Innovative cryptographic approaches to computer systems security

Advanced information security aspects concern the protection and encryption of secure, strategic and important information. These scientific problems and practical solutions are rooted in cryptography, which uses algorithms and protocols for ensuring information confidentiality and information splitting techniques, as well methods of reconstructing information.Innovative approaches allow to guarantee that information security focuses around data splitting and sharing techniques as well as data reconstruction. Such algorithms dedicated to information sharing are called threshold schemes.The main idea of this thesis is to propose such techniques, which allow to create new models of systems security, dedicated to the management of shared strategic information. Special emphasis will be put on multi-level threshold schemes. What characterises such a division is the possibility of reconstructing information from sets containing various numbers of parts (shares) obtained from the divided secret information. This problem has not been fully elaborated yet, but it seems extremely important from the perspective of the future development of modern systems security.Hence in this thesis its Author will discuss the development of threshold schemes for information sharing and will demonstrate the possibility and the reasons behind using them to manage secret information in different structures and levels. These algorithms will be proposed by the Author of this dissertation and, after theoretical evaluation, will be described step by step.The Author will propose new methods of information splitting, based on new threshold schemes used for secure/strategic/important information division, using mathematical linguistic formalisms. Such procedures will be described as linguistic threshold schemes. Mathematical linguistic techniques can be used in information splitting procedures and for the development new algorithms for securing data, using these techniques. Moreover, another class of threshold schemes, called biometric threshold schemes, will be proposed. Such schemes can use selected personal or individual data to mark secret parts, split secret information and to restore the original data.The basis of these proposed innovative approaches to cyber-systems security are new protocols, which use linguistic and biometric threshold schemes.The main solution of the proposed algorithms is the creation of a new generation of computer and cyber-systems by means of applying new classes of security protocols, as described in this thesis.In addition, an attempt will be dame to define new methods that could extend the current knowledge and practical solutions and which can contribute to improving the decision-making processes by means of acquisition, storage and retrieval of secret information in different organisations and at knowledge levels.The interdisciplinary nature of the proposed solutions create the subject of security systems, which constitutes part of cryptography and informatics, being a new challenge for the research and applications.博士(工学)法政大学 (Hosei University

A fuzzy-based reliaility for JXTA-overlay P2P platform considering data download speed, peer congestion situation, number of interaction and packet loss parameters

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.In this paper, we propose and evaluate a new fuzzy-based reliability system for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communications in JXTA-Overlay platform considering as a new parameter the peer congestion situation. In our system, we considered four input parameters: Data Download Speed (DDS), Peer Congestion Situation (PCS), Number of Interactions (NI) and Packet Loss (PL) to decide the Peer Reliability (PR). We evaluate the proposed system by computer simulations. The simulation results have shown that the proposed system has a good performance and can choose reliable peers to connect in JXTA-Overlay platform.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A fuzzy-based reliability system for JXTA-overlay P2P platform considering as new parameter sustained communication time

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.In this paper, we propose and evaluate a new fuzzy-based reliability system for Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Communications in JXTA-Overlay platform considering as a new parameter the sustained communication time. In our system, we considered four input parameters: Data Download Speed (DDS), Local Score (LS), Number of Interactions (NI) and Sustained Communication Time (SCT) to decide the Peer Reliability (PR). We evaluate the proposed system by computer simulations. The simulation results have shown that the proposed system has a good performance and can choose reliable peers to connect in JXTA-Overlay platform.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Effects of sustained communication time on reliability of JXTA-Overlay P2P platform: a comparison study for two fuzzy-based systems

(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.In P2P systems, each peer has to obtain information of other peers and propagate the information to other peers through neighboring peers. Thus, it is important for each peer to have some number of neighbor peers. Moreover, it is more significant to discuss if each peer has reliable neighbor peers. In reality, each peer might be faulty or might send obsolete, even incorrect information to the other peers. We have implemented a P2P platform called JXTA-Orverlay, which defines a set of protocols that standardize how different devices may communicate and collaborate among them. JXTA-Overlay provides a set of basic functionalities, primitives, intended to be as complete as possible to satisfy the needs of most JXTA-based applications. In this paper, we present two fuzzy-based systems (called FPRS1 and FPRS2) to improve the reliability of JXTA-Overlay P2P platform. We make a comparison study between the fuzzy-based reliability systems. Comparing the complexity of FPRS1 and FPRS2, the FPRS2 is more complex than FPRS1. However, it considers also the sustained communication time which makes the platform more reliable.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Multi-agency training and the artist (Sharing our experience, Practitioner-led research 2008-2009; PLR0809/032)

The Multi-Agency Team Project approached issues of multi-agency training indirectly by using an artist as a catalyst in a group exercise examining movement and sound in relation to early childhood. The aim of the research was to run an experiential non-traditional training programme based on using an artist as a catalyst to promote inter-agency dialogue in one setting, Woodlands Park Nursery and Children’s Centre, and to analyse the findings. Eleven participants used this common experiential focus to frame collective research both as a focus group and as individual fieldworkers. The research demonstrated shared professional discourse but also collected judgements relevant to policy issues based on collaborative professional reflection triggered by the exercise. The findings are presented theoretically in terms of critical discourse analysis using the interpretation-supporting software ATLASti. We next take a further look at the role play exercise in which the group constituted itself as a ‘House of Commons Select Committee’ before summarizing what theoretical insights might be brought to bear and attempting to draw some provisional conclusions. Some evidence is presented suggesting there is a degree of tension and ambiguity between alterative models of multi-agency working

A comparison study for two fuzzy-based systems: improving reliability and security of JXTA-overlay P2P platform

This is a copy of the author's final draft version of an article published in the journal Soft computing.The reliability of peers is very important for safe communication in peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. The reliability of a peer can be evaluated based on the reputation and interactions with other peers to provide different services. However, for deciding the peer reliability there are needed many parameters, which make the problem NP-hard. In this paper, we present two fuzzy-based systems (called FBRS1 and FBRS2) to improve the reliability of JXTA-overlay P2P platform. In FBRS1, we considered three input parameters: number of interactions (NI), security (S), packet loss (PL) to decide the peer reliability (PR). In FBRS2, we considered four input parameters: NI, S, PL and local score to decide the PR. We compare the proposed systems by computer simulations. Comparing the complexity of FBRS1 and FBRS2, the FBRS2 is more complex than FBRS1. However, it also considers the local score, which makes it more reliable than FBRS1.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

FABRIC: A National-Scale Programmable Experimental Network Infrastructure

FABRIC is a unique national research infrastructure to enable cutting-edge and exploratory research at-scale in networking, cybersecurity, distributed computing and storage systems, machine learning, and science applications. It is an everywhere-programmable nationwide instrument comprised of novel extensible network elements equipped with large amounts of compute and storage, interconnected by high speed, dedicated optical links. It will connect a number of specialized testbeds for cloud research (NSF Cloud testbeds CloudLab and Chameleon), for research beyond 5G technologies (Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research or PAWR), as well as production high-performance computing facilities and science instruments to create a rich fabric for a wide variety of experimental activities

Proceedings of International Workshop "Global Computing: Programming Environments, Languages, Security and Analysis of Systems"

According to the IST/ FET proactive initiative on GLOBAL COMPUTING, the goal is to obtain techniques (models, frameworks, methods, algorithms) for constructing systems that are flexible, dependable, secure, robust and efficient. The dominant concerns are not those of representing and manipulating data efficiently but rather those of handling the co-ordination and interaction, security, reliability, robustness, failure modes, and control of risk of the entities in the system and the overall design, description and performance of the system itself. Completely different paradigms of computer science may have to be developed to tackle these issues effectively. The research should concentrate on systems having the following characteristics: • The systems are composed of autonomous computational entities where activity is not centrally controlled, either because global control is impossible or impractical, or because the entities are created or controlled by different owners. • The computational entities are mobile, due to the movement of the physical platforms or by movement of the entity from one platform to another. • The configuration varies over time. For instance, the system is open to the introduction of new computational entities and likewise their deletion. The behaviour of the entities may vary over time. • The systems operate with incomplete information about the environment. For instance, information becomes rapidly out of date and mobility requires information about the environment to be discovered. The ultimate goal of the research action is to provide a solid scientific foundation for the design of such systems, and to lay the groundwork for achieving effective principles for building and analysing such systems. This workshop covers the aspects related to languages and programming environments as well as analysis of systems and resources involving 9 projects (AGILE , DART, DEGAS , MIKADO, MRG, MYTHS, PEPITO, PROFUNDIS, SECURE) out of the 13 founded under the initiative. After an year from the start of the projects, the goal of the workshop is to fix the state of the art on the topics covered by the two clusters related to programming environments and analysis of systems as well as to devise strategies and new ideas to profitably continue the research effort towards the overall objective of the initiative. We acknowledge the Dipartimento di Informatica and Tlc of the University of Trento, the Comune di Rovereto, the project DEGAS for partially funding the event and the Events and Meetings Office of the University of Trento for the valuable collaboration

Secure data sharing and processing in heterogeneous clouds

The extensive cloud adoption among the European Public Sector Players empowered them to own and operate a range of cloud infrastructures. These deployments vary both in the size and capabilities, as well as in the range of employed technologies and processes. The public sector, however, lacks the necessary technology to enable effective, interoperable and secure integration of a multitude of its computing clouds and services. In this work we focus on the federation of private clouds and the approaches that enable secure data sharing and processing among the collaborating infrastructures and services of public entities. We investigate the aspects of access control, data and security policy languages, as well as cryptographic approaches that enable fine-grained security and data processing in semi-trusted environments. We identify the main challenges and frame the future work that serve as an enabler of interoperability among heterogeneous infrastructures and services. Our goal is to enable both security and legal conformance as well as to facilitate transparency, privacy and effectivity of private cloud federations for the public sector needs. © 2015 The Authors