Experience Constructing the Artifact Genome Project (AGP): Managing the Domain\u27s Knowledge One Artifact at a Time

While various tools have been created to assist the digital forensics community with acquiring, processing, and organizing evidence and indicating the existence of artifacts, very few attempts have been made to establish a centralized system for archiving artifacts. The Artifact Genome Project (AGP) has aimed to create the largest vetted and freely available digital forensics repository for Curated Forensic Artifacts (CuFAs). This paper details the experience of building, implementing, and maintaining such a system by sharing design decisions, lessons learned, and future work. We also discuss the impact of AGP in both the professional and academic realms of digital forensics. Our work shows promise in the digital forensics academic community to champion the effort in curating digital forensic artifacts by integrating AGP into courses, research endeavors, and collaborative projects

4CeeD: Real-Time Data Acquisition and Analysis Framework for Material-related Cyber-Physical Environments

In this paper, we propose a data acquisition and analysis framework for materials-to-devices processes, named 4CeeD, that focuses on the immense potential of capturing, accurately curating, correlating, and coordinating materials-to-devices digital data in a real-time and trusted manner before fully archiving and publishing them for wide access and sharing. In particular, 4CeeD consists of: (i) a curation service for collecting data from experimental instruments, curating, and wrapping of data with extensive metadata in real-time and in a trusted manner, (ii) a cloudlet for caching collected data from curation service and coordinating data transfer with the back-end, and (iii) a cloud-based coordination service for storing data, extracting meta-data, analyzing and finding correlations among the data. Our evaluation results show that our proposed approach is able to help researchers significantly save time and cost spent on experiments, and is efficient in dealing with high-volume and fast-changing workload of heterogeneous types of experimental data.National Science Foundation/NSF ACI 1443013Ope

A Cognitive Framework to Secure Smart Cities

The advancement in technology has transformed Cyber Physical Systems and their interface with IoT into a more sophisticated and challenging paradigm. As a result, vulnerabilities and potential attacks manifest themselves considerably more than before, forcing researchers to rethink the conventional strategies that are currently in place to secure such physical systems. This manuscript studies the complex interweaving of sensor networks and physical systems and suggests a foundational innovation in the field. In sharp contrast with the existing IDS and IPS solutions, in this paper, a preventive and proactive method is employed to stay ahead of attacks by constantly monitoring network data patterns and identifying threats that are imminent. Here, by capitalizing on the significant progress in processing power (e.g. petascale computing) and storage capacity of computer systems, we propose a deep learning approach to predict and identify various security breaches that are about to occur. The learning process takes place by collecting a large number of files of different types and running tests on them to classify them as benign or malicious. The prediction model obtained as such can then be used to identify attacks. Our project articulates a new framework for interactions between physical systems and sensor networks, where malicious packets are repeatedly learned over time while the system continually operates with respect to imperfect security mechanisms

frances : cloud-based historical text mining with deep learning and parallel processing

frances is an advanced cloud-based text mining digital platform that leverages information extraction, knowledge graphs, natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, and parallel processing techniques. It has been specifically designed to unlock the full potential of historical digital textual collections, such as those from the National Library of Scotland, offering cloud-based capabilities and extended support for complex NLP analyses and data visualizations. frances enables realtime recurrent operational text mining and provides robust capabilities for temporal analysis, accompanied by automatic visualizations for easy result inspection. In this paper, we present the motivation behind the development of frances, emphasizing its innovative design and novel implementation aspects. We also outline future development directions. Additionally, we evaluate the platform through two comprehensive case studies in history and publishing history. Feedback from participants in these studies demonstrates that frances accelerates their work and facilitates rapid testing and dissemination of ideas.Postprin

CERN openlab Whitepaper on Future IT Challenges in Scientific Research

This whitepaper describes the major IT challenges in scientific research at CERN and several other European and international research laboratories and projects. Each challenge is exemplified through a set of concrete use cases drawn from the requirements of large-scale scientific programs. The paper is based on contributions from many researchers and IT experts of the participating laboratories and also input from the existing CERN openlab industrial sponsors. The views expressed in this document are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the view of their organisations and/or affiliates