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2025

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Full-Text Articles in OS and Networks

Context-Aware Representation: Jointly Learning Item Features And Selection From Triplets, Rodrigo Alves, Antoine Ledent Apr 2025

Context-Aware Representation: Jointly Learning Item Features And Selection From Triplets, Rodrigo Alves, Antoine Ledent

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In areas of machine learning such as cognitive modeling or recommendation, user feedback is usually context-dependent. For instance, a website might provide a user with a set of recommendations and observe which (if any) of the links were clicked by the user. Similarly, there is growing interest in the so-called “odd-one-out” learning setting, where human participants are provided with a basket of items and asked which is the most dissimilar to the others. In both of those cases, the presence of all the items in the basket can influence the final decision. In this article, we consider a classification task …


Minimum Multi-Service Fleet Size Problem: Shareability Graph And Network Flow Approach, Dingtong Yang, Yubin Liu, Hai Wang, Jinhua Zhao, Hamsa Balakrishnan Apr 2025

Minimum Multi-Service Fleet Size Problem: Shareability Graph And Network Flow Approach, Dingtong Yang, Yubin Liu, Hai Wang, Jinhua Zhao, Hamsa Balakrishnan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On-demand, vehicle-based services—such as ride-hailing, food, grocery, and parcel delivery—have become ubiquitous over the past decade. These services can be categorized into four types (Sun et al., 2023): passenger mobility, goods delivery, information acquisition (e.g., probe vehicle for traffic conditions), and mobile server (e.g., vehicle displaying advertisements). Passenger mobility and goods delivery are typically fulfilled by separate fleets, each dedicated to a single service. However, if various services can be pooled and handled simultaneously by a multi-functional fleet while maintaining service quality, the total number of required vehicles and overall vehicle mileage could be significantly reduced. This exciting potential motivates …


On The Probability Of Necessity And Sufficiency Of Explaining Graph Neural Networks: A Lower Bound Optimization Approach, Ruichu Cai, Yuxuan Zhu, Xuexin Chen, Yuan Fang, Min Wu, Jie Qiao, Zhifeng Hao Apr 2025

On The Probability Of Necessity And Sufficiency Of Explaining Graph Neural Networks: A Lower Bound Optimization Approach, Ruichu Cai, Yuxuan Zhu, Xuexin Chen, Yuan Fang, Min Wu, Jie Qiao, Zhifeng Hao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The explainability of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) is critical to various GNN applications, yet it remains a significant challenge. A convincing explanation should be both necessary and sufficient simultaneously. However, existing GNN explaining approaches focus on only one of the two aspects, necessity or sufficiency, or a heuristic trade-off between the two. Theoretically, the Probability of Necessity and Sufficiency (PNS) holds the potential to identify the most necessary and sufficient explanation since it can mathematically quantify the necessity and sufficiency of an explanation. Nevertheless, the difficulty of obtaining PNS due to non-monotonicity and the challenge of counterfactual estimation limit its …


Verification Of Bit-Flip Attacks Against Quantized Neural Networks, Yedi Zhang, Lei Huang, Pengfei Gao, Fu Song, Jun Sun, Jin Song Dong Apr 2025

Verification Of Bit-Flip Attacks Against Quantized Neural Networks, Yedi Zhang, Lei Huang, Pengfei Gao, Fu Song, Jun Sun, Jin Song Dong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In the rapidly evolving landscape of neural network security, the resilience of neural networks against bit-flip attacks (i.e., an attacker maliciously flips an extremely small amount of bits within its parameter storage memory system to induce harmful behavior), has emerged as a relevant area of research. Existing studies suggest that quantization may serve as a viable defense against such attacks. Recognizing the documented susceptibility of real-valued neural networks to such attacks and the comparative robustness of quantized neural networks (QNNs), in this work, we introduce BFAVerifier, the first verification framework designed to formally verify the absence of bit-flip attacks against …


Choosing Robust Leadership: Encompassing The Best-Of-N Model And Swarm Intelligence Optimization For Heterogeneous Multiple Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems, Kudamuhandiramlage Harith Kolitha Warnakulasooriya Mar 2025

Choosing Robust Leadership: Encompassing The Best-Of-N Model And Swarm Intelligence Optimization For Heterogeneous Multiple Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems, Kudamuhandiramlage Harith Kolitha Warnakulasooriya

Shelby Hall Graduate Research Forum Presentations

Presentation slides for a presentation given at the 1st annual Shelby Hall Graduate Research Forum at the University of South Alabama.


Turbulence Prediction Using Non-Linear Phase Space Analysis, Jeremy Quijano Mar 2025

Turbulence Prediction Using Non-Linear Phase Space Analysis, Jeremy Quijano

Shelby Hall Graduate Research Forum Posters

Our research presents a novel approach for turbulence prediction in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations using a non-linear phase space analysis (NLPSA) and threshold algorithm. NLPSA has been utilized in medical applications to predict seizures, as well as in cybersecurity to detect malicious control and utilization of computing systems. NLPSA uses time-series data to learn the normal operating state of the system, then sets a threshold to predict when the system becomes abnormal. Turbulence prediction is similar, such that a fluid system changes from normal to abnormal. Turbulence prediction methods currently utilize machine learning tools, such as convolutional neural networks …


Out-Of-Band Anomaly Detection For Real Time Operating Systems, Jeff K. Holifield Mar 2025

Out-Of-Band Anomaly Detection For Real Time Operating Systems, Jeff K. Holifield

Shelby Hall Graduate Research Forum Posters

Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) are increasing present throughout the industrial, business, defense, and healthcare spaces. These lightweight and efficient operating systems are designed to run on embedded, resource constrained devices, often within cyber-physical systems (CFS). A defining characteristic of RTOSs is that they are deterministic. Tasks are scheduled to run on fixed timelines within guaranteed execution windows. To accomplish tasks on time, real time software must conform to worst case execution times (WCETs) as design parameters. WCET is the maximum time a particular task can take to complete. Exceeding the WCET could cause system failure and lead to damage, …


Using Machine Learning Models To Improve The Cyber Physical Security Of Drones, Sean Lee, Aviv Segev Mar 2025

Using Machine Learning Models To Improve The Cyber Physical Security Of Drones, Sean Lee, Aviv Segev

Shelby Hall Graduate Research Forum Posters

This research proposes a new manner of implementing machine learning models such that, when applied on a drone, it will be able to accurately identify and maintain the authenticity of the entity sending the control data to the drone. To begin with, the drone will, for a pre-determined amount of signals received per unit time, determine the average signal strength (RSSI) of them and use that average to determine the approximate distance between the drone and the source of those signals. This single data point will be fed into a custom implementation of the SCluStream algorithm (a real-time clustering machine …


Explainable Neural Networks With Guarantees: A Sparse Estimation Approach, Antoine Ledent, Peng Liu Mar 2025

Explainable Neural Networks With Guarantees: A Sparse Estimation Approach, Antoine Ledent, Peng Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Balancing predictive power and interpretability has long been a challenging research area, particularly in powerful yet complex models like neural networks, where nonlinearity obstructs direct interpretation. This paper introduces a novel approach to constructing an explainable neural network that harmonizes predictiveness and explainability. Our model is designed as a linear combination of a sparse set of jointly learned features, each derived from a different trainable function applied to a single 1-dimensional input feature. Leveraging the ability to learn arbitrarily complex relationships, our neural network architecture enables automatic selection of a sparse set of important features, with the final prediction being …


An Aspect Performance-Aware Hypergraph Neural Network For Review-Based Recommendation, Junrui Liu, Tong Li, Di Wu, Zifang Tang, Yuan Fang, Zhen Yang Mar 2025

An Aspect Performance-Aware Hypergraph Neural Network For Review-Based Recommendation, Junrui Liu, Tong Li, Di Wu, Zifang Tang, Yuan Fang, Zhen Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Online reviews allow consumers to provide detailed feedback on various aspects of items. Existing methods utilize these aspects to model users' fine-grained preferences for specific item features through graph neural networks. We argue that the performance of items on different aspects is important for making precise recommendations, which has not been taken into account by existing approaches, due to lack of data. In this paper, we propose an aspect performance-aware hypergraph neural network (APH) for the review-based recommendation, which learns the performance of items from the conflicting sentiment polarity of user reviews. Specifically, APH comprehensively models the relationships among users, …


Drone Delivery Network Design With Uncertainties, Wenjia Zeng, Jiang Ruiwei, Hai Yang, Hai Wang Mar 2025

Drone Delivery Network Design With Uncertainties, Wenjia Zeng, Jiang Ruiwei, Hai Yang, Hai Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also called drones, are gaining popularity as an alternative delivery mode due to their faster delivery speed and reduced labor costs. Several companies, especially e-commerce giants, are conducting pilot projects that use drones to deliver fast food and groceries. In 2021, for example, Walmart partnered with Zipline in the United States to provide delivery services for areas near Walmart stores in Arkansas. In China, Meituan drone delivery services have been launched in Shenzhen and have conducted trial food delivery that cover more than 8,000 households.


Computing In The Commonwealth: Specialized Education In Computer Science And Information Technology For High School Students In Virginia – An Environmental Scan, Amy Corning, Jonathan D. Becker, Jon Graham, James Carrigan, Keisha Tennessee Jan 2025

Computing In The Commonwealth: Specialized Education In Computer Science And Information Technology For High School Students In Virginia – An Environmental Scan, Amy Corning, Jonathan D. Becker, Jon Graham, James Carrigan, Keisha Tennessee

ICRE Publications

Over the past two decades, Virginia has invested substantially in STEM education, in part through specialized programs focused on computer science and information technology (CS/IT). This study represents the first effort to identify Virginia’s specialized secondary CS/IT programs and examine them collectively. Findings from the statewide environmental scan indicate that the programs are delivered through a wide variety of institutional structures, including Governor’s STEM Academies, Governor’s Schools, specialty centers, and academies, but most often through Career and Technical Education (CTE) centers. Programs tend to be concentrated in metropolitan areas, and some rural divisions may not be served. The programs provide …


Rotary Operations Management & Automation Platform (Romap): Modernizing Attendance Tracking And Data Submission For Rotary Clubs, Zaineel Mithani Jan 2025

Rotary Operations Management & Automation Platform (Romap): Modernizing Attendance Tracking And Data Submission For Rotary Clubs, Zaineel Mithani

2025 Fall Honors Capstones Projects - Archive

As Technical Lead of the Rotary Operations Management & Automation Platform (ROMAP), my Honors contribution focused on developing a Bluetooth Low Energy proximity-based attendance system enabling automatic, hands-free member check-ins. I researched and selected beacon hardware, designed RSSI-based distance calculation algorithms, and implemented platform-specific background processing for iOS and Android, achieving 97% detection accuracy. Beyond this Honors component, I architected the complete backend infrastructure including a Node.js API with 20+ endpoints, PostgreSQL database with Prisma ORM, and JWT authentication. I also developed a novel GPT-4 Vision automation system that intelligently populates web forms through computer vision, achieving 95% success rate …


A Trust-By-Learning Framework For Secure 6g Wireless Networks Under Native Generative Ai Attacks, Md Shirajum Munir, Sravanthi Proddatoori, Manjushree Muralidhara, Trinidad Mario Dena, Walid Saad, Zhu Han, Sachin Shetty Jan 2025

A Trust-By-Learning Framework For Secure 6g Wireless Networks Under Native Generative Ai Attacks, Md Shirajum Munir, Sravanthi Proddatoori, Manjushree Muralidhara, Trinidad Mario Dena, Walid Saad, Zhu Han, Sachin Shetty

Center for Secure and Intelligent Critical Systems (CSICS) Publications

Sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks will become vulnerable due to native generative AI (GenAI)-driven intelligent poisoning attacks in both the radio unit and the core network. In particular, network parameters and metrics in cross-layer design pose fundamentally uncertain conditions and can be compromised through the native GenAI mechanism, which leverages data augmentation and reconstruction capabilities. This work investigates the capabilities of native GenAI to create novel poisoning attacks in wireless networks, while investigating their impact through uncertainty-informed root analysis. Then, detected attacks are mitigated by developing a trustworthy service aggregation in the wireless network. First, a joint decision problem is formulated …


Dynamic Analysis Of Malware Detection Using Customized Payloads: Examining The Effectiveness Of Manual And Automated Approaches In Web Applications, Jiban Krisna Das Jan 2025

Dynamic Analysis Of Malware Detection Using Customized Payloads: Examining The Effectiveness Of Manual And Automated Approaches In Web Applications, Jiban Krisna Das

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Web applications are becoming the prime targets for cyber-attacks, where SQL injection (SQLi) and Cross Site Scripting (XSS) are the most exploited vulnerabilities. The study explores a novel approach using customized payloads to examine the effectiveness of manual and automated techniques of malware detection. This dynamic approach can effectively generate attack payloads and identify the vulnerabilities in a website thereby strengthening website security measures. This research focuses on dynamic analysis in a controlled environment while testing and analyzing SQL and XSS payloads under varying security conditions. This quantitative analysis involves crafting targeted payloads to bypass Web Application Firewall (WAF) filters …


Qos-Aware Link Adaptation For Beyond 5g Networks: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach, Ali Parsa, Neda Moghim, Sachin Shetty Jan 2025

Qos-Aware Link Adaptation For Beyond 5g Networks: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach, Ali Parsa, Neda Moghim, Sachin Shetty

Center for Secure and Intelligent Critical Systems (CSICS) Publications

Modern wireless communication systems face increasingly complex challenges due to rapidly changing channel conditions and the growing diversity of application-specific Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Traditional link adaptation mechanisms primarily aim to maximize throughput and often lack the flexibility to support emerging applications, such as Extended Reality (XR) and Virtual Reality (VR), which demand simultaneous guarantees for high data rates, ultra low latency, and high reliability. These stringent and multidimensional QoS needs call for more intelligent and adaptive solutions. In this paper, we propose QDRLLA (QoS-aware Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Link Adaptation), a novel framework that employs deep reinforcement learning to …


Age Of Information-Based Optimal Scheduling With Energy Cost Trade-Off For Smart Warehouse: A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Approach, Sandip Roy, Abhishek Bisht, Ashok Kumar Das, Sachin Shetty Jan 2025

Age Of Information-Based Optimal Scheduling With Energy Cost Trade-Off For Smart Warehouse: A Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Approach, Sandip Roy, Abhishek Bisht, Ashok Kumar Das, Sachin Shetty

VMASC Publications

Recent advances in the integration of high-speed mobile networks and real-time IoT devices have facilitated in building of smart warehouses, where a set of beacons and Internet of Things (IoT) devices (or source nodes) can monitor the status of various physical processes in a time-critical way. In real-time status monitoring systems, like smart warehouses, quantifying the freshness of the Internet of Things (IoT) data based on the age of information (AoI) metrics becomes quite crucial. As source nodes are battery-constrained, a balanced trade-off between AoI minimization and preservation of source node battery energy is essential. In this paper, in a …


5g-Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance: An Improved Pbft Consensus Algorithm For The 5g Network, Xin Liu, Xing Fan, Baoning Niu, Xianrong Zheng Jan 2025

5g-Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance: An Improved Pbft Consensus Algorithm For The 5g Network, Xin Liu, Xing Fan, Baoning Niu, Xianrong Zheng

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

The consensus algorithm is the core technology of blockchain systems to maintain data consistency, and its performance directly affects the efficiency and security of the whole system. Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) plays a crucial role in blockchain consensus algorithms by providing a robust mechanism to achieve fault-tolerant and deterministic consensus in distributed networks. With the development of 5G network technology, its features of high bandwidth, low latency, and high reliability provide a new approach for consensus algorithm optimization. To take advantage of the features of the 5G network, this paper proposes 5G-PBFT, which is an improved practical Byzantine fault-tolerant …


A Framework For Task Offloading In Heterogeneous Computing Applications Within The Fog Ran Architecture, Samira Taheri, Neda Moghim, Naser Movahhedinia, Sachin Shetty Jan 2025

A Framework For Task Offloading In Heterogeneous Computing Applications Within The Fog Ran Architecture, Samira Taheri, Neda Moghim, Naser Movahhedinia, Sachin Shetty

VMASC Publications

Fog Radio Access Network (Fog RAN) has recently emerged as a promising architecture for supporting low-latency applications by bringing fog nodes and cloud resources closer to end users. However, existing research on computational offloading in Fog RAN lacks a comprehensive framework that addresses three key aspects: where to offload tasks, which processing nodes to utilize, and how to allocate resources for tasks with varying latency requirements. To address this gap, we propose TOFRA (Task Offloading for Fog RAN), a novel latency-aware task offloading framework. TOFRA is a centralized system that determines the optimal offloading strategy, whether to execute tasks locally, …


Secure Federated Learning Via Neural Cryptography With Homomorphic Operations, Espen Sele, Ferhat Ozgur Catak, Jungwon Seo, Murat Kuzlu Jan 2025

Secure Federated Learning Via Neural Cryptography With Homomorphic Operations, Espen Sele, Ferhat Ozgur Catak, Jungwon Seo, Murat Kuzlu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

This study examines neural cryptography with homomorphic operations as an alternative secure aggregation method for federated learning (FL). It proposes a novel neural cryptographic system supporting homomorphic addition on fixed-point encrypted data, and consisting of three networks, namely (1) an encryption network (Alice), (2) a homomorphic network (HO), and (3) a decryption network (Bob), along with an adversarial Eve network. Using the MNIST dataset, the proposed Neural Homomorphic Operation System (NHOS) is evaluated against a plaintext baseline and the CKKS scheme, a widely used public-key homomorphic encryption method. The results show that the proposed NHOS approach offers a satisfying performance, …


Silent Sabotage: Identifying And Preventing Cyber Attacks From Inside Actors, Autumn Groen Jan 2025

Silent Sabotage: Identifying And Preventing Cyber Attacks From Inside Actors, Autumn Groen

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly common and damaging as technology advances each year. Many businesses cannot afford the latest security technologies, and even with the highest security measures, there can still be room for employee error or insider threats that are not taken into account. It is crucial to keep these factors in mind when securing a business network of any size or financial standing.This project will aim to simulate a business environment by first building a small network with three routers and a switch, and implementing some of the common best practices for network hardening from credible organizations like NIST …


A Comprehensive Academic And Industrial Survey Of Blockchain Technology For The Energy Sector Using Fuzzy Einstein Decision-Making, Umit Cali, Annabelle Lee, Barry Hayes, Claudio Lima, D. Jonathan Sebastian-Cardenas, David Flynn, Emre Kantar, Farrokh Rahimi, Kaung Si Thu, Marco Pasetti, Marthe Fogstad Dynge, Merlinda Andoni, Muhammet Deveci, Murat Kuzlu, Raquel Alanso, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Sambeet Mishra, Shammya Shananda Saha, Sonam Norbu, Srinikhil Gourisetti, Ugur Halden, Vahid Hosseinezhad, Valentin Robu Jan 2025

A Comprehensive Academic And Industrial Survey Of Blockchain Technology For The Energy Sector Using Fuzzy Einstein Decision-Making, Umit Cali, Annabelle Lee, Barry Hayes, Claudio Lima, D. Jonathan Sebastian-Cardenas, David Flynn, Emre Kantar, Farrokh Rahimi, Kaung Si Thu, Marco Pasetti, Marthe Fogstad Dynge, Merlinda Andoni, Muhammet Deveci, Murat Kuzlu, Raquel Alanso, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Sambeet Mishra, Shammya Shananda Saha, Sonam Norbu, Srinikhil Gourisetti, Ugur Halden, Vahid Hosseinezhad, Valentin Robu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The global energy sector is undergoing a significant transformation driven by decarbonization and digitalization, leading to the emergence of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) — particularly blockchain — as a promising tool for enhancing transparency, security, and efficiency in modern power systems. This study aims to provide a comprehensive academic and industrial survey of blockchain applications in the energy sector and develop a robust decision-making framework to identify and prioritize the most promising real-world use cases based on multidisciplinary criteria. A three-stage methodology was adopted: (i) a literature and market review encompassing over 300 academic publications and commercial blockchain initiatives in …


5g-Enabled Iot Gateway For Educational Purposes, Murat Kuzlu Jan 2025

5g-Enabled Iot Gateway For Educational Purposes, Murat Kuzlu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The project aims to develop and implement a 5G-IoT gateway for efficient management and interconnection of IoT devices through advanced sensing and communication technologies. Sensing technologies encompass modern approaches for detecting and measuring physical properties with high accuracy across manufacturing, smart grids, healthcare, smart cities, and other domains. Communication technologies represent the latest developments in high-speed data transmission, offering enhanced reliability and network capacity. This 5G-IoT gateway functions as an educational platform, providing students and educators with hands-on experience in emerging technologies. The system creates opportunities for practical learning and research in telecommunication technologies by enabling direct engagement with 5G …


A Comprehensive Exploration Of 6g Wireless Communication Technologies, Md Nurul Absar Siddiky, Muhammad Enayetur Rahman, Md. Shahriar Uzzal, H. M. Dipu Kabir Jan 2025

A Comprehensive Exploration Of 6g Wireless Communication Technologies, Md Nurul Absar Siddiky, Muhammad Enayetur Rahman, Md. Shahriar Uzzal, H. M. Dipu Kabir

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

As the telecommunications landscape braces for the post-5G era, this paper embarks on delineating the foundational pillars and pioneering visions that define the trajectory toward 6G wireless communication systems. Recognizing the insatiable demand for higher data rates, enhanced connectivity, and broader network coverage, we unravel the evolution from the existing 5G infrastructure to the nascent 6G framework, setting the stage for transformative advancements anticipated in the 2030s. Our discourse navigates through the intricate architecture of 6G, highlighting the paradigm shifts toward superconvergence, non-IP-based networking protocols, and information-centric networks, all underpinned by a robust 360-degree cybersecurity and privacy-by-engineering design. Delving into …


Deep Reinforcement Learning With Explicit Context Representation, Francisco Munguia-Galeano, Ah-Hwee Tan, Ze Ji Jan 2025

Deep Reinforcement Learning With Explicit Context Representation, Francisco Munguia-Galeano, Ah-Hwee Tan, Ze Ji

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Though reinforcement learning (RL) has shown an outstanding capability for solving complex computational problems, most RL algorithms lack an explicit method that would allow learning from contextual information. On the other hand, humans often use context to identify patterns and relations among elements in the environment, along with how to avoid making wrong actions. However, what may seem like an obviously wrong decision from a human perspective could take hundreds of steps for an RL agent to learn to avoid. This article proposes a framework for discrete environments called Iota explicit context representation (IECR). The framework involves representing each state …


Nexus: Network Exploration For Exploiting Unsafe Sequences In Multi-Turn Llm Jailbreaks, Javad Rafiei Asl, Sidhant Narula, Mohammad Ghasemigol, Eduardo Blanco, Daniel Takabi Jan 2025

Nexus: Network Exploration For Exploiting Unsafe Sequences In Multi-Turn Llm Jailbreaks, Javad Rafiei Asl, Sidhant Narula, Mohammad Ghasemigol, Eduardo Blanco, Daniel Takabi

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing, yet remain vulnerable to jailbreak attacks—particularly multi-turn jailbreaks that distribute malicious intent across benign exchanges, thereby bypassing alignment mechanisms. Existing approaches often suffer from limited exploration of the adversarial space, rely on hand-crafted heuristics, or lack systematic query refinement. We propose NEXUS (Network Exploration for eXploiting Unsafe Sequences), a modular framework for constructing, refining, and executing optimized multi-turn attacks. NEXUS comprises: (1) ThoughtNet, which hierarchically expands a harmful intent into a structured semantic network of topics, entities, and query chains; (2) a feedback-driven Simulator that iteratively refines and prunes these chains …


Github Repository Complexity Leads To Diminished Web Archive Availability, David Calano, Michael Nelson, Michele Weigle Jan 2025

Github Repository Complexity Leads To Diminished Web Archive Availability, David Calano, Michael Nelson, Michele Weigle

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Software is often developed using versioned controlled software, such as Git, and hosted on centralized Web hosts, such as GitHub and GitLab. These Web hosted software repositories are made available to users in the form of traditional HTML Web pages for each source file and directory, as well as a presentational home page and various descriptive pages. We examined more than 12,000 Web hosted Git repository project home pages, primarily from GitHub, to measure how well their presentational components are preserved in the Internet Archive, as well as the source trees of the collected GitHub repositories to assess the extent …


Human Perception Of Ai Capabilities At Classifying Perturbed Roadway Signs, Katherine R. Garcia, Jing Chen, Yanru Xiao, Scott Mishler, Cong Wang, Bin Hu Jan 2025

Human Perception Of Ai Capabilities At Classifying Perturbed Roadway Signs, Katherine R. Garcia, Jing Chen, Yanru Xiao, Scott Mishler, Cong Wang, Bin Hu

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is crucial to numerous functions required for driving automation systems, including the computer vision techniques used to detect the roadway environment and make real-time decisions. However, the images used as inputs to the AI system may be maliciously perturbed, or manipulated, causing the AI system to make an incorrect classification. In this study, we examined humans’ perception of the AI’s computer vision capability of classifying various road sign images, including the original images, images with two different types of malicious attacks, and images that are scrambled randomly at the pixel level. Our results showed that participants rated …


Sting: A Stealthy Backdoor Attack On Gnn-Based Malicious Domain Detection Via Dns Perturbations, Muhammad Anan, Mahmoud Nazzal, Abdallah Khreishah, Issa Khalil, Nhathai Phan, Ahmad Sawalmeh Jan 2025

Sting: A Stealthy Backdoor Attack On Gnn-Based Malicious Domain Detection Via Dns Perturbations, Muhammad Anan, Mahmoud Nazzal, Abdallah Khreishah, Issa Khalil, Nhathai Phan, Ahmad Sawalmeh

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Detecting malicious Internet domains is essential for safeguarding against various online threats. The current approach to detecting malicious domains (MDD) employs a graph neural network (GNN) method, which uses DNS logs to construct heterogeneous graphs for determining the maliciousness of unknown domains. Despite its success, this method is vulnerable to data poisoning attacks where an adversary can manipulate specific graph nodes to implant a backdoor into the model during training. To showcase the vulnerability, we propose a stealthy trigger injection attack on node features and graph structure in MDD, dubbed (STING). The attacker carefully manipulates selected features and edges of …


Quickque: Enabling Quick Access To Information In User Reviews For Screen Reader Users, Mohan Sunkara, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Sandeep Kalari, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok Jan 2025

Quickque: Enabling Quick Access To Information In User Reviews For Screen Reader Users, Mohan Sunkara, Akshay Kolgar Nayak, Sandeep Kalari, Yash Prakash, Sampath Jayarathna, Hae-Na Lee, Vikas Ashok

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Efficiently perusing online customer reviews is presently challenging for blind users, who rely on a screen reader that supports predominantly one-dimensional narration of content via keyboard shortcuts. To address this, with restaurant reviews as seminal case study, we developed QuickCue, a browser extension prototype that enables screen reader users to quickly obtain the positives and negatives regarding different aspects of a restaurant (e.g., food quality, hygiene, ambiance), without having to sift through numerous reviews containing redundant information. At its core, QuickCue utilizes a large language model to perform aspect and sentiment-based joint classification of reviews to group them based on …