9,750 research outputs found
PDF-Malware Detection: A Survey and Taxonomy of Current Techniques
Portable Document Format, more commonly known as PDF, has become, in the last 20 years, a standard for document exchange and dissemination due its portable nature and widespread adoption. The flexibility and power of this format are not only leveraged by benign users, but from hackers as well who have been working to exploit various types of vulnerabilities, overcome security restrictions, and then transform the PDF format in one among the leading malicious code spread vectors. Analyzing the content of malicious PDF files to extract the main features that characterize the malware identity and behavior, is a fundamental task for modern threat intelligence platforms that need to learn how to automatically identify new attacks. This paper surveys existing state of the art about systems for the detection of malicious PDF files and organizes them in a taxonomy that separately considers the used approaches and the data analyzed to detect the presence of malicious code. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Actinide-rich and Actinide-poor -Process Enhanced Metal-Poor Stars do not Require Separate -Process Progenitors
The astrophysical production site of the heaviest elements in the universe
remains a mystery. Incorporating heavy element signatures of metal-poor,
-process enhanced stars into theoretical studies of -process production
can offer crucial constraints on the origin of heavy elements. In this study,
we introduce and apply the "Actinide-Dilution with Matching" model to a variety
of stellar groups ranging from actinide-deficient to actinide-enhanced to
empirically characterize -process ejecta mass as a function of electron
fraction. We find that actinide-boost stars do not indicate the need for a
unique and separate -process progenitor. Rather, small variations of neutron
richness within the same type of -process event can account for all observed
levels of actinide enhancements. The very low-, fission-cycling ejecta of
an -process event need only constitute 10-30% of the total ejecta mass to
accommodate most actinide abundances of metal-poor stars. We find that our
empirical distributions of ejecta are similar to those inferred from
studies of GW170817 mass ejecta ratios, which is consistent with neutron-star
mergers being a source of the heavy elements in metal-poor, -process
enhanced stars.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, Submitted to Ap
Improving acoustic vehicle classification by information fusion
We present an information fusion approach for ground vehicle classification based on the emitted acoustic signal. Many acoustic factors can contribute to the classification accuracy of working ground vehicles. Classification relying on a single feature set may lose some useful information if its underlying sound production model is not comprehensive. To improve classification accuracy, we consider an information fusion diagram, in which various aspects of an acoustic signature are taken into account and emphasized separately by two different feature extraction methods. The first set of features aims to represent internal sound production, and a number of harmonic components are extracted to characterize the factors related to the vehicle’s resonance. The second set of features is extracted based on a computationally effective discriminatory analysis, and a group of key frequency components are selected by mutual information, accounting for the sound production from the vehicle’s exterior parts. In correspondence with this structure, we further put forward a modifiedBayesian fusion algorithm, which takes advantage of matching each specific feature set with its favored classifier. To assess the proposed approach, experiments are carried out based on a data set containing acoustic signals from different types of vehicles. Results indicate that the fusion approach can effectively increase classification accuracy compared to that achieved using each individual features set alone. The Bayesian-based decision level fusion is found fusion is found to be improved than a feature level fusion approac
Classification and Verification of Online Handwritten Signatures with Time Causal Information Theory Quantifiers
We present a new approach for online handwritten signature classification and
verification based on descriptors stemming from Information Theory. The
proposal uses the Shannon Entropy, the Statistical Complexity, and the Fisher
Information evaluated over the Bandt and Pompe symbolization of the horizontal
and vertical coordinates of signatures. These six features are easy and fast to
compute, and they are the input to an One-Class Support Vector Machine
classifier. The results produced surpass state-of-the-art techniques that
employ higher-dimensional feature spaces which often require specialized
software and hardware. We assess the consistency of our proposal with respect
to the size of the training sample, and we also use it to classify the
signatures into meaningful groups.Comment: Submitted to PLOS On
Fundamental structures of dynamic social networks
Social systems are in a constant state of flux with dynamics spanning from
minute-by-minute changes to patterns present on the timescale of years.
Accurate models of social dynamics are important for understanding spreading of
influence or diseases, formation of friendships, and the productivity of teams.
While there has been much progress on understanding complex networks over the
past decade, little is known about the regularities governing the
micro-dynamics of social networks. Here we explore the dynamic social network
of a densely-connected population of approximately 1000 individuals and their
interactions in the network of real-world person-to-person proximity measured
via Bluetooth, as well as their telecommunication networks, online social media
contacts, geo-location, and demographic data. These high-resolution data allow
us to observe social groups directly, rendering community detection
unnecessary. Starting from 5-minute time slices we uncover dynamic social
structures expressed on multiple timescales. On the hourly timescale, we find
that gatherings are fluid, with members coming and going, but organized via a
stable core of individuals. Each core represents a social context. Cores
exhibit a pattern of recurring meetings across weeks and months, each with
varying degrees of regularity. Taken together, these findings provide a
powerful simplification of the social network, where cores represent
fundamental structures expressed with strong temporal and spatial regularity.
Using this framework, we explore the complex interplay between social and
geospatial behavior, documenting how the formation of cores are preceded by
coordination behavior in the communication networks, and demonstrating that
social behavior can be predicted with high precision.Comment: Main Manuscript: 16 pages, 4 figures. Supplementary Information: 39
pages, 34 figure
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