Optimizing precision agricultural operations by standardized cloud-based functions

Aim of study: An approach to integrate knowledge into the IT-infrastructure of precision agriculture (PA) is presented. The creation of operation relevant information is analyzed and explored to be processed by standardized web services and thereby to integrate external knowledge into PA. The target is to make knowledge integrable into any software solution. Area of study: The data sampling took place at the Heidfeld Hof Research Station in Stuttgart, Germany. Material and methods: This study follows the information science’s idea to separate the process from data sampling into the final actuation through four steps: data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. The process from the data acquisition, over a professional data treatment to the actual application is analyzed by methods modelled in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) for two use-cases. It was further applied for a low altitude sensor in a PA operation; a data sampling by UAV represents the starting point. Main results: For the implemented solution, the Web Processing Service (WPS) of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is proposed. This approach reflects the idea of a function as a service (FaaS), in order to develop a demand-driven and extensible solution for irregularly used functionalities. PA benefits, as on-farm processes are season oriented and a FaaS reflects the farm’s variable demands over time by origin and extends the concept to offer external know-how for the integration into specific processes. Research highlights: The standardized implementation of knowledge into PA software products helps to generate additional benefits for PA

Position-Independent Code Reuse:On the Effectiveness of ASLR in the Absence of Information Disclosure

Address-space layout randomization is a wellestablished defense against code-reuse attacks. However, it can be completely bypassed by just-in-time code-reuse attacks that rely on information disclosure of code addresses via memory or side-channel exposure. To address this fundamental weakness, much recent research has focused on detecting and mitigating information disclosure. The assumption being that if we perfect such techniques, we will not only maintain layout secrecy but also stop code reuse. In this paper, we demonstrate that an advanced attacker can mount practical code-reuse attacks even in the complete absence of information disclosure. To this end, we present Position-Independent Code-Reuse Attacks, a new class of codereuse attacks relying on the relative rather than absolute location of code gadgets in memory. By means of memory massaging, the attacker first makes the victim program generate a rudimentary ROP payload (for instance, containing code pointers that target instructions 'close' to relevant gadgets). Afterwards, the addresses in this payload are patched with small offsets via relative memory writes. To establish the practicality of such attacks, we present multiple Position-Independent ROP exploits against real-world software. After showing that we can bypass ASLR in current systems without requiring information disclosures, we evaluate the impact of our technique on other defenses, such as fine-grained ASLR, multi-variant execution, execute-only memory and re-randomization. We conclude by discussing potential mitigations

Adjustment of Weed Hoeing to Narrowly Spaced Cereals

Weed hoeing can be successfully performed in wide row crops, such as sugar beet, maize, soybean and wide spaced cereals. However, little experience is available for hoeing in narrow cereal row spaces below 200 mm. Yet, mechanical weed control can pose an alternative to herbicide applications by reducing the herbicide resistant populations present in the field. In this experiment, it was investigated whether hoeing is feasible in cereals with 150 and 125 mm row spacings. The trial was set up at two locations (Ihinger Hof and Kleinhohenheim) in southwest Germany. Three different conventional hoeing sweeps, a goosefoot sweep, a no-till sweep and a down-cut side knife were adjusted to the small row widths, and hoeing was performed once with a tractor and a standard hoeing frame which was guided by a second human operator. The average grain yield, crop and weed biomass, and weed control efficacy of each treatment were recorded. The goosefoot and no-till sweep were tested at driving speeds of 4 and 6 km·h−1. The down-cut side knife was applied at 4 km·h−1. The results indicate that hoeing caused no yield decrease in comparison to a conventional herbicide application or manual weeding. The highest yield with a mechanical treatment was recorded for the no-till sweeps at both trial locations. Hoeing was performed successfully in narrowly spaced cereals of 150 and 125 mm, and the weed control efficacy of the mechanical treatments ranged from 50.9% at Kleinhohenheim to 89.1% at Ihinger Hof. Future experiments are going to focus on more distinct driving speeds ranging from 2 to 10 km·h−1 and performing more than one pass with the hoe. Additionally, combining the mechanical weeding tools with a camera-steered hoeing frame could increase accuracy, allow for higher working speeds and substitute the second human operator guiding the hoe

Sensor-based mechanical weed control: Present state and prospects

Mechanical weed control in agriculture has advanced in terms of precision and working rate over the past years. The real-time communication of implements with sensor systems further increased the potential of mechanical weeding. There is a wide array of available sensors including image analysis by camera, GNSS, laser and ultrasonic systems that can improve weed control efficacy in combination with mechanical systems. Every sensor type has its advantages and disadvantages. Camera-steered hoes with a hydraulic side shifting control for row crops are robust and reliable and they are now widely available from different manufacturers. The robotic sector has difficulties handling the everchanging environment of agricultural fields and fully automated systems may not exist for many years. This review looks at the developments in sensor-based mechanical weeding since the 1980s. It focused on scientific studies presenting data results of their work, with the aim of providing an overview of the possibilities of sensor-based systems and to show their efficacy. The practical application for current and future farms is considered and discussed. Furthermore, an outlook towards sensor-based mechanical weeding in the future and necessary improvements are given.Peer reviewe

Assessing the cyber security of tunnel control centres

The paper presents the status quo of the cyber security of road tunnel control centres and a methodology how to assess the existing cyber security level. This methodology includes aspects on a threefold level: firstly technical aspects (e.g. technical equipment used in tunnels and control centres), secondly organizational aspects (e.g. access control to operation buildings or handling of remote maintenance of hardware and software) and thirdly personnel aspects (e.g. awareness with regard to so called social engineering and knowledge about first signs of cyber attacks). In order to achieve an improvement easily, a software application accompanied by a guideline for assessing and improving the existing cyber security level was developed. Related results were achieved in the framework of the research project “Cyber-Safe” which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The contributions of all members of the consortium are gratefully acknowledged

You Can Run but You Can't Read: Preventing Disclosure Exploits in Executable Code

Code reuse attacks allow an adversary to impose malicious behavior on an otherwise benign program. To mitigate such attacks, a common approach is to disguise the address or content of code snippets by means of randomization or rewrit- ing, leaving the adversary with no choice but guessing. How- ever, disclosure attacks allow an adversary to scan a process— even remotely—and enable her to read executable memory on-the-fly, thereby allowing the just-in-time assembly of ex- ploits on the target site. In this paper, we propose an approach that fundamentally thwarts the root cause of memory disclosure exploits by pre- venting the inadvertent reading of code while the code itself can still be executed. We introduce a new primitive we call Execute-no-Read (XnR) which ensures that code can still be executed by the processor, but at the same time code cannot be read as data. This ultimately forfeits the self-disassembly which is necessary for just-in-time code reuse attacks (JIT- ROP) to work. To the best of our knowledge, XnR is the first approach to prevent memory disclosure attacks of exe- cutable code and JIT-ROP attacks in general. Despite the lack of hardware support for XnR in contemporary Intel x86 and ARM processors, our software emulations for Linux and Windows have a run-time overhead of only 2.2% and 3.4%, respectively