e-Health for Rural Areas in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Sebokeng Experience

We report the experience gained in an e-Health project in the Gauteng province, in South Africa. A Proof-of-Concept of the project has been already installed in 3 clinics in the Sebokeng township. The project is now going to be applied to 300 clinics in the whole province. This extension of the Proof-of-Concept can however give rise to security aws because of the inclusion of rural areas with unreliable Internet connection. We address this problem and propose a safe solution

Enhanced cell controller for aerospace manufacturing

Aerospace manufacturing industry is unique in that production typically focuses on high variety and quality but extremely low volume. Manufacturing processes are also sometimes unique and not repeatable and, hence, costly. Production is getting more expensive with the introduction of industrial robots and their cells. This paper describes the development of the Flexa Cell Coordinator (FCC), a system that is providing a solution to manage resources at assembly cell level. It can control, organise and coordinate between the resources and is capable of controlling remote cells and resources because of its distributed nature. It also gives insight of a system to the higher management via its rich reporting facility and connectivity with company systems e.g., Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP). It is able to control various kinds of cells and resources (network based) which are not limited to robots and machines. It is extendable and capable of adding multiple numbers of cells inside the system. It also provides the facility of scheduling the task to avoid the deadlocking in the process. In FCC resources (e.g., tracker) can also be shared between cells

On the aspects of iot protocols specification and checking

Тіменко, А. В. Щодо аспектів специфікації і перевірки протоколів інтернету речей = On the aspects of iot protocols specification and checking / А. В. Тіменко // Shipbuilding & Marine Infrastructure. – 2019. – № 2 (12). – С. 35–41.Анотація. Сучасний рівень складності різноманітних програмних систем зумовлює потребу адаптації та доопрацювання процесу розроблення таких систем належним чином. Показовими прикладами останніх є системи, побудовані згідно з концепцією Інтернету речей, що, зокрема, передбачає застосування спеціалізованих протоколів взаємодії компонентів. Концепція Інтернету речей охоплює мільярди різнорідних «розумних» пристроїв, що взаємодіють один з одним на основі різноманітних протоколів. З огляду на варіативність протоколів взаємодії та їх реалізацій виникає проблема сумісності таких пристроїв. Разом із цим варто відзначити, що під час проектування різного роду систем, наприклад систем критичного призначення, все більшого поширення набуває використання формальних методів, зокрема методів перевірки на моделі. Робота адресується вирішенню проблеми перевірки сумісності компонентів систем Інтернету речей шляхом автоматизованого застосування методів перевірки на моделі. Мета роботи – запропонувати підхід до вирішення проблеми перевірки сумісності компонентів систем Інтернету речей за рахунок застосування методу перевірки на моделі. Методика полягає в наступному: спочатку синтезується абстрактна специфікація, потім ця специфікація деталізується і перевіряється методом перевірки на моделі в автоматизованому режимі. Як результат запропоновано підхід до перевірки сумісності компонентів систем Інтернету речей, що полягає в автоматизованій формальній верифікації протоколів взаємодії. Синтез специфікації протоколу MQTT згідно з запропонованим підходом розглядається як тематичне дослідження.Abstract. Modern level of diverse software systems complexity stipulates the engineering process to be adapted and refined appropriately. The demonstrative examples of such systems are the ones from the Internet of Things domain that, in particular, imply the usage of specialized communication protocols. The concept of the Internet of Things encompasses the billions of heterogeneous smart devices communicating to each other through different protocols. Taking into consideration the variation of communication protocols and its implementations, the interoperability problem arises. Moreover, it should be noted that during the designing of diverse systems, the safety-critical ones in particular, the practice of formal methods usage, especially the model checkers, is becoming more and more popular. The work is addressed to solving the interoperability problem of the Internet of Things domain by way of automated model checking. Goal – to propose an approach to solving the interoperability problem in the Internet of Things domain by way of model checking method usage. The technique applied is as follows: synthesize the abstract specification first, and then this specification should be detailed and formally checked in an automated manner. Results obtained – an approach to checking the interoperability between the components of the Internet of Things system has been proposed. The approach is based on automated formal verification of communication protocols. Synthesis of MQTT protocol specification has been considered as a case study. The novelty of work is about the interpretation of interoperability checking problem from the viewpoint of consistency at communication protocols level. The practical value of the results obtained is about the possibility of application of the approach proposed in order to exclude the unexpected scenarios of the Internet of Things System’s components communication, communication failures in particular

A theory and model for the evolution of software services

Software services are subject to constant change and variation. To control service development, a service developer needs to know why a change was made, what are its implications and whether the change is complete. Typically, service clients do not perceive the upgraded service immediately. As a consequence, service-based applications may fail on the service client side due to changes carried out during a provider service upgrade. In order to manage changes in a meaningful and effective manner service clients must therefore be considered when service changes are introduced at the service provider's side. Otherwise such changes will most certainly result in severe application disruption. Eliminating spurious results and inconsistencies that may occur due to uncontrolled changes is therefore a necessary condition for the ability of services to evolve gracefully, ensure service stability, and handle variability in their behavior. Towards this goal, this work presents a model and a theoretical framework for the compatible evolution of services based on well-founded theories and techniques from a number of disparate fields.

Formal analysis of security protocols based on web services

This thesis examines the use of multi-stack pushdown automata to model the behaviour and properties of Web services based cryptographic protocols. The protocols are modelled in Promela and verified using the Spin model checker. The Simple Message Exchange Protocol and the Security Token Protocol are protocols that underlie the WS-Security and WS-Trust specifications, respectively. These two protocols are tested for correctness in the presence of an intruder that conforms to the Dolev-Yao model, i.e., it is tested whether the required properties the protocols hold in the presence of a Dolev-Yao intruder. The thesis also extends the Dolev-Yao intruder model to encompass attacks targeted specifically at Web services. An intruder model in Promela is created based on the Dolev-Yao abstraction which is extended to incorporate an XML injection attack model. The behaviour and properties of the Simple Message Exchange Protocol and the Security Token Protocol are then examined when subjected to an XML injection attack using this extended Dolev-Yao model