Computer Sciences Commons^™

Table Of Contents

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

No abstract provided.

Anti-Forensic Trace Detection In Digital Forensic Triage Investigations, Kyoung Jea Park, Jung-Min Park, Eun-Jin Kim, Chang Geun Cheon, Joshua I. James

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Anti-forensics, whether intentionally to disrupt investigations or simply an effort to make a computer system run better, is becoming of increasing concern to digital investigators. This work attempts to assess the problem of anti-forensics techniques commonly deployed in South Korea. Based on identified challenges, a method of signature-based anti-forensic trace detection is proposed for triage purposes that will assist investigators in quickly making decisions about the suspect digital devices before conducting a full investigation. Finally, a prototype anti-forensic trace detection system is given to demonstrate the practicality of the proposed method.

Ten Simple Rules For Responsible Big Data Research, Matthew Zook, Solon Barocas, Danah Boyd, Kate Crawford, Emily Keller, Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Alyssa Goodman, Rachelle Hollander, Barbara A. Koenig, Jacob Metcalf, Arvind Narayanan, Alondra Nelson, Frank Pasquale

Geography Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Mitigation Of Insider Attacks For Data Security In Distributed Computing Environments, Santosh Aditham

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In big data systems, the infrastructure is such that large amounts of data are hosted away from the users. Information security is a major challenge in such systems. From the customer’s perspective, one of the big risks in adopting big data systems is in trusting the service provider who designs and owns the infrastructure, with data security and privacy. However, big data frameworks typically focus on performance and the opportunity for including enhanced security measures is limited. In this dissertation, the problem of mitigating insider attacks is extensively investigated and several static and dynamic run-time techniques are developed. The proposed …

Aerial Water Sampler, Carrick Detweiler, John-Paul Ore, Baoliang Zhao, Sebastian Elbaum

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

In one aspect, a vehicle includes an aerial propulsion system, an altitude sensor system, a water sampling system, and a control system. The water sampling system includes a water sampling extension configured to extend away from the vehicle, one or more water sample receptacles, and a water pump. The control system is configured to perform operations including: guiding, using the aerial propulsion system, the vehicle over a water Source; causing, using sensor data from the altitude sensor system, the vehicle to descend towards the water source so that the water sampling extension contacts the water source; and causing, using the …

Scalable Unsupervised Learning With Game Theory, Alireza Chakeri

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recently dominant sets, a generalization of the notion of the maximal clique to edge-weighted graphs, have proven to be an effective tool for unsupervised learning and have found applications in different domains. Although, they were initially established using optimization and graph theory concepts, recent work has shown fascinating connections with evolutionary game theory, that leads to the clustering game framework. However, considering size of today's data sets, existing methods need to be modified in order to handle massive data. Hence, in this research work, first we address the limitations of the clustering game framework for large data sets theoretically. We …

Tradeoffs In Protocol Designs For Collaborative Authentication, Jacob Venne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Authentication is a crucial tool used in access control mechanisms to verify a user’s identity. Collaborative Authentication (co-authentication) is a newly proposed authentication scheme designed to improve on traditional token authentication. Co-authentication works by using multiple user devices as tokens to collaborate in a challenge and authenticate a user request on single device.

This thesis adds two contributions to the co-authentication project. First, a detailed survey of applications that are suitable for adopting co-authentication is presented. Second, an analysis of tradeoffs between varying protocol designs of co-authentication is performed to determine whether, and how, any designs are superior to other …

Right Now Is The Wrong Time: And Other Considerations When Presenting Security Warnings, Brock Johanson, Bonnie Anderson

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Neuro Information Security (NeuroIS) focuses on the use of neurological measurements to improve the security of information systems. The BYU NeuroIS lab uses neurological tools and measurements to examine factors that affect security outcomes. Previous work has focused on various factors such as dual task interference (DTI), threat assessment, as well as factors such as habituation and generalization, which have become focus streams of research. The primary point of failure in most security related incidents tends to be users themselves. As such, anything that can be used to overcome neurobiological phenomenon such as those listed above can ultimately lead in …

Increasing Cyber Resiliency Of Industrial Control Systems, Andrew J. Chaves

Theses and Dissertations

Industrial control systems (ICS) are designed to be resilient, capable of recovering from process faults and failures with limited impact to operations. Current ICS resiliency strategies use redundant PLCs. However, these redundant PLCs, being of similar make and model, can be exploited by the same cyber attack, defeating the ICS's resiliency strategy. This research proposes a resiliency strategy for ICS that employs an active defense technique to remove the cyber common cause failure. The resiliency of the active defense strategy is compared to traditional ICS resiliency by implementing both strategies in a semi-simulated wastewater treatment plant aeration basin that experiences …

Multi-Plc Exercise Environments For Training Ics First Responders, Joseph K. Daoud

Theses and Dissertations

When systems are targeted by cyber attacks, cyber first responders must be able to react effectively, especially when dealing with critical infrastructure. Training for cyber first responders is lacking and most existing exercise platforms are expensive, inaccessible or ineffective. This paper presents a mobile training platform which incorporates a variety of programmable logic controllers into a single system which facilitates the development of the unique skills required of cyber first responders operating in the realm of industrial control systems. The platform is modeled after a jail in the northeastern United States and was developed to maximize realism. Example training scenarios …

A Framework For Categorization Of Industrial Control System Cyber Training Environments, Evan G. Plumley

Theses and Dissertations

First responders and professionals in hazardous occupations undergo training and evaluations for the purpose of mitigating risk and damage. For example, helicopter pilots train with multiple categorized simulations that increase in complexity before flying a real aircraft. However in the industrial control cyber incident response domain, where incident response professionals help detect, respond and recover from cyber incidents, no official categorization of training environments exist. To address this gap, this thesis provides a categorization of industrial control training environments based on realism. Four levels of environments are proposed and mapped to Blooms Taxonomy. This categorization will help organizations determine which …

Autoprov: An Automated File Provenance Collection Tool, Ryan A. Good

Theses and Dissertations

A file's provenance is a detailing of its origins and activities. There are tools available that are useful in maintaining the provenance of a file. Unfortunately for digital forensics, these tools require prior installation on the computer of interest while provenance generating events happen. The presented tool addresses this by reconstructing a file's provenance from several temporal artifacts. It identifies relevant temporal and user correlations between these artifacts, and presents them to the user. A variety of predefined use cases and real world data are tested against to demonstrate that this software allows examiners to draw useful conclusions about the …

Active Response Using Host-Based Intrusion Detection System And Software-Defined Networking, Jonathon S. Goodgion

Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes AHNSR: Active Host-based Network Security Response by utilizing Host-based Intrusion Detection Systems (HIDS) with Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to enhance system security by allowing dynamic active response and reconstruction from a global network topology perspective. Responses include traffic redirection, host quarantining, filtering, and more. A testable SDN-controlled network is constructed with multiple hosts, OpenFlow enabled switches, and a Floodlight controller, all linked to a custom, novel interface for the Open-Source SECurity (OSSEC) HIDS framework. OSSEC is implemented in a server-agent architecture, allowing scalability and OS independence. System effectiveness is evaluated against the following factors: alert density and a …

A Framework For Understanding, Prioritizing, And Applying Systems Security Engineering Processes, Activities, And Tasks, Stephen Khou

Theses and Dissertations

Current systems security practices lack an effective approach to prioritize and tailor systems security efforts to develop and field secure systems in challenging operational environments, which results in business and mission stakeholders becoming more susceptible to an array of disruptive events. This work informs Systems Engineers on recent developments in the field of system security engineering and provides a framework for more fully understanding the application of Systems Security Engineering (SSE) processes, activities, and tasks as described in the recently released National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-160. This SSE framework uniquely offers a repeatable and tailorable …

Applying Cyber Threat Intelligence To Industrial Control Systems, Matthew P. Sibiga

Theses and Dissertations

A cybersecurity initiative known as cyber threat intelligence (CTI) has recently been developed and deployed. The overall goal of this new technology is to help protect network infrastructures. Threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) have also been created to help facilitate CTI effectiveness within organizations. There are many benefits that both can achieve within the information technology (IT) sector. The industrial control system (ICS) sector can also benefit from these technologies as most ICS networks are connected to IT networks. CTI and TIPs become resourceful when using indicators of compromise (IOCs) from known ICS malware attacks and an open source intrusion detection …

A Sandbox In Which To Learn And Develop Soar Agents, Daniel Lugo

Theses and Dissertations

It is common for military personnel to leverage simulations (and simulators) as cost-effective tools to train and become proficient at various tasks (e.g., flying an aircraft and/or performing a mission, among others). These training simulations often need to represent humans within the simulated world in a realistic manner. Realistic implies creating simulated humans that exhibit behaviors that mimic real-world decision making and actions. Typically, to create the decision-making logic, techniques developed from the domain of artificial intelligence are used. Although there are several approaches to developing intelligent agents; we focus on leveraging and open source project called Soar, to define …

Forging Blockchains: Spatial Production And Political Economy Of Decentralized Cryptocurrency Code/Spaces, Joe Blankenship

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cryptocurrencies and blockchains are increasingly used, implemented and adapted for numerous purposes; people and businesses are integrating these technologies into their practices and strategies, creating new political economies and spaces in and of everyday life. This thesis seeks to develop a foundation of geographic theory for the study of spatial production within and surrounding blockchain technologies focusing on acute studies of Bitcoin as cryptocurrency, Ethereum as digital marketplace, and their conditions of possibility as decentralized autonomous organizations. Utilizing concepts from Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space, this thesis situates blockchain technologies within the wider discussion about the political economy of …

Certifying Loop Pipelining Transformations In Behavioral Synthesis, Disha Puri

Dissertations and Theses

Due to the rapidly increasing complexity in hardware designs and competitive time to market trends in the industry, there is an inherent need to move designs to a higher level of abstraction. Behavioral Synthesis is the process of automatically compiling such Electronic System Level (ESL) designs written in high-level languages such as C, C++ or SystemC into Register-Transfer Level (RTL) implementation in hardware description languages such as Verilog or VHDL. However, the adoption of this flow is dependent on designers' faith in the correctness of behavioral synthesis tools.

Loop pipelining is a critical transformation employed in behavioral synthesis process, and …

Mobile Hands: What Your Phone Use Says About You, Parker Williams, Jeff Jenkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The percentage of individuals using mobile phones to respond to online applications, forms, and surveys is predicted to rapidly increase in the future. As of June 2, 2015, there were an estimated 2.6 billion smartphones in use in the world; by 2020 there will be 6.1 billion smartphones in use. Smartphones will account for roughly 80% of all mobile driven data traffic by 2020 (Lunden, 2015). With the proliferation of smartphones, measuring the fidelity of information gathered from and about the user becomes extremely important. Smartphones are a rich source of behavioral and biometric information, gathering data about how the …

Intelligent Stitching: Transforming Offline Stroke Extraction For Online Handwriting Recognition, Curtis Wigington, William Barrett

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Images of historical documents are being collected and archived much faster than volunteers can possibly index them alone. Improvements in offline handwriting recognition could greatly accelerate the work of indexing by FamilySearch. Offline handwriting recognition has already been shown to be effective in assisting indexers and automating the transcription of historical documents into searchable texts. As documents are collected from all around the world, generalized techniques that are robust to damage and noise are needed. Effective stroke extraction and processing is an important tool in improving current recognition techniques.

Initial Comparative Empirical Usability Testing For The Collaborative Authentication System, Kim Bursum

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Collaborative Authentication (co-authentication) system is an authentication system that relies on some or all members of a pre-registered set of secure hardware tokens being concurrently present to an authentication server at the moment of authentication. Previous researchers have compared various embodiments of the co-authentication system to each other including using Quick Response (QR) codes/cellphone cameras and Near Field Communication (NFC) between tokens. This thesis concerns the initial design and implementation of empirical comparative testing mechanisms between one embodiment of the co-authentication system and other commonly used authentication systems. One contribution is the simulated standard user ID and password login …

Sexual Dimorphism In Digit Ratios Derived From Dorsal Digit Length Among Adults And Children, Sanjay Kumar, Martin Voracek, Maharaj Singh

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Sexual dimorphism in ventrally measured digit ratios (2D:4D and other) has been related to prenatal sex-hormone levels. In the present series of three studies, we measured all digit lengths (excluding the thumb) on the dorsal, rather than the ventral, side of left and right hands and investigated the sexual dimorphism in digit ratios in three independent samples, two of them comprising adults (Study I, N = 104; Study II, N = 154), and one further, comprising kindergarten children (Study III, N = 64). Results show that men have lower digit-ratio values compared to women in digit ratios that include digit …

Designing Novel Nanostructured Permanent Magnets, Ali Al Kadhim

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Rare earth element based alloys have been the source of high performance magnetic alloys, and have played a paramount role in the development of various technologies, including: memory devices (such as credit cards, random-access memory), sensors, and various biomedical applications. However, there is a tremendous need to replace rare earth metals with material with powerful magnetic properties. Our group recently found CrTe-based materials that show very promising magnetic properties in nanostructured form. The magnetic modeling of such material in nanostructured form prior to their fabrication demonstrates their magnetic properties in bulk form. In this project, we investigate the behavior of …

Vision-Based Mobile Robotic Platform For Autonomous Landing Of Quadcopters, Timothy R. Joe

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This project deals with the development of a vision-based control algorithm to assist quadcopters in the landing process. For demonstration purposes, the approach has been implemented in a mobile robotic platform (turtlebot). In this project, the objective is to use the mobile robot as a landing platform. The camera on-board the mobile robot detects the quadcopter (AprilTag attached to the flying robot) and keeps track of it. Based on this idea, the proposed approach estimates in real-time the landing zone. Once this zone is calculated, the mobile robot moves towards this area, stops under the quadcopter, and acts as a …

Passive Chemical Detection System For Uavs, John Hare 2185222

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

In this project we address the problem of autonomously detecting airborne gas particles using gas sensors that are mobilized using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The main hypothesis we investigate is whether a commercially available, off-the-shelf gas sensor can be suitably integrated on a UAV platform to detect ambient gas particles. The main challenges in this problem include addressing the weight constraints of the UAV’s payload and registering a consistent reading on the gas sensor in the presence of the turbulence in the air caused by the UAV’s rotors. To verify our hypothesis, we designed a passive funneling mechanism for airborne …

A Modular Robotic System For Assessment And Exercise Of Human Movement, Mohan Sai Ambati

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

This project targets the problem of developing a wearable modular robotic system, for assessing human movement and providing different types of exercises for the user. The system attempts to provide not only a variety of exercises (concentric, eccentric, assisted and resisted), but also to assess the change in variability of the movement as the subject shows functional improvement. The system will not only be useful for patients with sensorimotor problem such as stroke, Parkinson’s, cerebral palsy, but also for special populations such as astronauts who spend long periods of time in space and experience muscle atrophy. In this work, a …

Optimizing Campus Mobility With A Focus On Sustainability: A Graph Theory Approach To Intra-Campus Transportation Networks, Quinn M. Nelson

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The idea of public transportation is supported by most in theory but often heavily criticized by users when put into application. There are common tensions that are related to public transportation, as described by frequent users: unreliable, too crowded, and slow. The University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO) is a growing metropolitan institution that uses a shuttle system to transport students among their three campuses daily. As of 2015, the current total student enrollment is approximately 16,000; UNO plans to enroll 20,000 students by 2020. The expected student growth is also reflected by the current construction of new buildings and expansion of …

Lightweight Three-Factor Authentication And Key Agreement Protocol For Internet-Integrated Wireless Sensor Networks, Qi Jiang, Sherali Zeadally, Jianfeng Ma, Debiao He

Information Science Faculty Publications

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will be integrated into the future Internet as one of the components of the Internet of Things, and will become globally addressable by any entity connected to the Internet. Despite the great potential of this integration, it also brings new threats, such as the exposure of sensor nodes to attacks originating from the Internet. In this context, lightweight authentication and key agreement protocols must be in place to enable end-to-end secure communication. Recently, Amin et al. proposed a three-factor mutual authentication protocol for WSNs. However, we identified several flaws in their protocol. We found that their …

Power-Aware Datacenter Networking And Optimization, Qing Yi

Dissertations and Theses

Present-day datacenter networks (DCNs) are designed to achieve full bisection bandwidth in order to provide high network throughput and server agility. However, the average utilization of typical DCN infrastructure is below 10% for significant time intervals. As a result, energy is wasted during these periods. In this thesis we analyze traffic behavior of datacenter networks using traces as well as simulated models. Based on the insight developed, we present techniques to reduce energy waste by making energy use scale linearly with load. The solutions developed are analyzed via simulations, formal analysis, and prototyping. The impact of our work is significant …

Designing Interactive Systems That Embrace Uncertainty, Keith Vertanen

TechTalks

Traditionally, computer interfaces have relied on deterministic input (e.g. keyboard and mouse) and plentiful feedback (e.g. visual displays and audio). Today, computer interaction is often off-desktop, performed in diverse environments with diverse devices. This often requires interaction via uncertain input methods such as speech recognition, touchscreen gestures, mid-air gestures, or eye-tracking. Interaction becomes even more challenging when a user's input or output capabilities are limited by situation or disability. In this talk, I outline our efforts to create interfaces that are efficient, pleasant, and accessible despite uncertain input and/or limited output.