PRIVACY-PRESERVING QUERY PROCESSING ON OUTSOURCED DATABASES IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that enables IT providers to deliver database functionality as a service. In this model, a third party service provider known as a cloud server hosts a database and provides the associated software and hardware supports. Database outsourcing reduces the workload of the data owner in answering queries by delegating the tasks to powerful third-party servers with large computational and network resources. Despite the economic and technical benefits, privacy is the primary challenge posed by this category of services. By using these services, the data owners will lose the control of their databases. Moreover, the privacy of clients may be compromised since a curious cloud operator can follow the queries of a client and infer what the client is after. The challenge is to fulfill the main privacy goals of both the data owner and the clients without undermining the ability of the cloud server to return the correct query results. This thesis considers the design of protocols that protect the privacy of the clients and the data owners in the DBaaS model. Such protocols must protect the privacy of the clients so that the data owner and the cloud server cannot infer the constants contained in the query predicate as well as the query result. Moreover, the data owner privacy should be preserved by ensuring that the sensitive information in the database is not leaked to the cloud server and nothing beyond the query result is revealed to the clients. The results of the complexity and performance analysis indicates that the proposed protocols incur reasonable communication and computation overhead on the client and the data owner, considering the added advantage of being able to perform the symmetrically-private database search

Appropriating Play: Examining Twitch.tv as a Commercial Platform

This thesis critically analyzes Twitch.tv, a gaming-oriented, online live-streaming site. Viewing the site as a ‘lean platform’ (Srnicek, 2017), it analyzes many aspects of Twitch’s business operations, including ownership structure, video game industry affiliations, use of data, and the monetization of user activity. This analysis then identifies three major areas of concern arising from these operations: the tendency toward monopolization in the gaming industry and its peripheral activities; the intensification of audience commodification; and, the tendency to turn professional streamers into precarious creative labourers. All of these implications point to a growing need for concerted labour organization. The goal of this thesis is to address gaps in the existing literature about Twitch and to provide a foundation for future critical inquiries into the site

The Future of the Internet III

Presents survey results on technology experts' predictions on the Internet's social, political, and economic impact as of 2020, including its effects on integrity and tolerance, intellectual property law, and the division between personal and work lives

A Social Internet of Things Smart City Solution for Traffic and Pollution Monitoring in Cagliari

In the last years, the smart city paradigm has been deeply studied to support sustainable mobility and to improve human living conditions. In this context, a new smart city based on Social Internet of Things paradigm is presented in this article. Starting from the tracking of all vehicles (that is, private and public) and pedestrians, integrated with air quality measurements (that is, in real time by mobile and fixed sensors), the system aims to improve the viability of the city, both for pedestrian and vehicular users. A monitoring network based on sensors and devices hosted on board in local public transport allows real time monitoring of the most sensitive areas both from traffic congestion and from an environmental point of view. The proposed solution is equipped with an appropriate intelligence that takes into account instantaneous speed, type of traffic, and instantaneous pollution data, allowing to evaluate the congestion and pollution condition in a specific moment. Moreover, specific tools support the decisions of public administration facilitating the identification of the most appropriate actions for the implementation of effective policies relating to mobility. All collected data are elaborated in real time to improve traffic viability suggesting new directions and information to citizens to better organize how to live in the city

A Social Internet of Things Smart City Solution for Traffic and Pollution Monitoring in Cagliari

In the last years, the smart city (SC) paradigm has been deeply studied to support sustainable mobility and to improve human living conditions. In this context, a new SC based on the Social Internet of Things paradigm is presented in this article. Starting from the tracking of all vehicles (that is, private and public) and pedestrians, integrated with air quality measurements (that is, in real time by mobile and fixed sensors), the system aims to improve the viability of the city, both for pedestrian and vehicular users. A monitoring network based on sensors and devices hosted on board in local public transport allows real-time monitoring of the most sensitive areas both from traffic congestion and from an environmental point of view. The proposed solution is equipped with an appropriate intelligence that takes into account instantaneous speed, type of traffic, and instantaneous pollution data, allowing to evaluate the congestion and pollution condition in a specific moment. Moreover, specific tools support the decisions of public administration facilitating the identification of the most appropriate actions for the implementation of effective policies relating to mobility. All collected data are elaborated in real time to improve traffic viability suggesting new directions and information to citizens to better organize how to live in the city

There's No Place like the Connected Home

The home is a deeply meaningful and human place. It fulfills not only our fundamental physical needs, but also contributes significantly to our sense of belonging and safety. The home is a place where many domestic technologies are currently situated, shaping and being shaped by the complex social and emotional fabric of the home. To innovators in the technology industry, the home is ripe for a new wave of disruption in the form of the smart home. By zooming in on the use of technology in the home, this research demonstrates that the current state of domestic technology, including the smart home, has not been designed with people and real homes in mind. Technology providers fail to recognize the home as an ultimately human place - complex and filled with opposing values and tensions. As a result, it does not lend itself to be easily programmed into discrete tasks, simple routines or efficient workflows as technology is predisposed to do. Through the lens of lived everyday experiences, this research offers a critical look at the future of domestic living as shaped by a predominantly techno-centric narrative. The result is an urgent call for change to be led by technology providers, as well as emerging design considerations to the question: how might we rethink domestic technology to better support human-centered values in the home

A Collaborative Visualization Framework Using JINI™ Technology

It is difficult to achieve mutual understanding of complex information between individuals that are separated geographically. Two well-known techniques commonly used to deal with this difficultly are collaboration and information visualization. This thesis develops a generic flexible framework that supports both collaboration and information visualization. It introduces the Collaborative Visualization Environment (COVE) framework, which simplifies the development of real-time synchronous multi-user applications by decoupling the elements of collaboration from the application. This allows developers to focus on building applications and leave the difficulties of collaboration (i.e., concurrency controls, user awareness, session management, etc.) to the framework. The framework uses an object sharing approach to share information and views between participants in a collaborative session. This approach takes advantage of several Java technologies (i.e., JavaBeans™, Jini™, and JavaSpaces™). JavaBeans™ establish a well-known standard for applications to operate within the framework. Jini™ services provide framework stability and enable code sharing across the network. Objects are shared between remote clients through the JavaSpaces™ service

Project BeARCAT : Baselining, Automation and Response for CAV Testbed Cyber Security : Connected Vehicle & Infrastructure Security Assessment

Connected, software-based systems are a driver in advancing the technology of transportation systems. Advanced automated and autonomous vehicles, together with electrification, will help reduce congestion, accidents and emissions. Meanwhile, vehicle manufacturers see advanced technology as enhancing their products in a competitive market. However, as many decades of using home and enterprise computer systems have shown, connectivity allows a system to become a target for criminal intentions. Cyber-based threats to any system are a problem; in transportation, there is the added safety implication of dealing with moving vehicles and the passengers within

Authentication/authorization issues and fulltext document migration for the CERN Document Server

This thesis describes a master degree project, ending studies at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca of Computer Science, Milano. This work has been realized at the European Organization of Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva. The aim of the project was to enhance CDS Invenio, a digital library software developed by CERN, in the authentication/authorization area, to develop an automatic migration tool for moving documents from the legacy architecture and to develop an extension to Python in C for solving indexing time issues