26,211 research outputs found
Measuring Software Diversity, with Applications to Security
In this work, we briefly introduce and discuss some of the diversity measures
used in Ecology. After a succinct description and analysis of the most relevant
ones, we single out the Shannon-Weiner index. We justify why it is the most
informative and relevant one for measuring software diversity. Then, we show
how it can be used for effectively assessing the diversity of various real
software ecosystems. We discover in the process a frequently overlooked
software monopoly, and its key security implications. We finally extract some
conclusions from the results obtained, focusing mostly on their security
implications.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Ab Initio Modeling of Ecosystems with Artificial Life
Artificial Life provides the opportunity to study the emergence and evolution
of simple ecosystems in real time. We give an overview of the advantages and
limitations of such an approach, as well as its relation to individual-based
modeling techniques. The Digital Life system Avida is introduced and prospects
for experiments with ab initio evolution (evolution "from scratch"),
maintenance, as well as stability of ecosystems are discussed.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
Comparison of PBO solvers in a dependency solving domain
Linux package managers have to deal with dependencies and conflicts of
packages required to be installed by the user. As an NP-complete problem, this
is a hard task to solve. In this context, several approaches have been pursued.
Apt-pbo is a package manager based on the apt project that encodes the
dependency solving problem as a pseudo-Boolean optimization (PBO) problem. This
paper compares different PBO solvers and their effectiveness on solving the
dependency solving problem.Comment: In Proceedings LoCoCo 2010, arXiv:1007.083
A Storm in an IoT Cup: The Emergence of Cyber-Physical Social Machines
The concept of social machines is increasingly being used to characterise
various socio-cognitive spaces on the Web. Social machines are human
collectives using networked digital technology which initiate real-world
processes and activities including human communication, interactions and
knowledge creation. As such, they continuously emerge and fade on the Web. The
relationship between humans and machines is made more complex by the adoption
of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and devices. The scale, automation,
continuous sensing, and actuation capabilities of these devices add an extra
dimension to the relationship between humans and machines making it difficult
to understand their evolution at either the systemic or the conceptual level.
This article describes these new socio-technical systems, which we term
Cyber-Physical Social Machines, through different exemplars, and considers the
associated challenges of security and privacy.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
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