SWiM: Secure Wildcard Pattern Matching From OT Extension

Suppose a server holds a long text string and a receiver holds a short pattern string. Secure pattern matching allows the receiver to learn the locations in the long text where the pattern appears, while leaking nothing else to either party besides the length of their inputs. In this work we consider secure wildcard pattern matching WPM, where the receiver\u27s pattern is allowed to contain wildcards that match to any character. We present SWiM, a simple and fast protocol for WPM that is heavily based on oblivious transfer (OT) extension. As such, the protocol requires only a small constant number of public-key operations and otherwise uses only very fast symmetric-key primitives. SWiM is secure against semi-honest adversaries. We implemented a prototype of our protocol to demonstrate its practicality. We can perform WPM on a DNA text (4-character alphabet) of length $10^5$ and pattern of length $10^3$ in just over 2 seconds, which is over two orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art scheme of Baron et al. (SCN 2012)

Natural gas hydrates in northern Canada

Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

MoP-2-MoP – Mobile Private Microblogging

Microblogging services have become popular, especially since smartphones made them easily accessible for common users. However, current services like Twitter rely on a centralized infrastructure, which has serious drawbacks from privacy and reliability perspectives. In this paper, we present a decentralized privacy-preserving microblogging infrastructure based on a distributed peer-to-peer network of mobile users. It is resistant to censorship and provides high availability. Our solution allows secure distribution of encrypted messages over local radio links to physically close peers. When redistributing messages, each peer rerandomizes encryptions to achieve unlinkability. Moreover, we show the feasibility of our solution using different synchronization strategies

Carbapenemase producing Enterobacterales clinical isolates from a tertiary care hospital in Egypt

Abstract Background Carbapenem resistant Enterobacterales (CRE) is on the rise globally, triggering a significant health threat and a substantial concern for infection control management. We aimed to detect and characterize carbapenemases producing Enterobacterales (CPE) clinical isolates over a period of nearly one-year duration in Theodor Bilharz Research Institute, a tertiary care hospital in Egypt through molecular and phenotypic methods using carbapenemase detection combination inhibitor disk set (Enterobacterales) MASTDISCS ID (MDI) (MAST, UK), with the addition of temocillin disk. Results CRE represented 6.5% of Enterobacterales. Healthcare-associated infections were frequently high representing 87% of the CRE isolated from hospitalized patients. Most of the CRE isolates were Klebsiella pneumonia (68%) followed by Escherichia coli (22%), Enterobacter cloacae (4%), Serratia marcescens (4%) and Citrobacter freundii (2%). Phenotypic detection revealed metallo-β lactamases in 84% of isolates, followed by oxacillinase-48 {(OXA-48) 6%} and Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase in 2% of the isolates. The most prevalent gene detected by conventional PCR was bla NDM (84%) followed by bla OXA-48 (6%) and bla KPC (2%). Excellent agreement was found between PCR and MDI for detection of carbapenemase production. Conclusions NDM carbapenemase is prevalent in our hospital. Carbapenemase detection combination inhibitor disk set (Enterobacterales) MASTDISCS ID is a useful tool for rapid and precise confirmation of the detection of CPE