Multi-aspect, robust, and memory exclusive guest os fingerprinting

Precise fingerprinting of an operating system (OS) is critical to many security and forensics applications in the cloud, such as virtual machine (VM) introspection, penetration testing, guest OS administration, kernel dump analysis, and memory forensics. The existing OS fingerprinting techniques primarily inspect network packets or CPU states, and they all fall short in precision and usability. As the physical memory of a VM always exists in all these applications, in this article, we present OS-Sommelier+, a multi-aspect, memory exclusive approach for precise and robust guest OS fingerprinting in the cloud. It works as follows: given a physical memory dump of a guest OS, OS-Sommelier+ first uses a code hash based approach from kernel code aspect to determine the guest OS version. If code hash approach fails, OS-Sommelier+ then uses a kernel data signature based approach from kernel data aspect to determine the version. We have implemented a prototype system, and tested it with a number of Linux kernels. Our evaluation results show that the code hash approach is faster but can only fingerprint the known kernels, and data signature approach complements the code signature approach and can fingerprint even unknown kernels

Mössbauer diffractometry on polycrystalline (57)Fe3Al

A Mossbauer powder diffractometer was used to measure diffraction patterns from polycrystalline foils of (Fe3Al)-Fe-57. The intensities of Bragg diffractions were measured as a function of the energy of the incident photon. The bee fundamental diffractions showed large changes in intensity as the incident energy was tuned through the nuclear resonances. These variations of diffraction intensity with incident energy were calculated with reasonable success using a kinematical theory of diffraction that included effects of coherent interference between x-ray Rayleigh scattering and, more importantly for these samples, Mossbauer scattering from nuclei having different hyperfine magnetic fields

Development of a thermal acoustical aircraft insulation material

A process was developed for fabricating a light weight foam suitable for thermal and acoustical insulation in aircraft. The procedures and apparatus are discussed, and the foam specimens are characterized by numerous tests and measurements

A sharp stability criterion for the Vlasov-Maxwell system

We consider the linear stability problem for a 3D cylindrically symmetric equilibrium of the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system that describes a collisionless plasma. For an equilibrium whose distribution function decreases monotonically with the particle energy, we obtained a linear stability criterion in our previous paper. Here we prove that this criterion is sharp; that is, there would otherwise be an exponentially growing solution to the linearized system. Therefore for the class of symmetric Vlasov-Maxwell equilibria, we establish an energy principle for linear stability. We also treat the considerably simpler periodic 1.5D case. The new formulation introduced here is applicable as well to the nonrelativistic case, to other symmetries, and to general equilibria

#Bigbirds never die: Understanding social dynamics of emergent hashtag

We examine the growth, survival, and context of 256 novel hashtags during the 2012 U.S. presidential debates. Our analysis reveals the trajectories of hashtag use fall into two distinct classes: “winners” that emerge more quickly and are sustained for longer periods of time than other “also-rans” hashtags. We propose a “conversational vibrancy” framework to capture dynamics of hashtags based on their topicality, interactivity, diversity, and prominence. Statistical analyses of the growth and persistence of hashtags reveal novel relationships between features of this framework and the relative success of hashtags. Specifically, retweets always contribute to faster hashtag adoption, replies extend the life of “winners” while having no effect on “also-rans.” This is the first study on the lifecycle of hashtag adoption and use in response to purely exogenous shocks. We draw on theories of uses and gratification, organizational ecology, and language evolution to discuss these findings and their implications for understanding social influence and collective action in social media more generally

Sliding of Electron Crystal of Finite Size on the Surface of Superfluid He-4 Confined in a Microchannel

We present a new study of the nonlinear transport of a two-dimensional electron crystal on the surface of liquid helium confined in a 10 micrometer-wide channel in which the effective length of the crystal can be varied from 10 to 215 micrometers. At low driving voltages, the moving electron crystal is strongly coupled to deformation of the liquid surface arising from resonant excitation of surface capillary waves, ripplons, while at higher driving voltages the crystal decouples from the deformation. We find strong dependence of the decoupling threshold of the driving electric field acting on the electrons, on the size of the crystal. In particular, the threshold electric field significantly decreases when the length of the crystal becomes shorter than 25 micrometers. We explain this effect as arising from weakening of surface deformations due to radiative loss of resonantly-excited ripplons from an electron crystal of finite size, and we account for the observed effect using an instructive analytical model.Comment: 5 figure