ShakeMe: Key Generation From Shared Motion

Devices equipped with accelerometer sensors such as today's mobile devices can make use of motion to exchange information. A typical example for shared motion is shaking of two devices which are held together in one hand. Deriving a shared secret (key) from shared motion, e.g. for device pairing, is an obvious application for this. Only the keys need to be exchanged between the peers and neither the motion data nor the features extracted from it. This makes the pairing fast and easy. For this, each device generates an information signal (key) independently of each other and, in order to pair, they should be identical. The key is essentially derived by quantizing certain well discriminative features extracted from the accelerometer data after an implicit synchronization. In this paper, we aim at finding a small set of effective features which enable a significantly simpler quantization procedure than the prior art. Our tentative results with authentic accelerometer data show that this is possible with a competent accuracy ($76$%) and key strength (entropy approximately $15$ bits).Comment: The paper is accepted to the 13th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Intelligence and Computing (PIComp-2015

Seismic Risk Analysis of Revenue Losses, Gross Regional Product and transportation systems.

Natural threats like earthquakes, hurricanes or tsunamis have shown seri- ous impacts on communities. In the past, major earthquakes in the United States like Loma Prieta 1989, Northridge 1994, or recent events in Italy like L’Aquila 2009 or Emilia 2012 earthquake emphasized the importance of pre- paredness and awareness to reduce social impacts. Earthquakes impacted businesses and dramatically reduced the gross regional product. Seismic Hazard is traditionally assessed using Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Anal- ysis (PSHA). PSHA well represents the hazard at a specific location, but it’s unsatisfactory for spatially distributed systems. Scenario earthquakes overcome the problem representing the actual distribution of shaking over a spatially distributed system. The performance of distributed productive systems during the recovery process needs to be explored. Scenario earthquakes have been used to assess the risk in bridge networks and the social losses in terms of gross regional product reduction. The proposed method for scenario earthquakes has been applied to a real case study: Treviso, a city in the North East of Italy. The proposed method for scenario earthquakes requires three models: one representation of the sources (Italian Seismogenic Zonation 9), one attenuation relationship (Sa- betta and Pugliese 1996) and a model of the occurrence rate of magnitudes (Gutenberg Richter). A methodology has been proposed to reduce thou- sands of scenarios to a subset consistent with the hazard at each location. Earthquake scenarios, along with Mote Carlo method, have been used to simulate business damage. The response of business facilities to earthquake has been obtained from fragility curves for precast industrial building. Fur- thermore, from business damage the reduction of productivity has been simulated using economic data from the National statistical service and a proposed piecewise “loss of functionality model”. To simulate the economic process in the time domain, an innovative businesses recovery function has been proposed. The proposed method has been applied to generate scenarios earthquakes at the location of bridges and business areas. The proposed selection method- ology has been applied to reduce 8000 scenarios to a subset of 60. Subse- quently, these scenario earthquakes have been used to calculate three system performance parameters: the risk in transportation networks, the risk in terms of business damage and the losses of gross regional product. A novel model for business recovery process has been tested. The proposed model has been used to represent the business recovery process and simulate the effects of government aids allocated for reconstruction. The proposed method has efficiently modeled the seismic hazard using scenario earthquakes. The scenario earthquakes presented have been used to assess possible consequences of earthquakes in seismic prone zones and to increase the preparedness. Scenario earthquakes have been used to sim- ulate the effects to economy of the impacted area; a significant Gross Regional Product reduction has been shown, up to 77% with an earthquake with 0.0003 probability of occurrence. The results showed that limited funds available after the disaster can be distributed in a more efficient way

Impact of New Madrid Seismic Zone Earthquakes on the Central USA, Vol. 1 and 2

The information presented in this report has been developed to support the Catastrophic Earthquake Planning Scenario workshops held by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Four FEMA Regions (Regions IV, V, VI and VII) were involved in the New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) scenario workshops. The four FEMA Regions include eight states, namely Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri. The earthquake impact assessment presented hereafter employs an analysis methodology comprising three major components: hazard, inventory and fragility (or vulnerability). The hazard characterizes not only the shaking of the ground but also the consequential transient and permanent deformation of the ground due to strong ground shaking as well as fire and flooding. The inventory comprises all assets in a specific region, including the built environment and population data. Fragility or vulnerability functions relate the severity of shaking to the likelihood of reaching or exceeding damage states (light, moderate, extensive and near-collapse, for example). Social impact models are also included and employ physical infrastructure damage results to estimate the effects on exposed communities. Whereas the modeling software packages used (HAZUS MR3; FEMA, 2008; and MAEviz, Mid-America Earthquake Center, 2008) provide default values for all of the above, most of these default values were replaced by components of traceable provenance and higher reliability than the default data, as described below. The hazard employed in this investigation includes ground shaking for a single scenario event representing the rupture of all three New Madrid fault segments. The NMSZ consists of three fault segments: the northeast segment, the reelfoot thrust or central segment, and the southwest segment. Each segment is assumed to generate a deterministic magnitude 7.7 (Mw7.7) earthquake caused by a rupture over the entire length of the segment. US Geological Survey (USGS) approved the employed magnitude and hazard approach. The combined rupture of all three segments simultaneously is designed to approximate the sequential rupture of all three segments over time. The magnitude of Mw7.7 is retained for the combined rupture. Full liquefaction susceptibility maps for the entire region have been developed and are used in this study. Inventory is enhanced through the use of the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) 2007 and 2008 Gold Datasets (NGA Office of America, 2007). These datasets contain various types of critical infrastructure that are key inventory components for earthquake impact assessment. Transportation and utility facility inventories are improved while regional natural gas and oil pipelines are added to the inventory, alongside high potential loss facility inventories. The National Bridge Inventory (NBI, 2008) and other state and independent data sources are utilized to improve the inventory. New fragility functions derived by the MAE Center are employed in this study for both buildings and bridges providing more regionally-applicable estimations of damage for these infrastructure components. Default fragility values are used to determine damage likelihoods for all other infrastructure components. The study reports new analysis using MAE Center-developed transportation network flow models that estimate changes in traffic flow and travel time due to earthquake damage. Utility network modeling was also undertaken to provide damage estimates for facilities and pipelines. An approximate flood risk model was assembled to identify areas that are likely to be flooded as a result of dam or levee failure. Social vulnerability identifies portions of the eight-state study region that are especially vulnerable due to various factors such as age, income, disability, and language proficiency. Social impact models include estimates of displaced and shelter-seeking populations as well as commodities and medical requirements. Lastly, search and rescue requirements quantify the number of teams and personnel required to clear debris and search for trapped victims. The results indicate that Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri are most severely impacted. Illinois and Kentucky are also impacted, though not as severely as the previous three states. Nearly 715,000 buildings are damaged in the eight-state study region. About 42,000 search and rescue personnel working in 1,500 teams are required to respond to the earthquakes. Damage to critical infrastructure (essential facilities, transportation and utility lifelines) is substantial in the 140 impacted counties near the rupture zone, including 3,500 damaged bridges and nearly 425,000 breaks and leaks to both local and interstate pipelines. Approximately 2.6 million households are without power after the earthquake. Nearly 86,000 injuries and fatalities result from damage to infrastructure. Nearly 130 hospitals are damaged and most are located in the impacted counties near the rupture zone. There is extensive damage and substantial travel delays in both Memphis, Tennessee, and St. Louis, Missouri, thus hampering search and rescue as well as evacuation. Moreover roughly 15 major bridges are unusable. Three days after the earthquake, 7.2 million people are still displaced and 2 million people seek temporary shelter. Direct economic losses for the eight states total nearly $300 billion, while indirect losses may be at least twice this amount. The contents of this report provide the various assumptions used to arrive at the impact estimates, detailed background on the above quantitative consequences, and a breakdown of the figures per sector at the FEMA region and state levels. The information is presented in a manner suitable for personnel and agencies responsible for establishing response plans based on likely impacts of plausible earthquakes in the central USA.Armu W0132T-06-02unpublishednot peer reviewe

INFRASTRUCTURE-FREE SECURE PAIRING OF MOBILE DEVICES

Mobile devices have advanced tremendously during the last ten years and have changed our daily life in various ways. Secure pairing of mobile devices has become a significant issue considering the huge quantity of active mobile device connections and mobile traffic. However, current commonly used file sharing mobile applications rely on servers completely that are always targeted by attackers. In this thesis work, an innovative mechanism is proposed to generate symmetric keys on both mobile devices independently from a shared movement in arbitrary pattern, which means no server needs to be involved and no data exchange needed. A secret wireless-communication channel can then be established with a particular network strategy

USSR Space Life Sciences Digest, issue 32

This is the thirty-second issue of NASA's USSR Space Life Sciences Digest. It contains abstracts of 34 journal or conference papers published in Russian and of 4 Soviet monographs. Selected abstracts are illustrated with figures and tables from the original. The abstracts in this issue have been identified as relevant to 18 areas of space biology and medicine. These areas include: adaptation, aviation medicine, biological rhythms, biospherics, cardiovascular and respiratory systems, developmental biology, exobiology, habitability and environmental effects, human performance, hematology, mathematical models, metabolism, microbiology, musculoskeletal system, neurophysiology, operational medicine, and reproductive system

New Interactive Solar Flare Modeling and Advanced Radio Diagnostics Tools

The coming years will see routine use of solar data of unprecedented spatial and spectral resolution, time cadence, and completeness in the wavelength domain. To capitalize on the soon to be available radio facilities such as the expanded OVSA, SSRT and FASR, and the challenges they present in the visualization and synthesis of the multi-frequency datasets, we propose that realistic, sophisticated 3D active region and flare modeling is timely now and will be a forefront of coronal studies over the coming years. Here we summarize our 3D modeling efforts, aimed at forward fitting of imaging spectroscopy data, and describe currently available 3D modeling tools. We also discuss plans for future generalization of our modeling tools.Comment: 4 pages; IAU Symposium # 274 "Advances in Plasma Astrophysics"; typo remove

LiReK: A lightweight and real-time key establishment scheme for wearable embedded devices by gestures or motions

With the recent trend in wearable technology adoption, the security of these wearable devices has been the subject of scrutiny. Traditional cryptographic schemes such as key establishment schemes are not practical for deployment on the (resource-constrained) wearable devices, due to the limitations in their computational capabilities (e.g. limited battery life). Thus, in this study, we propose a lightweight and real-time key establishment scheme for wearable devices by leveraging the integrated accelerometer. Specifically, we introduce a novel way for users to initialize a shared key using random shakes/movements on their wearable devices. Construction of the real-time key is based on the users’ motion (e.g. walking), which does not require the data source for key construction in different devices worn by the same user to be matching. To address the known limitations on the regularity and predictability of gait, we propose a new quantization method to select data that involve noise and uncertain factors when generating secure random number. This enhances the security of the derived key. Our evaluations demonstrate that the matching rate of the shake-to-generate secret key is up to 91.00% and the corresponding generation rate is 2.027 bit/s, and devices worn on human participant’s chest, waist, wrist and carried in the participant’s pocket can generate 4.405, 4.089, 6.089 and 3.204 bits random number per second for key generation, respectively