Ransomware: A New Era of Digital Terrorism

This work entails the study of ten nasty ransomwares to reveal out the analytical similarities and differences among them, which will help in understanding the mindset of cyber crooks crawling over the dark net. It also reviews the traps used by ransomware for its distribution and side by side examining the new possibilities of its dispersal. It conclude by divulging inter-relationship between various distribution approaches adopted by ransomwares and some attentive measures to hinder the ransomware and supporting alertness as ultimate tool of defense at user’s hand

Privacy-preserving deanonymization of Dark Web Tor Onion services for criminal investigations

Tese de Mestrado, Engenharia Informática, 2022, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiênciasTor is one of the most popular anonymity networks in the world. Users of this platform range from dissidents to cybercriminals or even ordinary citizens concerned with their privacy. It is based on advanced security mechanisms that provide strong guarantees against traffic correlation attacks that can deanonymize its users and services. Torpedo is the first known traffic correlation attack on Tor that aims at deanonymizing onion services’ (OS) sessions. In a federated way, servers belonging to ISPs around the globe can process deanonymization queries of specific IPs. With the abstraction of an interface, these queries can be submitted by an operator to deanonymize OSes and clients. Initial results showed that this attack was able to identify the IP addresses of OS sessions with high confidence (no false positives). However, Torpedo required ISPs to share sensitive network traffic of their clients between each other. Thus, in this work, we seek to complement the previously developed research with the introduction and study of privacy-preserving machine learning techniques, aiming to develop and assess a new attack vector on Tor that can preserve the privacy of the inputs of each party involved in a computation, allowing ISPs to encrypt their network traffic before correlation. In more detail, we leverage, test and assess a ML-oriented multi-party computation framework on top of Torpedo (TF Encrypted) and we also develop a preliminary extension for training the model with differential privacy using TF Privacy. Our evaluation concludes that the performance and precision of the system were not significantly affected by the execution of multi-party computation between ISPs, but the same was not true when we additionally introduced a pre-defined amount of random noise to the gradients by training the model with differential privac

Privacy, anonymity, visibility: dilemmas in tech use by marginalised communities

Making All Voices Count Research ReportThis paper synthesises reflections and learnings from two studies, in Kenya and South Africa, about how marginalised communities – lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) people in Nairobi, Kenya, and economically marginalised housing and urban development rights activists in Johannesburg, South Africa – use technologies commonly applied in transparency and accountability work, and the limits of their use of these technologies.Omidyar NetworkSIDADFIDUSAI

The role of architecture in providing physical & social wellbeing for the youth: a proposed youth centre in Wentworth Durban.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Youth Centres have been proven to promote physical and social wellbeing amongst modern youth. Previous research has proven the importance of architecture in community empowerment as mediator between user and surrounding environment. Offering great potential in economic, cognitive, physical and social development for disadvantaged youth. This research will explore the potential of a youth centre in the Wentworth Township. Situated in the industrious back of port South Durban Basin. The lush natural environment, thriving petro-chemical industry, lack of basic health amenities and excessive crime rates present interesting and challenging discussions for research. The overburdened low-income youth are challenged with great social deterrents however offer unwavering potential in their local interests. Limited government aided skills development and youth facilities have resulted in current negative socio-economic activities amongst Wentworth youth. The research to follow will engage scarce youth spaces and related popular peripheries. Exploring existing local and international literature for proposing the design of a youth centre that pro-actively participates in the lives of the youth. Stimulating local youth culture, economic empowerment and holistic development through architectural design. Limited local research carried out in South African youth centre typologies present potential for development of a local framework for inspired and appropriate youth spaces. Dealing with the specifics of the township and greater South African context. Engaging unemployment, hopelessness, scarce basic amenities, skills development, substance abuse and other related social dilemmas that exist because of poverty. The research to follow will analyse the social and built environment within a context specific theoretical and conceptual framework. Determining the role of architecture in youth wellbeing by establishing specific architectural design principles, for designing youth spaces in Wentworth. Place, culture and empowerment theories form a framework for analysing the local urban and social fabric. Concepts of youth culture, proactive design strategy and dreamscaping will orientate methods of response to potentials, and challenges established based on relevant case studies. Incorporating qualitative analysis of both primary and secondary data for the support of outcomes

Model-Driven Online Capacity Management for Component-Based Software Systems

Capacity management is a core activity when designing and operating distributed software systems. It comprises the provisioning of data center resources and the deployment of software components to these resources. The goal is to continuously provide adequate capacity, i.e., service level agreements should be satisfied while keeping investment and operating costs reasonably low. Traditional capacity management strategies are rather static and pessimistic: resources are provisioned for anticipated peak workload levels. Particularly, enterprise application systems are exposed to highly varying workloads, leading to unnecessarily high total cost of ownership due to poor resource usage efficiency caused by the aforementioned static capacity management approach. During the past years, technologies emerged that enable dynamic data center infrastructures, e. g., leveraged by cloud computing products. These technologies build the foundation for elastic online capacity management, i.e., adapting the provided capacity to workload demands based on a short-term horizon. Because manual online capacity management is not an option, automatic control approaches have been proposed. However, most of these approaches focus on coarse-grained adaptation actions and adaptation decisions are based on aggregated system-level measures. Architectural information about the controlled software system is rarely considered. This thesis introduces a model-driven online capacity management approach for distributed component-based software systems, called SLAstic. The core contributions of this approach are a) modeling languages to capture relevant architectural information about a controlled software system, b) an architecture-based online capacity management framework based on the common MAPE-K control loop architecture, c) model-driven techniques supporting the automation of the approach, d) architectural runtime reconfiguration operations for controlling a system’s capacity, e) as well as an integration of the Palladio Component Model. A qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the approach is performed by case studies, lab experiments, and simulation

Review / Update of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP)

In view of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD) revised and updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets for the years 2011-2020, Botswana is aligning its National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) in line with decisions taken at the 10th Conference of Parties. This report represents the stocktaking / assessment and gap analysis phase, and covers an assessment of synergies with other Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs); the current status and trends in biodiversity across Botswana’s different ecoregions; the economic value of biodiversity; and the extent to which biodiversity is accommodated in the national accounts; and an evaluation of the degree to which the existing NBSAP has been implemented

Exploring Strategies for Capturing Requirements for Developing ICT4D Applications

Some software engineers make decisions using applications designed from poorly captured user requirements. The quality of user requirements is crucial in the requirements engineering process, costing 50 times more to remedy the defects of using poorly captured user requirements. Grounded in the socialization, externalization, combination and internalization model of Nonaka theoretical framework, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies software engineers in Southern African software houses and IT departments use for capturing information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) requirements. The participants consisted of software 12 engineers who were working in Southern Africa, capturing ICT4D requirements. The data were collected using semistructured interviews. Thematic analysis was used, and four themes emerged: (a) interacting with stakeholders—socialization, (b) transforming interactive knowledge into user requirements—externalization, (c) sharing documented knowledge about user requirements—combination, and (d) applying assimilated knowledge from documented knowledge—internalization. A recommendation is for software engineers to capture their users’ needs and experiences to develop reliable ICT4D software that can assist in delivering interventions to marginalized societies. The implications for positive social change include improving the socioeconomic status of marginalized citizens with ICT4D software applications due to potentially improved requirements engineering practices

Assessment of Agricultural Information Needs in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States: West Africa: Country study Liberia

The study aimed to provide insight on status of infrastructure, information services and ICM capacity of institutions involved in agriculture and rural development, Information and capacity building needs in the area of ICM identified for key institutions and potential CTA partners involved in ARD and potential strategic partners for CTA activities and services identified and baseline data on the status of ICM and ICT in ARD compiled for monitoring purposes and improved outreach..

Lessons learned: overcoming common challenges in reconstructing the SARS-CoV-2 genome from short-read sequencing data via CoVpipe2 [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Background Accurate genome sequences form the basis for genomic surveillance programs, the added value of which was impressively demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic by tracing transmission chains, discovering new viral lineages and mutations, and assessing them for infectiousness and resistance to available treatments. Amplicon strategies employing Illumina sequencing have become widely established for variant detection and reference-based reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 genomes, and are routine bioinformatics tasks. Yet, specific challenges arise when analyzing amplicon data, for example, when crucial and even lineage-determining mutations occur near primer sites. Methods We present CoVpipe2, a bioinformatics workflow developed at the Public Health Institute of Germany to reconstruct SARS-CoV-2 genomes based on short-read sequencing data accurately. The decisive factor here is the reliable, accurate, and rapid reconstruction of genomes, considering the specifics of the used sequencing protocol. Besides fundamental tasks like quality control, mapping, variant calling, and consensus generation, we also implemented additional features to ease the detection of mixed samples and recombinants. Results We highlight common pitfalls in primer clipping, detecting heterozygote variants, and dealing with low-coverage regions and deletions. We introduce CoVpipe2 to address the above challenges and have compared and successfully validated the pipeline against selected publicly available benchmark datasets. CoVpipe2 features high usability, reproducibility, and a modular design that specifically addresses the characteristics of short-read amplicon protocols but can also be used for whole-genome short-read sequencing data. Conclusions CoVpipe2 has seen multiple improvement cycles and is continuously maintained alongside frequently updated primer schemes and new developments in the scientific community. Our pipeline is easy to set up and use and can serve as a blueprint for other pathogens in the future due to its flexibility and modularity, providing a long-term perspective for continuous support. CoVpipe2 is written in Nextflow and is freely accessible from \href{https://github.com/rki-mf1/CoVpipe2}{github.com/rki-mf1/CoVpipe2} under the GPL3 license