6,544 research outputs found
Feature Selection for MAUC-Oriented Classification Systems
Feature selection is an important pre-processing step for many pattern
classification tasks. Traditionally, feature selection methods are designed to
obtain a feature subset that can lead to high classification accuracy. However,
classification accuracy has recently been shown to be an inappropriate
performance metric of classification systems in many cases. Instead, the Area
Under the receiver operating characteristic Curve (AUC) and its multi-class
extension, MAUC, have been proved to be better alternatives. Hence, the target
of classification system design is gradually shifting from seeking a system
with the maximum classification accuracy to obtaining a system with the maximum
AUC/MAUC. Previous investigations have shown that traditional feature selection
methods need to be modified to cope with this new objective. These methods most
often are restricted to binary classification problems only. In this study, a
filter feature selection method, namely MAUC Decomposition based Feature
Selection (MDFS), is proposed for multi-class classification problems. To the
best of our knowledge, MDFS is the first method specifically designed to select
features for building classification systems with maximum MAUC. Extensive
empirical results demonstrate the advantage of MDFS over several compared
feature selection methods.Comment: A journal length pape
Dos and Don'ts of Machine Learning in Computer Security
With the growing processing power of computing systems and the increasing
availability of massive datasets, machine learning algorithms have led to major
breakthroughs in many different areas. This development has influenced computer
security, spawning a series of work on learning-based security systems, such as
for malware detection, vulnerability discovery, and binary code analysis.
Despite great potential, machine learning in security is prone to subtle
pitfalls that undermine its performance and render learning-based systems
potentially unsuitable for security tasks and practical deployment. In this
paper, we look at this problem with critical eyes. First, we identify common
pitfalls in the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning-based
security systems. We conduct a study of 30 papers from top-tier security
conferences within the past 10 years, confirming that these pitfalls are
widespread in the current security literature. In an empirical analysis, we
further demonstrate how individual pitfalls can lead to unrealistic performance
and interpretations, obstructing the understanding of the security problem at
hand. As a remedy, we propose actionable recommendations to support researchers
in avoiding or mitigating the pitfalls where possible. Furthermore, we identify
open problems when applying machine learning in security and provide directions
for further research.Comment: to appear at USENIX Security Symposium 202
Deep Hierarchical Parsing for Semantic Segmentation
This paper proposes a learning-based approach to scene parsing inspired by
the deep Recursive Context Propagation Network (RCPN). RCPN is a deep
feed-forward neural network that utilizes the contextual information from the
entire image, through bottom-up followed by top-down context propagation via
random binary parse trees. This improves the feature representation of every
super-pixel in the image for better classification into semantic categories. We
analyze RCPN and propose two novel contributions to further improve the model.
We first analyze the learning of RCPN parameters and discover the presence of
bypass error paths in the computation graph of RCPN that can hinder contextual
propagation. We propose to tackle this problem by including the classification
loss of the internal nodes of the random parse trees in the original RCPN loss
function. Secondly, we use an MRF on the parse tree nodes to model the
hierarchical dependency present in the output. Both modifications provide
performance boosts over the original RCPN and the new system achieves
state-of-the-art performance on Stanford Background, SIFT-Flow and Daimler
urban datasets.Comment: IEEE CVPR 201
A comparative study of machine learning methods for verbal autopsy text classification
A Verbal Autopsy is the record of an interview about the circumstances of an uncertified death. In developing countries, if a death occurs away from health facilities, a field-worker interviews a relative of the deceased about the circumstances of the death; this Verbal Autopsy can be reviewed offsite. We report on a comparative study of the processes involved in Text Classification applied to classifying Cause of Death: feature value representation; machine learning classification algorithms; and feature reduction strategies in order to identify the suitable approaches applicable to the classification of Verbal Autopsy text. We demonstrate that normalised term frequency and the standard TFiDF achieve comparable performance across a number of classifiers. The results also show Support Vector Machine is superior to other classification algorithms employed in this research. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of employing a ’locally-semisupervised’ feature reduction strategy in order to increase performance accuracy
The Dark Side(-Channel) of Mobile Devices: A Survey on Network Traffic Analysis
In recent years, mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) have met an
increasing commercial success and have become a fundamental element of the
everyday life for billions of people all around the world. Mobile devices are
used not only for traditional communication activities (e.g., voice calls and
messages) but also for more advanced tasks made possible by an enormous amount
of multi-purpose applications (e.g., finance, gaming, and shopping). As a
result, those devices generate a significant network traffic (a consistent part
of the overall Internet traffic). For this reason, the research community has
been investigating security and privacy issues that are related to the network
traffic generated by mobile devices, which could be analyzed to obtain
information useful for a variety of goals (ranging from device security and
network optimization, to fine-grained user profiling).
In this paper, we review the works that contributed to the state of the art
of network traffic analysis targeting mobile devices. In particular, we present
a systematic classification of the works in the literature according to three
criteria: (i) the goal of the analysis; (ii) the point where the network
traffic is captured; and (iii) the targeted mobile platforms. In this survey,
we consider points of capturing such as Wi-Fi Access Points, software
simulation, and inside real mobile devices or emulators. For the surveyed
works, we review and compare analysis techniques, validation methods, and
achieved results. We also discuss possible countermeasures, challenges and
possible directions for future research on mobile traffic analysis and other
emerging domains (e.g., Internet of Things). We believe our survey will be a
reference work for researchers and practitioners in this research field.Comment: 55 page
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