A Weighted Minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance Technique for Ransomware Early Detection in Industrial IoT

Ransomware attacks against Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) have catastrophic consequences not only to the targeted infrastructure, but also the services provided to the public. By encrypting the operational data, the ransomware attacks can disrupt the normal operations, which represents a serious problem for industrial systems. Ransomware employs several avoidance techniques, such as packing, obfuscation, noise insertion, irrelevant and redundant system call injection, to deceive the security measures and make both static and dynamic analysis more difficult. In this paper, a Weighted minimum Redundancy maximum Relevance (WmRmR) technique was proposed for better feature significance estimation in the data captured during the early stages of ransomware attacks. The technique combines an enhanced mRMR (EmRmR) with the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) so that it can filter out the runtime noisy behavior based on the weights calculated by the TF-IDF. The proposed technique has the capability to assess whether a feature in the relevant set is important or not. It has low-dimensional complexity and a smaller number of evaluations compared to the original mRmR method. The TF-IDF was used to evaluate the weights of the features generated by the EmRmR algorithm. Then, an inclusive entropy-based refinement method was used to decrease the size of the extracted data by identifying the system calls with strong behavioral indication. After extensive experimentation, the proposed technique has shown to be effective for ransomware early detection with low-complexity and few false-positive rates. To evaluate the proposed technique, we compared it with existing behavioral detection methods

2017 Research & Innovation Day Program

A one day showcase of applied research, social innovation, scholarship projects and activities.https://first.fanshawec.ca/cri_cripublications/1004/thumbnail.jp

Use of dietary and performance-enhancing supplements among male fitness center members in Riyadh: A cross-sectional study

<div><p>This study aimed to explore the health beliefs and patterns of dietary supplement usage among fitness center members. This cross-sectional study was conducted in four large indoor fitness centers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This study involved male fitness center members aged ≥18 years with no speech or hearing disabilities. In-person interviews were conducted with fitness center members who agreed to participate using a newly developed questionnaire. Information on participants’ sociodemographics (e.g., age and education), smoking status, health status, exercise frequency, average time spent exercising, different supplements used, used supplements sources, and health beliefs regarding dietary supplements were obtained. A total of 445 fitness center members agreed to participate, and 198 of them reported taking dietary supplements. Most participants were between the age of 18 and 25 years (66%), had a college degree (74%), non-smokers (77%), healthy (84%), and perform exercise at least thrice weekly (52%) for at least 1 hour (63%). The percentage of participants who had favorable health views on dietary supplements was significantly higher among the supplement users than among the non-users (<i>P</i><0.0001). Proteins, multivitamins, amino acids, and omega 3 fatty acids were the most commonly reported supplements used. Almost 30% of the supplement users reported buying them overseas, 28% online, 25% from a pharmacy or supplement store, 19% from a medical clinic, and 17% from peddlers. Public health campaigns are needed to educate the public on the potential harmful effects of supplements if purchased from an unofficial seller or taken without seeking medical advice before using them.</p></div

The attitudes of dental interns to the use of the rubber dam at Riyadh dental colleges

Background : The rubber dam is one of the best tools for tooth isolation and infection control in the dental field. Our aim is to evaluate the attitudes toward the use of rubber dams by dental interns in Riyadh Dental Colleges (RCsDP) and determine the barriers to their use. Materials and Methods: A self-administered questionnaire was designed and used for data collection. 150 questionnaires were distributed by hand to the dental interns of RCsDP over a period of two weeks. Information sought included the attitudes toward and difficulties for the use of the rubber dam, the time needed to apply the rubber dam, and the patients′ allergic history of the rubber dam. Respondents were asked to state their preference on a five point Likert type scale ranging from "strongly dislike" to "strongly like". The information and data of the completed questionnaires were statistically analyzed using Mann-Whitney U test and Friedman test. Results: Of 150 questionnaires distributed, 150 were completed and returned (response rate = 100%). Of those, 46.7% were males and 53.3% were females. In general; (43.3%), interns strongly liked the use of the rubber dam and the rest (46.7%) liked the use of the rubber dam. The majority of respondents liked to use rubber dam in direct restorations more than in indirect restorations and 46.7% strongly liked to use it in posterior teeth for composite restoration. Most dental interns felt that they would strongly like to use a rubber dam for endodontic treatment whether in posterior teeth (73.3%) or anterior teeth (68.7%). 66.7% of interns asked their patients if they had an allergy to latex prior to the use of the rubber dam. Child behavior (mean rank about seven) is the most important reason for not using rubber dam. The time is taken to apply the rubber dam was less than five minutes in most cases. Conclusion: Most dental interns prefer to use rubber dams in the general dental field and are enthusiastic to use it in future

Dietary supplements used by the participants.

<p>Dietary supplements used by the participants.</p

Participants’ beliefs regarding dietary supplements.

<p>Participants’ beliefs regarding dietary supplements.</p

Sources of dietary supplements.

<p>Sources of dietary supplements.</p