15,757 research outputs found
Adtech’s new clothes might redefine privacy more than they reform profiling
As the era of cookie tracking is about to end, a new battle for control over the billion dollar ad tech business has begun. An astonishing partnership between non-profit Mozilla and surveillance capitalist Meta is only a small chapter of a bigger story, argues Michael Veale. For the next phase of online advertising could be even worse
Self-Reference, Biologic and the Structure of Reproduction
This paper concentrates on relationships of formal systems with biology. The
paper is based on previous papers by the author. We have freely used texts of
those papers where the formulations are of use, and we have extended the
concepts and discussions herein considerably beyond the earlier work. We
concentrate on formal systems not only for the sake of showing how there is a
fundamental mathematical structure to biology, but also to consider and
reconsider philosophical and phenomenological points of view in relation to
natural science and mathematics. The relationship with phenomenology comes
about in the questions that arise about the nature of the observer in relation
to the observed that arise in philosophy, but also in science in the very act
of determining the context and models upon which it shall be based.We examine
the schema behind the reproduction of DNA. The DNA molecule consists of two
interwound strands, the Watson Strand (W) and the Crick Strand (C). The two
strands are bonded to each other via a backbone of base-pairings and these
bonds can be broken by certain enzymes present in the cell. In reproduction of
DNA the bonds between the two strands are broken and the two strands then
acquire the needed complementary base molecules from the cellular environment
to reconstitute each a separate copy of the DNA. At this level the situation
can be described by a symbolism like this. DNA = ------->
--------> = = DNA DNA. Here E stands for the
environment of the cell. The first arrow denotes the separation of the DNA into
the two strands. The second arrow denotes the action between the bare strands
and the environment that leads to the production of the two DNA molecules. The
paper considers and compares many formalisms for self-replication, including
aspects of quantum formalism and the Temperley-Lieb algebra.Comment: LaTeX document, 71 pages, 33 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial
text overlap with arXiv:quant-ph/020400
Bayesian Optimization with Unknown Constraints
Recent work on Bayesian optimization has shown its effectiveness in global
optimization of difficult black-box objective functions. Many real-world
optimization problems of interest also have constraints which are unknown a
priori. In this paper, we study Bayesian optimization for constrained problems
in the general case that noise may be present in the constraint functions, and
the objective and constraints may be evaluated independently. We provide
motivating practical examples, and present a general framework to solve such
problems. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on optimizing the
performance of online latent Dirichlet allocation subject to topic sparsity
constraints, tuning a neural network given test-time memory constraints, and
optimizing Hamiltonian Monte Carlo to achieve maximal effectiveness in a fixed
time, subject to passing standard convergence diagnostics.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure
Relationship between the peroxidation of leukocytes index ratio and the improvement of postprandial metabolic stress by a functional food
For the first time, we investigated the relationship between postprandial dysmetabolism and the Peroxidation of Leukocytes Index Ratio (PLIR), a test that measures the resistance of leukocytes to exogenous oxidative stress and their functional capacity of oxidative burst upon activation. Following a blind, placebo controlled, randomized, crossover design, ten healthy subjects ingested, in two different occasions, a high fat and high carbohydrates meal with Snello cookie (HFHCM-S) or with control cookies (HFHCM-C). Snello cookie, a functional food covered by dark chocolate and containing glucomannan, inulin, fructooligosaccharides, and Bacillus coagulans strain GanedenBC30, significantly improved postprandial metabolic stress (insulin, glucose, and triglycerides) and reduced the postprandial increase of uric acid. HFHCM-S improved PLIR of lymphocytes, but not of monocytes and granulocytes. Both meals increased granulocytes' count and reduced the lipoperoxidation induced by both exogenous free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by oxidative burst. Our results suggest that the healthy status of the subjects could be a limitation of this pilot study for PLIR evaluation on cells that produce ROS by oxidative burst. In conclusion, the relationship between PLIR and postprandial dysmetabolism requires further investigation
Cross-Device Tracking: Matching Devices and Cookies
The number of computers, tablets and smartphones is increasing rapidly, which
entails the ownership and use of multiple devices to perform online tasks. As
people move across devices to complete these tasks, their identities becomes
fragmented. Understanding the usage and transition between those devices is
essential to develop efficient applications in a multi-device world. In this
paper we present a solution to deal with the cross-device identification of
users based on semi-supervised machine learning methods to identify which
cookies belong to an individual using a device. The method proposed in this
paper scored third in the ICDM 2015 Drawbridge Cross-Device Connections
challenge proving its good performance
Herding Vulnerable Cats: A Statistical Approach to Disentangle Joint Responsibility for Web Security in Shared Hosting
Hosting providers play a key role in fighting web compromise, but their
ability to prevent abuse is constrained by the security practices of their own
customers. {\em Shared} hosting, offers a unique perspective since customers
operate under restricted privileges and providers retain more control over
configurations. We present the first empirical analysis of the distribution of
web security features and software patching practices in shared hosting
providers, the influence of providers on these security practices, and their
impact on web compromise rates. We construct provider-level features on the
global market for shared hosting -- containing 1,259 providers -- by gathering
indicators from 442,684 domains. Exploratory factor analysis of 15 indicators
identifies four main latent factors that capture security efforts: content
security, webmaster security, web infrastructure security and web application
security. We confirm, via a fixed-effect regression model, that providers exert
significant influence over the latter two factors, which are both related to
the software stack in their hosting environment. Finally, by means of GLM
regression analysis of these factors on phishing and malware abuse, we show
that the four security and software patching factors explain between 10\% and
19\% of the variance in abuse at providers, after controlling for size. For
web-application security for instance, we found that when a provider moves from
the bottom 10\% to the best-performing 10\%, it would experience 4 times fewer
phishing incidents. We show that providers have influence over patch
levels--even higher in the stack, where CMSes can run as client-side
software--and that this influence is tied to a substantial reduction in abuse
levels
The Web SSO Standard OpenID Connect: In-Depth Formal Security Analysis and Security Guidelines
Web-based single sign-on (SSO) services such as Google Sign-In and Log In
with Paypal are based on the OpenID Connect protocol. This protocol enables
so-called relying parties to delegate user authentication to so-called identity
providers. OpenID Connect is one of the newest and most widely deployed single
sign-on protocols on the web. Despite its importance, it has not received much
attention from security researchers so far, and in particular, has not
undergone any rigorous security analysis.
In this paper, we carry out the first in-depth security analysis of OpenID
Connect. To this end, we use a comprehensive generic model of the web to
develop a detailed formal model of OpenID Connect. Based on this model, we then
precisely formalize and prove central security properties for OpenID Connect,
including authentication, authorization, and session integrity properties.
In our modeling of OpenID Connect, we employ security measures in order to
avoid attacks on OpenID Connect that have been discovered previously and new
attack variants that we document for the first time in this paper. Based on
these security measures, we propose security guidelines for implementors of
OpenID Connect. Our formal analysis demonstrates that these guidelines are in
fact effective and sufficient.Comment: An abridged version appears in CSF 2017. Parts of this work extend
the web model presented in arXiv:1411.7210, arXiv:1403.1866,
arXiv:1508.01719, and arXiv:1601.0122
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