISYC significantly improves device battery life, provides location data authenticity, ensures security of location data, and significantly reduces the amount of data transferred between the phone and server. The design, implementation, and evaluation of LAISYC using real mobile phones include the following modules: the GPS Auto-Sleep module saves battery energy when using GPS, maintaining acceptable movement tracking (approximately 89% accuracy) with an approximate average doubling of battery life. …

Decentralized Riemannian Particle Filtering With Applications To Multi-Agent Localization, Martin J. Eilders

Theses and Dissertations

The primary focus of this research is to develop consistent nonlinear decentralized particle filtering approaches to the problem of multiple agent localization. A key aspect in our development is the use of Riemannian geometry to exploit the inherently non-Euclidean characteristics that are typical when considering multiple agent localization scenarios. A decentralized formulation is considered due to the practical advantages it provides over centralized fusion architectures. Inspiration is taken from the relatively new field of information geometry and the more established research field of computer vision. Differential geometric tools such as manifolds, geodesics, tangent spaces, exponential, and logarithmic mappings are used …

The White-Hat Bot: A Novel Botnet Defense Strategy, Tyrone C. Gubler

Theses and Dissertations

Botnets are a threat to computer systems and users around the world. Botmasters can range from annoying spam email propagators to nefarious criminals. These criminals attempt to take down networks or web servers through distributed denial-of-service attacks, to steal corporate secrets, or to launder money from individuals or corporations. As the number and severity of successful botnet attacks rise, computer security experts need to develop better early-detection and removal techniques to protect computer networks and individual computer users from these very real threats. I will define botnets and describe some of their common purposes and current uses. Next, I will …

Forensic Memory Analysis For Apple Os X, Andrew F. Hay

Theses and Dissertations

Analysis of raw memory dumps has become a critical capability in digital forensics because it gives insight into the state of a system that cannot be fully represented through traditional disk analysis. Interest in memory forensics has grown steadily in recent years, with a focus on the Microsoft Windows operating systems. However, similar capabilities for Linux and Apple OS X have lagged by comparison. The volafox open source project has begun work on structured memory analysis for OS X. The tool currently supports a limited set of kernel structures to parse hardware information, system build number, process listing, loaded kernel …

Enhancing Trust In The Smart Grid By Applying A Modified Exponentially Weighted Averages Algorithm, Andrew T. Kasperek

Theses and Dissertations

The main contribution of this thesis is the development and application of a modified Exponentially Weighted Moving Algorithm (EWMA) algorithm, and its ability to robustly function in the face varying numbers of bad (malicious or malfunctioning) Special Protection System (SPS) nodes. Simulation results support the use of the proposed modified EWMA reputation based trust module in SPSs within a smart grid environment. This modification results in the ability to easily maintain the system above the minimum acceptable frequency of 58.8 Hz at the 95% confidence interval, when challenged with test cases containing 5, 10 and 15 bad node test cases …

Process Flow Features As A Host-Based Event Knowledge Representation, Benhur E. Pacer

Theses and Dissertations

The detection of malware is of great importance but even non-malicious software can be used for malicious purposes. Monitoring processes and their associated information can characterize normal behavior and help identify malicious processes or malicious use of normal process by measuring deviations from the learned baseline. This exploratory research describes a novel host feature generation process that calculates statistics of an executing process during a window of time called a process flow. Process flows are calculated from key process data structures extracted from computer memory using virtual machine introspection. Each flow cluster generated using k-means of the flow features represents …

Vulnerability Analysis Of The Player Command And Control Protocol, John T. Hagen

Theses and Dissertations

The Player project is an open-source effort providing a control interface specification and software framework for abstracting robot hardware. This research presents five exploits that compromise vulnerabilities in Player's command and control protocol. The attacks exploit weaknesses in the ARP, IP, TCP and Player protocols to compromise the confidentially, integrity, and availability of communication between a Player client and server. The attacks assume a laptop is connected in promiscuous mode to the same Ethernet hub as the client and server in order to sniff all network traffic between them. This work also demonstrates that Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is capable …

Resource Provisioning In Large-Scale Self-Organizing Distributed Systems, M. Brent Reynolds

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation researches the mathematical translation of resource provisioning policy into mathematical terms and parameters to solve the on-line service placement problem. A norm called the Provisioning Norm is introduced. Theorems presented in the work show the Provisioning Norm utility function and greedy, random, local search effectively and efficiently solve the on-line problem. Caching of placements is shown to reduce the cost of change but does not improve response time performance. The use of feedback control theory is shown to be effective at significantly improving performance but increases the cost of change. The theoretical results are verified using a decentralized, …

A Novel Web Based Support Tool For Learning Random Variables, Anahita Zarei, Jinzhu Gao, Alan Joe, Jason Ortiz

All Faculty Presentations - School of Engineering and Computer Science

Battle of Distributions: A Web Based Learning Support ToolIn probability and statistics, a random variable is a function that assigns a number to eachoutcome of a random experiment. Random variables have various applications in differentscientific and engineering fields. There is an inherent complexity in dealing with randomvariables and their distribution models. It takes a lot of careful thought and practice to fullyunderstand these concepts and their applications. We have identified two issues that contributethe most to the difficulty students experience learning the subject: 1) the complexity of themathematical logic behind the probability theory and 2) lack of motivation to attempt …

The Effects Of Diagrams And Relational Complexity On User Performance In Conditional Probability Problems In A Non-Learning Context, Vincent J. Kellen

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

Many disciplines in everyday life depend on improved performance in conditional probability problems. Most adults struggle with conditional probability problems and several prior studies have shown participant accuracy is less than 50%. This study examined user performance when aided with computer-generated Venn and Euler type diagrams in a non-learning context. Despite the prevalence of research into diagrams and extensive research into conditional probability problem solving, this study is one of the only studies to apply theories of working memory to predict user performance in conditional probability problems with diagrams. Following relational complexity theory, this study manipulated problem complexity in computer …

Analyzing Multi-Agent Systems With Probabilistic Model Checking Approach, Songzheng Song, Jianye Hao, Yang Liu, Jun Sun, Ho-Fung Leung, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Multi-agent systems, which are composed of autonomous agents, have been successfully employed as a modeling paradigm in many scenarios. However, it is challenging to guarantee the correctness of their behaviors due to the complex nature of the autonomous agents, especially when they have stochastic characteristics. In this work, we propose to apply probabilistic model checking to analyze multi-agent systems. A modeling language called PMA is defined to specify such kind of systems, and LTL property and logic of knowledge combined with probabilistic requirements are supported to analyze system behaviors. Initial evaluation indicates the effectiveness of our current progress; meanwhile some …

Mining Input Sanitization Patterns For Predicting Sql Injection And Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities, Lwin Khin Shar, Hee Beng Kuan Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Static code attributes such as lines of code and cyclomatic complexity have been shown to be useful indicators of defects in software modules. As web applications adopt input sanitization routines to prevent web security risks, static code attributes that represent the characteristics of these routines may be useful for predicting web application vulnerabilities. In this paper, we classify various input sanitization methods into different types and propose a set of static code attributes that represent these types. Then we use data mining methods to predict SQL injection and cross site scripting vulnerabilities in web applications. Preliminary experiments show that our …