Computer Sciences Commons^™

Leap: Leakage-Abuse Attack On Efficiently Deployable, Efficiently Searchable Encryption With Partially Known Dataset, Jianting Ning, Xinyi Huang, Geong Sen Poh, Jiaming Yuan, Yingjiu Li, Jian Weng, Robert H. Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Searchable Encryption (SE) enables private queries on encrypted documents. Most existing SE schemes focus on constructing industrialready, practical solutions at the expense of information leakages that are considered acceptable. In particular, ShadowCrypt utilizes a cryptographic approach named “efficiently deployable, efficiently searchable encryption” (EDESE) that reveals the encrypted dataset and the query tokens among other information. However, recent attacks showed that such leakages can be exploited to (partially) recover the underlying keywords of query tokens under certain assumptions on the attacker’s background knowledge. We continue this line of work by presenting LEAP, a new leakageabuse attack on EDESE schemes that can …

Investigating The Effects Of Dimension-Specific Sentiments On Product Sales: The Perspective Of Sentiment Preferences, Cuiqing Jiang, Jianfei Wang, Qian Tang, Xiaozhong Lyu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

While literature has reached a consensus on the awareness effect of online word-of-mouth (eWOM), this paper studies its persuasive effect, specifically, the dimension-specific sentiment effects on product sales. We allow the sentiment information in eWOM along different product dimensions to have different persuasive effects on consumers’ purchase decisions. This occurs because of consumers’ sentiment preference, which is defined as the relative importance consumers place on various dimension-specific sentiments. We use an aspect-level sentiment analysis to derive the dimension-specific sentiments and PVAR (panel vector auto-regression) models to estimate their effects on product sales using a movie panel dataset. The findings show …

Towards Enriching Responses With Crowd-Sourced Knowledge For Task-Oriented Dialogue, Yingxu He, Lizi Liao, Zheng Zhang, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Task-oriented dialogue agents are built to assist users in completing various tasks. Generating appropriate responses for satisfactory task completion is the ultimate goal. Hence, as a convenient and straightforward way, metrics such as success rate, inform rate etc., have been widely leveraged to evaluate the generated responses. However, beyond task completion, there are several other factors that largely affect user satisfaction, which remain under-explored. In this work, we focus on analyzing different agent behavior patterns that lead to higher user satisfaction scores. Based on the findings, we design a neural response generation model EnRG. It naturally combines the power of …

Towards Balancing Vr Immersion And Bystander Awareness, Yoshiki Kudo, Anthony Tang, Kazuyuki Fujita, Isamu Endo, Kazuki Takashima, Yoshifumi Kitamura

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Head-mounted displays (HMDs) increase immersion into virtual worlds. The problem is that this limits headset users' awareness of bystanders: headset users cannot attend to bystanders' presence and activities. We call this the HMD boundary. We explore how to make the HMD boundary permeable by comparing different ways of providing informal awareness cues to the headset user about bystanders. We adapted and implemented three visualization techniques (Avatar View, Radar and Presence++) that share bystanders' location and orientation with headset users. We conducted a hybrid user and simulation study with three different types of VR content (high, medium, low interactivity) with twenty …

Exploiting Reasoning Chains For Multi-Hop Science Question Answering, Weiwen Xu, Yang Deng, Huihui Zhang, Deng Cai, Wai Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose a novel Chain Guided Retriever reader (CGR) framework to model the reasoning chain for multi-hop Science Question Answering. Our framework is capable of performing explainable reasoning without the need of any corpus-specific annotations, such as the ground-truth reasoning chain, or human annotated entity mentions. Specifically, we first generate reasoning chains from a semantic graph constructed by Abstract Meaning Representation of retrieved evidence facts. A Chain-aware loss, concerning both local and global chain information, is also designed to enable the generated chains to serve as distant supervision signals for training the retriever, where reinforcement learning is also adopted to …

Efficient Online-Friendly Two-Party Ecdsa Signature, Haiyang Xue, Ho Man Au, Xiang Xie, Hon Tsz Yuen, Handong Cui

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Two-party ECDSA signatures have received much attention due to their widespread deployment in cryptocurrencies. Depending on whether or not the message is required, we could divide two-party signing into two different phases, namely, offline and online. Ideally, the online phase should be made as lightweight as possible. At the same time, the cost of the offline phase should remain similar to that of a normal signature generation. However, the existing two-party protocols of ECDSA are not optimal: either their online phase requires decryption of a ciphertext, or their offline phase needs at least two executions of multiplicative-to-additive conversion which dominates …

Building Legal Datasets, Jerrold Soh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Data-centric AI calls for better, not just bigger, datasets. As data protection laws with extra-territorial reach proliferate worldwide, ensuring datasets are legal is an increasingly crucial yet overlooked component of “better”. To help dataset builders become more willing and able to navigate this complex legal space, this paper reviews key legal obligations surrounding ML datasets, examines the practical impact of data laws on ML pipelines, and offers a framework for building legal datasets.

Probablistic Verification Of Neural Networks Against Group Fairness, Bing Sun, Jun Sun, Ting Dai, Lijun Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Fairness is crucial for neural networks which are used in applications with important societal implication. Recently, there have been multiple attempts on improving fairness of neural networks, with a focus on fairness testing (e.g., generating individual discriminatory instances) and fairness training (e.g., enhancing fairness through augmented training). In this work, we propose an approach to formally verify neural networks against fairness, with a focus on independence-based fairness such as group fairness. Our method is built upon an approach for learning Markov Chains from a user-provided neural network (i.e., a feed-forward neural network or a recurrent neural network) which is guaranteed …

Figcps: Effective Failure-Inducing Input Generation For Cyber-Physical Systems With Deep Reinforcement Learning, Shaohua Zhang, Shuang Liu, Jun Sun, Yuqi Chen, Wenzhi Huang, Jinyi Liu, Jian Liu, Jianye Hao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are composed of computational control logic and physical processes, that intertwine with each other. CPSs are widely used in various domains of daily life, including those safety-critical systems and infrastructures, such as medical monitoring, autonomous vehicles, and water treatment systems. It is thus critical to effectively test them. However, it is not easy to obtain test cases which can fail the CPS. In this work, we propose a failure-inducing input generation approach FIGCPS for CPS, which requires no knowledge of the CPS under test or any history logs of the CPS which are usually hard to obtain. …

Traffic Collision Avoidance System: False Injection Viability, John Hannah, Robert F. Mills, Richard Dill, Douglas D. Hodson

Faculty Publications

Safety is a simple concept but an abstract task, specifically with aircraft. One critical safety system, the Traffic Collision Avoidance System II (TCAS), protects against mid-air collisions by predicting the course of other aircraft, determining the possibility of collision, and issuing a resolution advisory for avoidance. Previous research to identify vulnerabilities associated with TCAS’s communication processes discovered that a false injection attack presents the most comprehensive risk to veritable trust in TCAS, allowing for a mid-air collision. This research explores the viability of successfully executing a false injection attack against a target aircraft, triggering a resolution advisory. Monetary constraints precluded …

Analytical Models For Traffic Congestion And Accident Analysis, Hongrui Liu, Rahul Ramachandra Shetty

Mineta Transportation Institute

In the US, over 38,000 people die in road crashes each year, and 2.35 million are injured or disabled, according to the statistics report from the Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT) in 2020. In addition, traffic congestion keeping Americans stuck on the road wastes millions of hours and billions of dollars each year. Using statistical techniques and machine learning algorithms, this research developed accurate predictive models for traffic congestion and road accidents to increase understanding of the complex causes of these challenging issues. The research used US Accidents data consisting of 49 variables describing 4.2 million accident records …

Emotional Analysis Of Learning Cybersecurity With Games Using Iot, Maria Valero, Md Jobair Hossain, Shahriar Sobhan

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The constant rise of cyber-attacks poses an increasing demand for more qualified people with cybersecurity knowledge. Games have emerged as a well-fitted technology to engage users in learning processes. In this paper, we analyze the emotional parameters of people while learning cybersecurity through computer games. The data are gathered using a non-invasive Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) to study the signals directly from the users’ brains. We analyze six performance metrics (engagement, focus, excitement, stress, relaxation, and interest) of 12 users while playing computer games to measure the effectiveness of the games to attract the attention of the participants. Results show participants …

Resilience Vs. Prevention. Which Is The Better Cybersecurity Practice?, Frank Katz

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Students in multiple cohorts of our 3000 level Fundamentals of Information Systems Security course were given a discussion question where they had to either agree or disagree with the premise that given all the constant threats to our systems, we should dedicate more of our efforts to quickly repairing the damage of an attack rather than dedicate more of our time and energies to preventing such attacks. They were required to give their reasoning and provide sources to back up their analysis of his comment.

This paper will describe and explain the concept of cyber resiliency. It will then evaluate …

Warshipping: Hacking The Mailroom, Jackson Szwast, Bryson Payne

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Everyone knows what package shipping is, but not everyone knows what warshipping is. Corporate mailrooms are rarely considered as part of the cybersecurity attack surface of most organizations, but they offer physical access to millions of uninspected packages daily. UPS shipped 5.5 billion items last year, with their daily average being 21.9 million items and operating through 1,800 locations in 2020. FedEx shipped 6.5 million packages daily and operates 2,150 locations. The United States Postal Service delivered 143 billion pieces of mail in 2019. Increasingly the world’s consumers are relying on e-commerce, and during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, package deliveries …

Importance Of Cryptography In The Government, Gazmend Krasniqi, Agnesa Pefqeli

UBT International Conference

This paper first of all reflects the need for encryption and then the importance it has managed to accumulate over thousands of years of use. Various factors, mainly of a purpose; being powerful, have influenced the rapid development and stressed the importance of encryption in governing bodies.

Depending on in which part of the world it is used and for what reasons it is developed, the importance of cryptography in different governments has shifted to the more powerful states.

Governments have encountered conflicts due to the popularization of encryption, where users of encryption belonging to the non-governmental communities have declined …

The Impact Of Geogebra On Learning The Concept Of Quadratic Function, Nazmi Misini, Faton Kabashi

UBT International Conference

There are many software programs used in math, but we have noticed that the Geogebra program is more equipped for our groups of different ages, it is useful for elementary math teachers and even in bachelor's undergraduate teaching. It is useful for students to teach math at each school level, it's fun and fun using GeoGebra - thus encouraging students to deepen more and more in math. The purpose of this quasi-experimental research is to show how GeoGebra can be used to learn the concept of quadratic function within the subject of mathematics at the high school level. Research will …

Blockchain Invoicing For Government Services, Vehbi Neziri, Ramadan Dervishi, Blerim Rexha

UBT International Conference

Blockchain technology is known primarily through the cryptocurrency bitcoin, but has begun to find application in other areas for both public and private services, including, but not limited to, payments, electronic voting, health, government services etc. Blockchain technology potential relay on its capability to store all transactions records and makes them available to all parties with permission to view, but no one can make unauthorized changes to them. Many government service providers have to bill the government for the services they provide, but non-standardized and unverified manual or electronic invoicing often leads to double invoicing or payment. As a result …

Incidence Matrix And Some Of Its Applications In Graph Theory, Hizer Leka, Faton Kabashi

UBT International Conference

In this paper we will focus mainly on some basic concepts and definitions regarding incidence matrices and some examples of their application in graph theory. To give their clearest definition of the incidence matrix, we will first give the meaning of the incidence structure, then through it to define the incidence matrix. The structure of incidence is called the ordered triplet S=(P,B,I), where P∩B=ϕ, I⊆P×B and P,B while, are two non-empty sets and I a relation in between them, such that I⊂P×B. We call the elements of P community dots and we will mark them in lower case letters of, …

Internet Of Things In Healthcare: A Review, Faton Kabashi, Lamir Shkurti, Hizer Leka, Vehbi Sofiu, Nazmi Misini

UBT International Conference

In the current era, there is a requirement of a system with connected devices, persons, time, places, and networks, which is completely incorporated in what is called as Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is developed toward making the objects smart and connectable using recent development in miniaturizing and communication technologies. IoT can change the way human being live their life by making it their more convenient and smart. IoT has wide application domains one of them is healthcare. Healthcare is one of the application domains in IoT that draws enormous interest from industry, the research community, and the public sector. …

Towards Assessing Password Workarounds And Perceived Risk To Data Breaches For Organizational Cybersecurity Risk Management Taxonomy, Michael J. Rooney, Yair Levy, Wei Li, Ajoy Kumar

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Cybersecurity involves a broad range of techniques, including cyber-physical, managerial, and technical, while authentication provides a layer of protection for Information Systems (IS) against data breaches. The recent COVID-19 pandemic brought a tsunami of data breach incidents worldwide. Authentication serves as a mechanism for IS against unauthorized access utilizing various defense techniques, with the most popular and frequently used technique being passwords. However, the dramatic increase of user accounts over the past few decades has exposed the realization that technological measures alone cannot ensure high level of IS security; this leaves the end-users holding a critical role in protecting their …

Analyzing Robotics Software Vulnerabilities, Hossain Shahriar, Md Jobair Hossain Faruk, Shahriar Sobhan, Mohammad Nazim

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Robots are widely used in our day-to-day life in various domains. For example, eldercare robots, such as CareO-Bots [1]are used to perform household tasks and provide mobility assistance [2]. Amazon uses manufacturing robots to accomplish manufacturing labor activities, such as welding and assembling equipment [2]. According to the International Data Corporation, spending on robotics is expected to reach USD 241.4 billion by the end of 2023 [4].

However, malicious users can exploit security vulnerabilities in hardware and software components of robotics systems to conduct security attacks and cause malfunction, i.e., deviate robots from their expected behaviors. Security attacks on robots …

Chatbot In Banks Of Kosovo And Albania, Festinë Retkoceri, Festim Halili

UBT International Conference

Not so long ago Artificial Intelligence was only in the realm of scientific fiction. Today, it has become a reality and is growing every day more prominent in many different industries. Chatbots enable machines to mimic human conversation. This paper is an attempt to study the use of artificial intelligence and natural language processing in Albanian banks and Kosovo banks regarding the use of Albanian-speaking Chatbots and how to become a more intelligent chatbot. The data is collected from sources that are in the public domain, such as banking websites.

A Taxonomy Of Cyberattacks Against Critical Infrastructure, Miloslava Plachkinova, Ace Vo

KSU Proceedings on Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

The current study proposes a taxonomy to organize existing knowledge on cybercrimes against critical infrastructure such as power plants, water treatment facilities, dams, and nuclear facilities. Routine Activity Theory is used to inform a three-dimensional taxonomy with the following dimensions: hacker motivation (likely offender), cyber, physical, and cyber-physical components of any cyber-physical system (suitable target), and security (capable guardian). The focus of the study is to develop and evaluate the classification tool using Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. Publicly available data was used to evaluate the utility and usability of the proposed artifact by exploring three possible scenarios – Stuxnet, …

International Conference On Computer Science And Communication Engineering, University For Business And Technology - Ubt

UBT International Conference

UBT Annual International Conference is the 9th international interdisciplinary peer reviewed conference which publishes works of the scientists as well as practitioners in the area where UBT is active in Education, Research and Development. The UBT aims to implement an integrated strategy to establish itself as an internationally competitive, research-intensive university, committed to the transfer of knowledge and the provision of a world-class education to the most talented students from all background. The main perspective of the conference is to connect the scientists and practitioners from different disciplines in the same place and make them be aware of the recent …

Workplace Chat Application Using Socket Programming In Python, Egzon Salihu, Gentiana Blakaj

UBT International Conference

A chat is a real-time communication with one or more users connected to the internet. Chat applications are very necessary at this time in a workplace to communicate employees with each other for company purposes. In Python programming, this type of communication is possible to do using the library sockets, which enables connecting two nodes on a network to communicate with each other. We represent in this paper how to build a chat application that uses a server to connects multiple users and let them communicate with each other using the TCP protocol. Threads are used for parallel programming to …

Software Automated Testing Using Bdd Approach With Cucumber Framework, Arbesë Musliu, Xhelal Jashari

UBT International Conference

Software testing is becoming essentially needed nowadays, but at the same time is becoming more complex and taking more resources. Software development using agile methodology helps us deliver a considered number of versions in a short amount of time. However, using these methodologies means that we have to repeatedly test each version by testing all functionalities, including the updated ones. This research paper will show the importance of Automation Testing using the Cucumber framework and behavior driven development (BDD) approach to test new features and maintain the previous ones. We will show the implementation of the Cucumber framework using Selenium …

One-Time Pad Cipher (Otp) Use Cases And Simulation Examples For Electronic Financial Transactions, Ana Savic, Goran Bjelobaba, Nikola Popović, Hana Stefanovic

UBT International Conference

Network This paper presents some applications of One-Time pad (OTP) cipher in business communications and processing the electronic financial transactions. Several simulation models created in the CrypTool, making a mention of the misuse and weaknesses if the same OTP key is used several times, are also given. Some examples of processing an electronic financial transaction through the application of the OTP are proposed.

Membership Application Subscription Based, Vlera Zhubi, Medina Shamolli

UBT International Conference

I

t's no secret: Units wanting from small businesses, both public and private, to large businesses, are facing new challenges in hiring and managing members and payments. The membership application is an application that provides businesses, associations, clubs and functional organizations looking to manage their members. A membership application is an online subscription-based business where people pay for regular access to exclusive content. Online memberships and courses have continued to grow as people are willing to pay for convenience, exclusivity, knowledge and community. They are structured in such a way as to meet the special needs of the members at …

Optimization Of Energy Flow In A Microgrid Application With A Photovoltaic Electricity Supply, Vassil Guliashki, Egzon Salihu, Galia Marinova

UBT International Conference

Microgrids can be powered using wind turbines, generators, batteries, or solar panels. In case of emergency, a microgrid provides backup from the main grid in times of crisis like storms or power outages, also it can be used to reduce the energy consumption from the main grid. This paper presents optimization of a battery schedule in a microgrid application when it is used in a grid-connected mode (connected to the main grid) with a photovoltaic electricity supply, battery and inverter. The data used for the problem formulation include the photovoltaic energy production in 24 hours for 3000 houses of California …

The Negative Effects Of Cyberbullying Among Secondary School Adolescents In Tanzania, Hezron Zacharia Onditi, Jennifer Shapka

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Cyberbullying and its associated consequences on children and adolescents has recently become a problem of global concern. Using phenomenological research design, this study explores the negative effects of cyberbullying on Tanzanian secondary school female and male adolescents. A total of 20 adolescents (50% female) in secondary schools (Form I to Form IV) who identified themselves as victims of cyberbullying were involved in the interview to share their lived experiences on the negative effects of cyberbullying. From thematic analysis, results indicated that, similar to their counterpart adolescents in the developed countries, Tanzanian female and male adolescents have experienced emotional, social, cognitive, …