Distributed Load Testing by Modeling and Simulating User Behavior

Modern human-machine systems such as microservices rely upon agile engineering practices which require changes to be tested and released more frequently than classically engineered systems. A critical step in the testing of such systems is the generation of realistic workloads or load testing. Generated workload emulates the expected behaviors of users and machines within a system under test in order to find potentially unknown failure states. Typical testing tools rely on static testing artifacts to generate realistic workload conditions. Such artifacts can be cumbersome and costly to maintain; however, even model-based alternatives can prevent adaptation to changes in a system or its usage. Lack of adaptation can prevent the integration of load testing into system quality assurance, leading to an incomplete evaluation of system quality. The goal of this research is to improve the state of software engineering by addressing open challenges in load testing of human-machine systems with a novel process that a) models and classifies user behavior from streaming and aggregated log data, b) adapts to changes in system and user behavior, and c) generates distributed workload by realistically simulating user behavior. This research contributes a Learning, Online, Distributed Engine for Simulation and Testing based on the Operational Norms of Entities within a system (LODESTONE): a novel process to distributed load testing by modeling and simulating user behavior. We specify LODESTONE within the context of a human-machine system to illustrate distributed adaptation and execution in load testing processes. LODESTONE uses log data to generate and update user behavior models, cluster them into similar behavior profiles, and instantiate distributed workload on software systems. We analyze user behavioral data having differing characteristics to replicate human-machine interactions in a modern microservice environment. We discuss tools, algorithms, software design, and implementation in two different computational environments: client-server and cloud-based microservices. We illustrate the advantages of LODESTONE through a qualitative comparison of key feature parameters and experimentation based on shared data and models. LODESTONE continuously adapts to changes in the system to be tested which allows for the integration of load testing into the quality assurance process for cloud-based microservices

Anomaly recognition for intrusion detection on emergent monitoring environments

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Informática, Departamento de Ingeniería del Software e Inteligencia Artificial, leída el 19/12/2018La proteccion de la informacion y el ciberespacio se ha convertido en un aspecto esencial en el soporte que garantiza el avance hacia los principales desafíos que plantean la sociedad de la informacion y las nuevas tecnologías. Pero a pesar del progreso en esta area, la eficacia de los ataques dirigidos contra sistemas de la informacion ha aumentado drasticamente en los ultimos años. Esto es debido a diferentes motivos: en primer lugar, cada vez mas usuarios hacen uso de tecnologías de la informacion para llevar a cabo actividades que involucren el intercambio de datos sensibles. Por otro lado, los atacantes cada vez disponen de una mayor cantidad de medios para la ejecucion de intentos de intrusion. Finalmente, es de especial relevancia la evolucion de los escenarios de monitorizacion. Este hecho es propiciado por el avance tecnologico, dando lugar a sistemas de computo mucho mas complejos, con mayor capacidad de procesamiento y que son capaces de manejar informacion masiva proporcionada por fuentes de diferente naturaleza...The security on information and cyberspace has become a fundamental component of the support that guarantees progress towards the main challenges posed by the information society and the new technologies. But despite progress in this research field, the effectiveness of the attacks against information systems has increased dramatically in recent years. This is due to different reasons: firstly, more and more users make use of information technologies to carry out activities that involve exchanges of sensitive data. On the other hand, attackers dispose an increasable amount of means for executing intrusion attempts. Finally, is of particular relevance the evolution of the protected environment, which is fostered by technological advances, hence giving rise to much more sophisticated computer systems, with greater processing capacity and which are able to handle massive information provided by sources of varying nature...Fac. de InformáticaTRUEunpu