'Safety: everybody’s concern, everybody’s duty?' Questioning the significance of 'active citizenship' and 'social cohesion' for people's perception of safety

The catchphrase “Safety: everybody’s concern, everybody’s duty” implies that in order to safe-guard the social order and safety we, the professionals as well as the public, need to unite and work together. In this sense, social connectedness and civic engagement are perceived as the prime sources to counter crime and people’s perception of safety. In this paper, we will first clarify that the references to ‘active citizenship’ and ‘social cohesion’ in criminal policy discourse are the result of the development of ‘perception of safety’ as an autonomous subject for research and policy. Policymakers have come to see (in)security as a phenomenon that needs to be explained by taking into account crime and non-crime related factors. Next, we will describe the emergence of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘active citizenship’ as natural barriers against crime and other deviant behaviour and as prerequisites for people’s perception of safety. In the third part, however, we will point out that both concepts are not necessarily positively interlinked with people’s ‘perception of safety’. Moreover we will indicate that activating civic engagement and stimulating social cohesion can even be detrimental to people’s perception of safety. In the final part we will suggest that in order to understand people’s perception of safety, we need to consider the process of identity formation and social categorization

Automotive firmware extraction and analysis techniques

An intricate network of embedded devices, called Electronic Control Units (ECUs), is responsible for the functionality of a modern vehicle. Every module processes a myriad of information and forwards it on to other nodes on the network, typically an automotive bus such as the Controller Area Network (CAN). Analysing embedded device software, and automotive in particular, brings many challenges. The analyst must, especially in the notoriously secretive automotive industry, first lift the ECU firmware from the hardware, which typically prevents unauthorised access. In this thesis, we address this problem in two ways: - We detail and bypass the access control mechanism used in diagnostic protocols in ECU firmware. Using existing diagnostic functionality, we present a generic technique to download code to RAM and execute it, without requiring physical access to the ECU. We propose a generic firmware readout framework on top of this, which only requires access to the CAN bus. - We analyse various embedded bootloaders and combine dynamic analysis with low-level hardware fault attacks, resulting in several fault-injection attacks which bypass on-chip readout protection. We then apply these firmware extraction techniques to acquire immobiliser firmware by two different manufacturers, from which we reverse engineer the DST80 cipher and present it in full detail here. Furthermore, we point out flaws in the key generation procedure, also recovered from the ECU firmware, leading to a full key recovery based on publicly readable transponder pages

Constructies en bronnen van veiligheidsbeleving bij burgers: naar een andere benadering van een relatief fenomeen

Vertrekkend vanuit de vaststelling dat zowel wetenschappelijk als beleidsmatig veiligheidsbeleving bij burgers wordt beschreven als een relatief en complex fenomeen met een aantal vreemde inconsistenties en paradoxen, is dit proefschrift een zoektocht naar een andere manier om veiligheidsbeleving te begrijpen, te problematiseren en aan te pakken. Geïllustreerd aan de hand van interviews met bewoners uit een doorsnee Vlaamse wijk, menen we dat een sociaal constructionistische benadering meer inzicht geeft in hoe en waarom burgers een bepaalde beleving ontwikkelen (construeren). In lijn met deze nieuwe benadering houden we vervolgens een pleidooi voor een problematisering en aanpak die het traditionele onderscheid tussen ‘subjectieve’ en ‘objectieve’ onveiligheid verlaten, en nagaan in welke mate burgers beschikken over én overtuigd zijn van strategieën en antwoorden (bronnen) om onveiligheid te voorspellen, te verklaren en eventueel te controleren

Cutting Through the Complexity of Reverse Engineering Embedded Devices

Performing security analysis of embedded devices is a challenging task. They present many difficulties not usually found when analyzing commodity systems: undocumented peripherals, esoteric instruction sets, and limited tool support. Thus, a significant amount of reverse engineering is almost always required to analyze such devices. In this paper, we present Incision, an architecture and operating-system agnostic reverse engineering framework. Incision tackles the problem of reducing the upfront effort to analyze complex end-user devices. It combines static and dynamic analyses in a feedback loop, enabling information from each to be used in tandem to improve our overall understanding of the firmware analyzed. We use Incision to analyze a variety of devices and firmware. Our evaluation spans firmware based on three RTOSes, an automotive ECU, and a 4G/LTE baseband. We demonstrate that Incision does not introduce significant complexity to the standard reverse engineering process and requires little manual effort to use. Moreover, its analyses produce correct results with high confidence and are robust across different OSes and ISAs

Side-by-side comparison of the effects of Gq- and Gi-DREADD-mediated astrocyte modulation on intracellular calcium dynamics and synaptic plasticity in the hippocampal CA1

Abstract Astrocytes express a plethora of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that are crucial for shaping synaptic activity. Upon GPCR activation, astrocytes can respond with transient variations in intracellular Ca2+. In addition, Ca2+-dependent and/or Ca2+-independent release of gliotransmitters can occur, allowing them to engage in bidirectional neuron-astrocyte communication. The development of designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) has facilitated many new discoveries on the roles of astrocytes in both physiological and pathological conditions. They are an excellent tool, as they can target endogenous GPCR-mediated intracellular signal transduction pathways specifically in astrocytes. With increasing interest and accumulating research on this topic, several discrepancies on astrocytic Ca2+ signalling and astrocyte-mediated effects on synaptic plasticity have emerged, preventing a clear-cut consensus about the downstream effects of DREADDs in astrocytes. In the present study, we performed a side-by-side evaluation of the effects of bath application of the DREADD agonist, clozapine-N-oxide (10 µM), on Gq- and Gi-DREADD activation in mouse CA1 hippocampal astrocytes. In doing so, we aimed to avoid confounding factors, such as differences in experimental procedures, and to directly compare the actions of both DREADDs on astrocytic intracellular Ca2+ dynamics and synaptic plasticity in acute hippocampal slices. We used an adeno-associated viral vector approach to transduce dorsal hippocampi of male, 8-week-old C57BL6/J mice, to drive expression of either the Gq-DREADD or Gi-DREADD in CA1 astrocytes. A viral vector lacking the DREADD construct was used to generate controls. Here, we show that agonism of Gq-DREADDs, but not Gi-DREADDs, induced consistent increases in spontaneous astrocytic Ca2+ events. Moreover, we demonstrate that both Gq-DREADD as well as Gi-DREADD-mediated activation of CA1 astrocytes induces long-lasting synaptic potentiation in the hippocampal CA1 Schaffer collateral pathway in the absence of a high frequency stimulus. Moreover, we report for the first time that astrocytic Gi-DREADD activation is sufficient to elicit de novo potentiation. Our data demonstrate that activation of either Gq or Gi pathways drives synaptic potentiation through Ca2+-dependent and Ca2+-independent mechanisms, respectively

'Better safe than sorry, but, you know, don't overdo it' responsabilization and fatalism in perception of safety

The slogan ‘Better Safe than Sorry, But You Know, Don’t Overdo It’ is inspired by a column written by Melissa Summers about ‘National Baby Safety Month’ (2007). In a cynical but funny manner Summers criticises the industry that, in order to sell some outlandish safety devices, preys on one of parents’ biggest fears: a preventable accident hurting their baby. Summers does not ridicule their fear, but urges parents not to get terrorised by these messages, and instead to set out some practical ground rules to protect infants. Although this article is not focused on ‘baby safety’, I will show that people use the same slogan in dealing with crime. While acknowledging that people are (more) aware of crime, and take precautions, I will note that this awareness and this behaviour does not necessarily have a dramatic impact on people’s daily lives, nor are they to be interpreted as signals for a problematic perception of safety. Parallel to the conclusions of an Australian study by Deborah Lupton (2000), my own research findings in a Flemish neighbourhood raise some strong reservations to the current theoretical assumption that people nowadays are caught up in a ‘Culture of Fear’ (Furedi, 2006) or victims of a ‘Culture of Control’ (Garland, 2001), and that ‘fear of crime’ functions as a way to project (Hollway & Jefferson, 1997) or to express (Jackson, 2004) late modern ambiguous anxieties. In the conclusion I will discuss the relevance of this interpretative research for surveillance studies

La topographie

SYL-002434 = Volume 11re édition 1995-1996/1 Edition provisoirePOLYT-info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Help! De burgers voelen zich onveilig! Constructies en bronnen van veiligheidsbeleving bij burgers

Zowel beleidsmatig als wetenschappelijke wordt de veiligheidsbeleving bij burgers omschreven als een relatief fenomeen waardoor het niet altijd duidelijk is hoe we die beleving kunnen begrijpen, wanneer die beleving problematisch is en hoe we die beleving kunnen aanpakken en betrekken in het veiligheidsbeleid. In deze bijdrage argumenteren we dat de traditionele focus op WAT burgers als onveilig ervaren onvoldoende is om veiligheidsbeleving beter te begrijpen, en zelfs risico’s inhoudt in de manier waarop die beleving betrokken wordt in het veiligheidsbeleid. Om de betekenis, stabiliteit en problematisch karakter van veiligheidsbeleving beter te kunnen begrijpen is o.i. een sociaal constructionistische benadering noodzakelijk waarbij de focus vooreerst ligt op HOE burgers onveiligheid vorm geven in hun dagelijkse leven (construeren) en vervolgens wordt nagegaan WAAROM die beleving zich ontwikkelt door te analyseren welke sociale en culturele kaders (bronnen) burgers gebruiken om hun beleving te verantwoorden en te managen