Measuring network security using Bayesian Network-based attack graphs

Given the increasing dependence of our societies on networked information systems, the overall security of such systems should be measured and improved. Recent research has explored the application of attack graphs and probabilistic security metrics to address this challenge. However, such work usually shares several limitations. First, individual vulnerabilities' scores are usually assumed to be independent. This assumption will not hold in many realistic cases where exploiting a vulnerability may change the score of other vulnerabilities. Second, the evolving nature of vulnerabilities and networks has generally been ignored. The scores of individual vulnerabilities are constantly changing due to released patches and exploits, which should be taken into account in measuring network security. To address these limitations, this thesis first proposes a Bayesian Network-based attack graph model for combining scores of individual vulnerabilities into a global measurement of network security. The application of Bayesian Networks allows us to handle dependency between scores and provides a sound theoretical foundation to network security metrics. We then extend the model using Dynamic Bayesian Networks in order to reason about the patterns and trends in changing scores of vulnerabilities. Finally, we implement and evaluate the proposed models through simulation studies

Understanding Fall-Risk Factors for Inuvialuit Elders in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, Canada

Older Indigenous adults in Canada experience disproportionately poorer health outcomes than older non-Indigenous adults. Current fall-prevention literature suggests that older Indigenous adults have higher rates of falls and fall-related injuries; however, no information exists on older Inuit adults’ experience with falls. Using the social determinants of Inuit health (SDoIH) as a conceptual framework, this research sought to understand which of the SDoIH are believed by stakeholders (i.e., local fall prevention programmers [LFPPs] and Inuvialuit Elders) to affect most the likelihood of older Inuvialuit adults’ falls. The findings from the 12 semi-structured interviews and participant observations show that factors related to personal health status and conditions, personal health practices and coping skills, physical environments, social support networks, and access to health services increase older Inuvialuit adults’ likelihood of experiencing a fall. Some determinants, however, decrease their likelihood of experiencing falls (health practices, coping skills, and access to health services), and others, such as culture, were perceived as having little influence on falls. Specific cultural practices were identified as factors that influence the likelihood of older Inuvialuit adults experiencing a fall; however, the overall Inuvialuit culture was not. In light of these findings, we offer recommendations for LFPPs in Inuvik to implement fall-prevention programs that adequately address the SDoIH influencing older Inuvialuit adults’ fall risk and rates.Au Canada, les Autochtones âgés ont un état de santé excessivement moins bon que les non-Autochtones âgés. Selon la documentation actuelle sur la prévention des chutes, les Autochtones âgés ont des taux plus élevés de chutes et de blessures découlant de chutes. Cependant, il n’existe pas d’information au sujet des chutes chez les Inuits âgés. Cette recherche, ayant comme cadre conceptuel les déterminants sociaux de la santé des Inuits (DSSI), a cherché à comprendre les DSSI (comme les programmeurs locaux de prévention des chutes et les aînés inuvialuits) qui, selon les parties prenantes, sont les plus susceptibles d’avoir une incidence sur les chutes d’Inuvialuits âgés. D’après les constatations émanant des12 entretiens semi-structurés et les observations des participants, les facteurs liés à l’état de santé et aux conditions personnelles, les pratiques personnelles en matière de santé, la capacité d’adaptation, le milieu physique, les réseaux de soutien social et l’accès aux services de santé ont une incidence sur les possibilités de chutes chez les Inuvialuits âgés. Cependant, certains déterminants diminuent leurs possibilités de chutes (les pratiques personnelles en matière de santé, la capacité d’adaptation et l’accès aux services de santé), tandis que d’autres facteurs, comme la culture, ont peu d’influence apparente sur les chutes. Certaines pratiques culturelles constituent des facteurs qui influencent les possibilités de chutes chez les Inuvialuits âgés, mais dans son ensemble, la culture inuvialuite n’est pas un facteur. À la lumière de ces constatations, nous présentons des recommandations aux programmeurs locaux de prévention des chutes d’Inuvik en vue de la mise en oeuvre de programmes de prévention des chutes qui auraient une incidence réelle sur les DSSI influençant les risques et les taux de chutes chez les Inuvialuits âgés

Fair play, white advantage, and black reparations

This dissertation advances a new argumentative approach to the political problem of black reparations in the contemporary United States appealing to the normative principle of fair play. Among its core presumptions is the view that getting appreciable numbers of white Americans to acknowledge what I call the primary normative case for black reparations will require, among other things, a new kind of discursive move, namely: the deployment of an intermediary case designed to facilitate recognition of the primary one. The two central tasks of my dissertation are to establish the need for such an intermediary case, and to make it via my novel fair play argument. My approach to fair play reasoning involves three main innovations: First, I introduce the possibility of deploying that framework in a corrective mode, to ground redistributive obligations on the part of members of systemically advantaged groups, but which do not imply guilt or blame. Second, in arguing for that deployment, I offer a novel conception of free-riding which I call externalist insofar as it defines the latter without reference to the relevant agents’ mental states. Third, I argue that in a range of cases those corrective obligations of fair play can qualify as reparative despite the fact that their normative force is not determined by direct reference to any discrete wrong, or what I call extrinsically reparative. A key plank of my proposal is the empirical claim that the lens of fair play is better suited to overcoming many of the moral and social psychological obstacles that have long plagued political progress on black reparations in the U.S. I defend this claim by drawing upon various strands of the empirical literature on white racial identity in connection with attitudes toward race-sensitive social policies generally. I argue that it is only upon being safely confronted with the details of how their very whiteness precipitates the nonvoluntary receipt of various unearned material advantages that white Americans will begin to perceive their own personal involvement in America’s long history of racial injustice, and feel a new kind of pressure to do something about it.2021-10-29T00:00:00

L'Île promise : la figure de l'«insula» chez Bède le Vénérable

Ce mémoire cherche à approfondir les connaissances actuelles de la médiévistique en matière de notion d'espace pour le haut Moyen Âge. L'étude de la figure de l'insula au sein de l'Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum de Bède le Vénérable demeure au centre de cet approfondissement. Le présent document offre dans un premier temps une analyse de la place et du rôle des îles dans les discours géographiques de l'Antiquité et du haut Moyen Âge. S'y trouve ensuite une analyse des principaux sens du vocable insula de l'Historia ecclesiastica suivi d'une réflexion sur les principaux rapports sociaux mis en exergue et les structures auxquelles ils s'attachent. Finalement, on s'intéresse à la notion d'unitas ainsi qu'aux modalités de sa réalisation, sachant qu'elle est nécessaire à la transformation de la Bretagne en « Île promise »

CAR-Based Approaches to Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma

Cutaneous T cell lymphomas (CTCL) are a heterogeneous group of malignancies characterized by the expansion of a malignant T cell clone. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has shown impressive results for the treatment of B-cell tumors, but several challenges have prevented this approach in the context of T cell lymphoma. These challenges include the possibilities of fratricide due to shared T-cell antigens, T cell immunodeficiency, and CAR transduction of malignant cells if CAR T are manufactured in the autologous setting. In this review, we discuss these and other challenges in detail and summarize the approaches currently in development to overcome these challenges and offer cellular targeting of T cell lymphomas