3,844 research outputs found
Modeling the Worldwide Spread of Pandemic Influenza: Baseline Case and Containment Interventions
We present a study of the worldwide spread of a pandemic influenza and its
possible containment at a global level taking into account all available
information on air travel. We studied a metapopulation stochastic epidemic
model on a global scale that considers airline travel flow data among urban
areas. We provided a temporal and spatial evolution of the pandemic with a
sensitivity analysis of different levels of infectiousness of the virus and
initial outbreak conditions (both geographical and seasonal). For each
spreading scenario we provided the timeline and the geographical impact of the
pandemic in 3,100 urban areas, located in 220 different countries. We compared
the baseline cases with different containment strategies, including travel
restrictions and the therapeutic use of antiviral (AV) drugs. We show that the
inclusion of air transportation is crucial in the assessment of the occurrence
probability of global outbreaks. The large-scale therapeutic usage of AV drugs
in all hit countries would be able to mitigate a pandemic effect with a
reproductive rate as high as 1.9 during the first year; with AV supply use
sufficient to treat approximately 2% to 6% of the population, in conjunction
with efficient case detection and timely drug distribution. For highly
contagious viruses (i.e., a reproductive rate as high as 2.3), even the
unrealistic use of supplies corresponding to the treatment of approximately 20%
of the population leaves 30%-50% of the population infected. In the case of
limited AV supplies and pandemics with a reproductive rate as high as 1.9, we
demonstrate that the more cooperative the strategy, the more effective are the
containment results in all regions of the world, including those countries that
made part of their resources available for global use.Comment: 16 page
Command & Control: Understanding, Denying and Detecting - A review of malware C2 techniques, detection and defences
In this survey, we first briefly review the current state of cyber attacks,
highlighting significant recent changes in how and why such attacks are
performed. We then investigate the mechanics of malware command and control
(C2) establishment: we provide a comprehensive review of the techniques used by
attackers to set up such a channel and to hide its presence from the attacked
parties and the security tools they use. We then switch to the defensive side
of the problem, and review approaches that have been proposed for the detection
and disruption of C2 channels. We also map such techniques to widely-adopted
security controls, emphasizing gaps or limitations (and success stories) in
current best practices.Comment: Work commissioned by CPNI, available at c2report.org. 38 pages.
Listing abstract compressed from version appearing in repor
#mytweet via Instagram: Exploring User Behaviour across Multiple Social Networks
We study how users of multiple online social networks (OSNs) employ and share
information by studying a common user pool that use six OSNs - Flickr, Google+,
Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube. We analyze the temporal and topical
signature of users' sharing behaviour, showing how they exhibit distinct
behaviorial patterns on different networks. We also examine cross-sharing
(i.e., the act of user broadcasting their activity to multiple OSNs
near-simultaneously), a previously-unstudied behaviour and demonstrate how
certain OSNs play the roles of originating source and destination sinks.Comment: IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks
Analysis and Mining, 2015. This is the pre-peer reviewed version and the
final version is available at
http://wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/publications/2015/lim-et-al-15.pd
Optimizing Mobile Application Performance through Network Infrastructure Aware Adaptation.
Encouraged by the fast adoption of mobile devices and the widespread deployment of mobile networks, mobile applications are becoming the preferred “gateways” connecting users to networking services. Although the CPU capability of mobile devices is approaching that of off-the-shelf PCs, the performance of mobile networking applications is still far behind. One of the fundamental reasons is that most mobile applications are unaware of the mobile network specific characteristics, leading to inefficient network and device resource utilization. Thus, in order to improve the user experience for most mobile applications, it is essential to dive into the critical network components along network connections including mobile networks, smartphone platforms, mobile applications, and content partners. We aim to optimize the performance of mobile network applications through network-aware resource adaptation approaches. Our techniques consist of the following four aspects: (i) revealing the fundamental infrastructure characteristics of cellular networks that are distinctive from wireline networks; (ii) isolating the impact of important factors on user perceived performance in mobile network applications; (iii) determining the particular usage patterns of mobile applications; and (iv) improving the performance of mobile applications through network aware adaptations.PhDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99829/1/qiangxu_1.pd
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