ACMiner: Extraction and Analysis of Authorization Checks in Android's Middleware

Billions of users rely on the security of the Android platform to protect phones, tablets, and many different types of consumer electronics. While Android's permission model is well studied, the enforcement of the protection policy has received relatively little attention. Much of this enforcement is spread across system services, taking the form of hard-coded checks within their implementations. In this paper, we propose Authorization Check Miner (ACMiner), a framework for evaluating the correctness of Android's access control enforcement through consistency analysis of authorization checks. ACMiner combines program and text analysis techniques to generate a rich set of authorization checks, mines the corresponding protection policy for each service entry point, and uses association rule mining at a service granularity to identify inconsistencies that may correspond to vulnerabilities. We used ACMiner to study the AOSP version of Android 7.1.1 to identify 28 vulnerabilities relating to missing authorization checks. In doing so, we demonstrate ACMiner's ability to help domain experts process thousands of authorization checks scattered across millions of lines of code

What Can Quantitative Gait Analysis Tell Us about Dementia and Its Subtypes? A Structured Review

Distinguishing dementia subtypes can be difficult due to similarities in clinical presentation. There is increasing interest in discrete gait characteristics as markers to aid diagnostic algorithms in dementia. This structured review explores the differences in quantitative gait characteristics between dementia and healthy controls, and between four dementia subtypes under single-task conditions: Alzheimer’s disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease dementia, and vascular dementia. Twenty-six papers out of an initial 5,211 were reviewed and interpreted using a validated model of gait. Dementia was associated with gait characteristics grouped by slower pace, impaired rhythm, and increased variability compared to normal aging. Only four studies compared two or more dementia subtypes. People with AD are less impaired in pace, rhythm, and variability domains of gait compared to non-AD dementias. Results demonstrate the potential of gait as a clinical marker to discriminate between dementia subtypes. Larger studies using a more comprehensive battery of gait characteristics and better characterized dementia sub-types are required

Ageing, plasticity, and cognitive reserve in connectionist networks

Neurocomputational modeling has suggested that a range of mechanisms can lead to reductions in functional plasticity across development (Thomas & Johnson, 2006). In this paper, we consider whether ageing might also produce a reduction in plasticity. Marchman’s (1993) model of damage and recovery in past tense formation was extended to incorporate the two main proposals for implementing effects of ageing: altered neuromodulation and connection loss. Simulations showed that ageing did reduce plasticity (as assessed by the system’s ability to recover from damage) but that effects were modulated by (a) the mechanism used to implement ageing, (b) problem type, and (c) pre-existing levels of cognitive reserve

Ageing makes us dyslexic

Background: The effects of typical ageing on spoken language are well known: word production is disproportionately affected while syntactic processing is relatively well preserved. Little is known, however, about how ageing affects reading.Aims: What effect does ageing have on written language processing? In particular, how does it affect our ability to read words? How does it affect phonological awareness (our ability to manipulate the sounds of our language)?Methods & Procedures: We tested 14 people with Parkinson's disease (PD), 14 typically ageing adults (TAA), and 14 healthy younger adults on a range of background neuropsychological tests and tests of phonological awareness. We then carried out an oral naming experiment where we manipulated consistency, and a nonword repetition task where we manipulated the word-likeness of the nonwords.Outcomes & Results: We find that normal ageing causes individuals to become mildly phonologically dyslexic in that people have difficulty pronouncing nonwords. People with Parkinson's disease perform particularly poorly on language tasks involving oral naming and metalinguistic processing. We also find that ageing causes difficulty in repeating nonwords. We show that these problems are associated with a more general difficulty in processing phonological information, supporting the idea that language difficulties, including poorer reading in older age, can result from a general phonological deficit.Conclusions: We suggest that neurally this age-induced dyslexia is associated with frontal deterioration (and perhaps deterioration in other regions) and cognitively to the loss of executive processes that enable us to manipulate spoken and written language. We discuss implications for therapy and treatment

Principles in Patterns (PiP) : Heuristic Evaluation of Course and Class Approval Online Pilot (C-CAP)

The PiP Evaluation Plan documents four distinct evaluative strands, the first of which entails an evaluation of the PiP system pilot (WP7:37). Phase 1 of this evaluative strand focuses on the heuristic evaluation of the PiP Course and Class Approval Online Pilot system (C-CAP). Heuristic evaluation is an established usability inspection and testing technique and is most commonly deployed in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, e.g. to test user interface designs, technology systems testing, etc. The success of heuristic evaluation in detecting 'major' and 'minor' usability problems is well documented, but its principal limitation is its inability to capture data on all possible usability problems. For this reason heuristic evaluation is often used as a precursor to user testing, e.g. so that user testing focuses on deeper system issues rather than on those that can easily be debugged. Heuristic evaluation nevertheless remains an important usability inspection technique and research continues to demonstrate its success in detecting usability problems which would otherwise evade detection in user testing sessions. For this reason experts maintain that heuristic evaluation should be used to complement user testing. This is reflected in the PiP Evaluation Plan, which proposes protocol analysis, stimulated recall and pre- and post-test questionnaire instruments to comprise user testing (see WP7:37 phases 2, 3 and 4 of PiP Evaluation Plan). This brief report summarises the methodology deployed, presents the results of the heuristic evaluation and proposes solutions or recommendations to address the heuristic violations that were found to exist in the C-CAP system. It is anticipated that some solutions will be implemented within the lifetime of the project. This is consistent with the incremental systems design methodology that PiP has adopted

Mens rea ascription, expertise and outcome effects: Professional judges surveyed

A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law

Suspended Sentences and Free-Standing Probation Orders in U.S. Guidelines Systems: A Survey and Assessment

Much academic attention has been directed towards management models, but there is limited research into the details of how these models are put to use in organizations. In this paper, we employ a multi-theoretical process perspective on the introduction of Balanced Scorecard in a Swedish healthcare organization. Through the application of actor-network theory, behavior setting theory and distributed cognition, we have identified a set of complementary observations and conclusions. First, we claim that a critical mass of actors is needed to support the change effort. We also emphasize the need for a problematization process in which critical voices are given room to influence the introduction. Further, we stress the importance of aligning the physical environment with organizational goals, and argue that well-designed feedback mechanisms may prevent undesired decoupling of managerial practice.Working paper