Spoiled Onions: Exposing Malicious Tor Exit Relays

Several hundred Tor exit relays together push more than 1 GiB/s of network traffic. However, it is easy for exit relays to snoop and tamper with anonymised network traffic and as all relays are run by independent volunteers, not all of them are innocuous. In this paper, we seek to expose malicious exit relays and document their actions. First, we monitored the Tor network after developing a fast and modular exit relay scanner. We implemented several scanning modules for detecting common attacks and used them to probe all exit relays over a period of four months. We discovered numerous malicious exit relays engaging in different attacks. To reduce the attack surface users are exposed to, we further discuss the design and implementation of a browser extension patch which fetches and compares suspicious X.509 certificates over independent Tor circuits. Our work makes it possible to continuously monitor Tor exit relays. We are able to detect and thwart many man-in-the-middle attacks which makes the network safer for its users. All our code is available under a free license

Investigating the timecourse of accessing conversational implicatures during incremental sentence interpretation

Many contextual inferences in utterance interpretation are explained as following from the nature of conversation and the assumption that participants are rational. Recent psycholinguistic research has focussed on certain of these ‘Gricean’ inferences and have revealed that comprehenders can access them in online interpretation. However there have been mixed results as to the time-course of access. Some results show that Gricean inferences can be accessed very rapidly, as rapidly as any other contextually specified information (Sedivy, 2003; Grodner, Klein, Carbery, & Tanenhaus, 2010); while other studies looking at the same kind of inference suggest that access to Gricean inferences are delayed relative to other aspects of semantic interpretation (Huang & Snedeker, 2009; in press). While previous timecourse research has focussed on Gricean inferences that support the online assignment of reference to definite expressions, the study reported here examines the timecourse of access to scalar implicatures, which enrich the meaning of an utterance beyond the semantic interpretation. Even if access to Gricean inference in support of reference assignment may be rapid, it is still unknown whether genuinely enriching scalar implicatures are delayed. Our results indicate that scalar implicatures are accessed as rapidly as other contextual inferences. The implications of our results are discussed in reference to the architecture of language comprehension

Spying the World from your Laptop -- Identifying and Profiling Content Providers and Big Downloaders in BitTorrent

This paper presents a set of exploits an adversary can use to continuously spy on most BitTorrent users of the Internet from a single machine and for a long period of time. Using these exploits for a period of 103 days, we collected 148 million IPs downloading 2 billion copies of contents. We identify the IP address of the content providers for 70% of the BitTorrent contents we spied on. We show that a few content providers inject most contents into BitTorrent and that those content providers are located in foreign data centers. We also show that an adversary can compromise the privacy of any peer in BitTorrent and identify the big downloaders that we define as the peers who subscribe to a large number of contents. This infringement on users' privacy poses a significant impediment to the legal adoption of BitTorrent

The Patient's Guide to Psoriasis Treatment. Part 4: Goeckerman Therapy.

BackgroundThe Goeckerman regimen remains one of the oldest, most reliable treatment options for patients with moderate to severe psoriasis. Goeckerman therapy currently consists of exposure to ultraviolet B light and application of crude coal tar. The details of the procedure can be confusing and challenging to understand for the first-time patient or provider.ObjectiveTo present a freely available online guide and video on Goeckerman treatment that explains the regimen in a patient-oriented manner.MethodsThe Goeckerman protocol used at the University of California-San Francisco Psoriasis and Skin Treatment Center as well as available information from the literature were reviewed to design a comprehensive guide for patients receiving Goeckerman treatment.ResultsWe created a printable guide and video resource that covers the supplies needed for Goeckerman regimen, the treatment procedure, expected results, how to monitor for adverse events, and discharge planning.ConclusionThis new resource is beneficial for prospective patients planning to undergo Goeckerman treatment, healthcare providers, and trainees who want to learn more about this procedure. Online media and video delivers material in a way that is flexible and often familiar to patients

Developing a valid method to study adaptive behaviours with regard to IEQ in primary schools

Adaptive behaviour impacts the classroom's environment and the student's comfort. Therefore, a deep understanding of students' adaptive behaviour is required. This study aims to develop a valid and reliable method to realize how children in their late middle childhood (9–11) practise adaptive behaviours as a response to the classroom's Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). A self-reported questionnaire accompanied with an observation form is designed based on children's ‘here and now’ sensations, their cognitive and linguistic competence. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire were tested by running pilot and field studies in eight primary schools from July 2017 to May 2018. Through transverse sampling, 805 children were observed, and 1390 questionnaires were collected in 31 classrooms. Questions and responses of the designed questionnaire were validated by monitoring answer-process, non-participant observations, cross-checking questions and statistical tests. Validating process improved the wording of the questions and response categories and resulted in a questionnaire with a high and valid response rate. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by measuring the variability and standard deviations of responses under similar conditions. To conclude, the study introduces a questionnaire and an observation form that should be used together to provide a valid and reliable method for studying adaptive behaviour of primary school children

A List of Household Objects for Robotic Retrieval Prioritized by People with ALS (Version 092008)

This technical report is designed to serve as a citable reference for the original prioritized object list that the Healthcare Robotics Lab at Georgia Tech released on its website in September of 2008. It is also expected to serve as the primary citable reference for the research associated with this list until the publication of a detailed, peer-reviewed paper. The original prioritized list of object classes resulted from a needs assessment involving 8 motor-impaired patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and targeted, in-person interviews of 15 motor-impaired ALS patients. All of these participants were drawn from the Emory ALS Center. The prioritized object list consists of 43 object classes ranked by how important the participants considered each class to be for retrieval by an assistive robot. We intend for this list to be used by researchers to inform the design and benchmarking of robotic systems, especially research related to autonomous mobile manipulation

Tracking Chart 2004 Nike, Indonesia 07003322C

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_2004_Nike_TC_Indonesia_07003322C.pdf: 25 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Component-aware Orchestration of Cloud-based Enterprise Applications, from TOSCA to Docker and Kubernetes

Enterprise IT is currently facing the challenge of coordinating the management of complex, multi-component applications across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Containers and container orchestrators provide a valuable solution to deploy multi-component applications over cloud platforms, by coupling the lifecycle of each application component to that of its hosting container. We hereby propose a solution for going beyond such a coupling, based on the OASIS standard TOSCA and on Docker. We indeed propose a novel approach for deploying multi-component applications on top of existing container orchestrators, which allows to manage each component independently from the container used to run it. We also present prototype tools implementing our approach, and we show how we effectively exploited them to carry out a concrete case study