Static code analysis of data-driven applications through common lingua and the Semantic Web technologies

Web applications have become increasingly popular due to their potential for businesses' high revenue gain through global reach. Along with these opportunities, also come challenges in terms of Web application security. The increased rise in the number of datadriven applications has also seen an increased rise in their systematic attacks. Cyberattacks exploit Web application vulnerabilities. Attack trends show a major increase in Web application vulnerabilities caused by improper implementation of information-flow control methods and they account for more than 50% of all Web application vulnerabilities found in the year 2013. Static code analysis using methods of information-flow control is a widely acknowledged technique to secure Web applications. Whilst this technique has been found to be both very effective and efficient in finding Web application vulnerabilities, specific tools are highly dependent on the programming language. This thesis leverages Semantic Web technologies in order to offer a common language through source code represented using the Resource Description Framework format, whereby reasoning can be applied to securely test Web applications. In this thesis, we present a framework that extracts source code facts from various programming languages at a variable-level of granularity using Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) generated using language grammars and the ANTLR parser generator. The methodology for detecting Web application vulnerabilities implements three phases: entry points identification, tracing information-flow and vulnerability detection using the Jena framework inference mechanism and rules describing patterns of source code. The approach discussed in this thesis is found to be effective and practical in finding Web application vulnerabilities with the limitation that it can only detect patterns that are used as training data or very similar patterns. False positives are caused by limitations of the language grammar, but they do not affect the accuracy of the security vulnerability detection method in identifying the correct Web application vulnerability.Doctor of Philosoph

A holistic semantic based approach to component specification and retrieval

Component-Based Development (CBD) has been broadly used in software development as it enhances the productivity and reduces the costs and risks involved in systems development. It has become a well-understood and widely used technology for developing not only large enterprise applications, but also a whole spectrum of software applications, as it offers fast and flexible development. However, driven by the continuous expansions of software applications, the increase in component varieties and sizes and the evolution from local to global component repositories, the so-called component mismatch problem has become an even more severe hurdle for component specification and retrieval. This problem not only prevents CBD from reaching its full potential, but also hinders the acceptance of many existing component repository. To overcome the above problem, existing approaches engaged a variety of technologies to support better component specification and retrieval. The existing approaches range from the early syntax-based (traditional) approaches to the recent semantic-based approaches. Although the different technologies are proposed to achieve accurate description of the component specification and/or user query in their specification and retrieval, the existing semantic-based approaches still fail to achieve the following goals which are desired for present component reuse: precise, automated, semantic-based and domain capable. This thesis proposes an approach, namely MVICS-based approach, aimed at achieving holistic, semantic-based and adaptation-aware component specification and retrieval. As the foundation, a Multiple-Viewed and Interrelated Component Specification ontology model (MVICS) is first developed for component specification and repository building. The MVICS model provides an ontology-based architecture to specify components from a range of perspectives; it integrates the knowledge of Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE), and supports ontology evolution to reflect the continuous developments in CBD and components. A formal definition of the MVICS model is presented, which ensures the rigorousness of the model and supports the high level of automation of the retrieval. Furthermore, the MVICS model has a smooth mechanism to integrate with domain related software system ontology. Such integration enhances the function and application scope of the MVICS model by bringing more domain semantics into component specification and retrieval. Another improved feature of the proposed approach is that the effect of possible component adaptation is extended to the related components. Finally a comprehensive profile of the result components shows the search results to the user from a summary to satisfied and unsatisfied discrepancy details. The above features of the approach are well integrated, which enables a holistic view in semantic-based component specification and retrieval. A prototype tool was developed to exert the power of the MVICS model in expressing semantics and process automation in component specification and retrieval. The tool implements the complete process of component search. Three case studies have been undertaken to illustrate and evaluate the usability and correctness of the approach, in terms of supporting accurate component specification and retrieval, seamless linkage with a domain ontology, adaptive component suggestion and comprehensive result component profile. A conclusion is drawn based on an analysis of the feedback from the case studies, which shows that the proposed approach can be deployed in real life industrial development. The benefits of MVICS include not only the improvement of the component search precision and recall, reducing the development time and the repository maintenance effort, but also the decrease of human intervention on CBD.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Optimizing a Rete-based inference engine using a hybrid heuristic and pyramid based indexes on ontological data

This paper describes indexing of ontological data to reduce the memory consumption of a Rete-based reasoner whose time performance is increased using a hybrid optimization heuristic. The aforementioned indexing mechanism is known as the Pyramid Technique. Our work organizes three dimensional ontological data in a way that works efficiently with this indexing mechanism and it constructs a subset of the querying scheme of the Pyramid Technique that supports querying ontological data. This work also implements an optimization on the Pyramid Technique. Finally, it represents the progress in the memory consumption of the reasoner. © 2007 ACADEMY PUBLISHER

A holistic semantic based approach to component specification and retrieval

Component-Based Development (CBD) has been broadly used in software development as it enhances the productivity and reduces the costs and risks involved in systems development. It has become a well-understood and widely used technology for developing not only large enterprise applications, but also a whole spectrum of software applications, as it offers fast and flexible development. However, driven by the continuous expansions of software applications, the increase in component varieties and sizes and the evolution from local to global component repositories, the so-called component mismatch problem has become an even more severe hurdle for component specification and retrieval. This problem not only prevents CBD from reaching its full potential, but also hinders the acceptance of many existing component repository. To overcome the above problem, existing approaches engaged a variety of technologies to support better component specification and retrieval. The existing approaches range from the early syntax-based (traditional) approaches to the recent semantic-based approaches. Although the different technologies are proposed to achieve accurate description of the component specification and/or user query in their specification and retrieval, the existing semantic-based approaches still fail to achieve the following goals which are desired for present component reuse: precise, automated, semantic-based and domain capable.This thesis proposes an approach, namely MVICS-based approach, aimed at achieving holistic, semantic-based and adaptation-aware component specification and retrieval. As the foundation, a Multiple-Viewed and Interrelated Component Specification ontology model (MVICS) is first developed for component specification and repository building. The MVICS model provides an ontology-based architecture to specify components from a range of perspectives; it integrates the knowledge of Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE), and supports ontology evolution to reflect the continuous developments in CBD and components. A formal definition of the MVICS model is presented, which ensures the rigorousness of the model and supports the high level of automation of the retrieval. Furthermore, the MVICS model has a smooth mechanism to integrate with domain related software system ontology. Such integration enhances the function and application scope of the MVICS model by bringing more domain semantics into component specification and retrieval. Another improved feature of the proposed approach is that the effect of possible component adaptation is extended to the related components. Finally a comprehensive profile of the result components shows the search results to the user from a summary to satisfied and unsatisfied discrepancy details. The above features of the approach are well integrated, which enables a holistic view in semantic-based component specification and retrieval.A prototype tool was developed to exert the power of the MVICS model in expressing semantics and process automation in component specification and retrieval. The tool implements the complete process of component search. Three case studies have been undertaken to illustrate and evaluate the usability and correctness of the approach, in terms of supporting accurate component specification and retrieval, seamless linkage with a domain ontology, adaptive component suggestion and comprehensive result component profile.A conclusion is drawn based on an analysis of the feedback from the case studies, which shows that the proposed approach can be deployed in real life industrial development. The benefits of MVICS include not only the improvement of the component search precision and recall, reducing the development time and the repository maintenance effort, but also the decrease of human intervention on CBD

Optimizing a Rete-based Inference Engine using a Hybrid Heuristic and Pyramid based Indexes on Ontological Data

Abstract — This paper describes indexing of ontological data to reduce the memory consumption of a Rete-based reasoner whose time performance is increased using a hybrid optimization heuristic. The aforementioned indexing mechanism is known as the Pyramid Technique. Our work organizes three dimensional ontological data in a way that works efficiently with this indexing mechanism and it constructs a subset of the querying scheme of the Pyramid Technique that supports querying ontological data. This work also implements an optimization on the Pyramid Technique. Finally, it represents the progress in the memory consumption of the reasoner. Index Terms — scalability, reasoning, ontology, pyramid technique, optimization heuristi

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen

Proceedings of the Eighth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CliC-it 2021

The eighth edition of the Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2021) was held at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca from 26th to 28th January 2022. After the edition of 2020, which was held in fully virtual mode due to the health emergency related to Covid-19, CLiC-it 2021 represented the first moment for the Italian research community of Computational Linguistics to meet in person after more than one year of full/partial lockdown

Proceedings /5th International Symposium on Industrial Engineering – SIE2012, June 14-15, 2012., Belgrade

editors Dragan D. Milanović, Vesna Spasojević-Brkić, Mirjana Misit