15 research outputs found
Device-Centric Monitoring for Mobile Device Management
The ubiquity of computing devices has led to an increased need to ensure not
only that the applications deployed on them are correct with respect to their
specifications, but also that the devices are used in an appropriate manner,
especially in situations where the device is provided by a party other than the
actual user. Much work which has been done on runtime verification for mobile
devices and operating systems is mostly application-centric, resulting in
global, device-centric properties (e.g. the user may not send more than 100
messages per day across all applications) being difficult or impossible to
verify. In this paper we present a device-centric approach to runtime verify
the device behaviour against a device policy with the different applications
acting as independent components contributing to the overall behaviour of the
device. We also present an implementation for Android devices, and evaluate it
on a number of device-centric policies, reporting the empirical results
obtained.Comment: In Proceedings FESCA 2016, arXiv:1603.0837
Improving Android security through real-time policy enforcement
The use of the Android operating system has become a very popular option with a vast variety of mobile devices. This popularity means that companies and other users are more likely to consider using android devices. Naturally there will be users and companies concerned with how their Android devices are used. Therefore, some sort of device management is required. Let us consider a coffee distribution company that has employees visiting its customers to showcase new products and take orders. Such a company would need to provide its employees with portable devices containing sensitive data about their products and customers. Therefore, the company would want to limit access to such data to only authorized applications or users. It could also want to disable the android market or not allow untrusted applications from running on the mobile device. Another possible scenario could be that of having parents concerned with how their children use their mobile devices. It is well known that children love to play games, therefore a parent might want to control the amount of hours per day that they could spend playing on their mobile device. They could also want to make sure that the browsers that their children use, filter out bad websites. Parents could also want to control how many messages and phone calls their children make.peer-reviewe
Device centric monitoring on mobile devices
Mobile devices have become an integral part of our modern society. In fact, the use of these devices has grown to such an extent that nowadays they are finding their way to virtually every household. Various companies have also started to show interest in using such devices to support sales and productivity whilst facilitating the employees’ jobs. Naturally, there are various mobile devices that one can choose from, but with a market share of over 50 percent Android based devices have become a popular choice.peer-reviewe
Exploring the link between test suite quality and automatic specification inference
While no one doubts the importance of correct and complete specifications, many industrial systems
still do not have formal specifications written out — and even when they do, it is hard to check their
correctness and completeness. This work explores the possibility of using an invariant extraction tool
such as Daikon to automatically infer specifications from available test suites with the idea of aiding
software engineers to improve the specifications by having another version to compare to. Given that
our initial experiments did not produce satisfactory results, in this paper we explore which test suite
attributes influence the quality of the inferred specification. Following further study, we found that
instruction, branch and method coverage are correlated to high recall values, reaching up to 97.93%.peer-reviewe
Automatically generating runtime monitors from tests
A large portion of the software development industry relies on testing as the main technique for quality assurance while other techniques which can provide extra guarantees are largely ignored. A case in point is runtime verification which provides assurance that a system’s behaviour is correct at runtime. Compared to testing, this technique has the advantage of checking the actual runs of a system rather than a number of representative testcases.peer-reviewe
Device-centric monitoring for mobile device management
The ubiquity of computing devices has led to an increased need to ensure not only that the applications
deployed on them are correct with respect to their specifications, but also that the devices are used in
an appropriate manner, especially in situations where the device is provided by a party other than the
actual user. Much work which has been done on runtime verification for mobile devices and operating
systems is mostly application-centric, resulting in global, device-centric properties (e.g. the user may
not send more than 100 messages per day across all applications) being difficult or impossible to
verify. In this paper we present a device-centric approach to runtime verify the device behaviour
against a device policy with the different applications acting as independent components contributing
to the overall behaviour of the device. We also present an implementation for Android devices, and
evaluate it on a number of device-centric policies, reporting the empirical results obtained.peer-reviewe
Critical Role for Cold Shock Protein YB-1 in Cytokinesis
High levels of the cold shock protein Y-box-binding protein-1, YB-1, are tightly correlated with increased cell proliferation and progression. However, the precise mechanism by which YB-1 regulates proliferation is unknown. Here, we found that YB-1 depletion in several cancer cell lines and in immortalized fibroblasts resulted in cytokinesis failure and consequent multinucleation. Rescue experiments indicated that YB-1 was required for completion of cytokinesis. Using confocal imaging we found that YB-1 was essential for orchestrating the spatio-temporal distribution of the microtubules, β-actin and the chromosome passenger complex (CPC) to define the cleavage plane. We show that phosphorylation at six serine residues was essential for cytokinesis, of which novel sites were identified using mass spectrometry. Using atomistic modelling we show how phosphorylation at multiple sites alters YB-1 conformation, allowing it to interact with protein partners. Our results establish phosphorylated YB-1 as a critical regulator of cytokinesis, defining precisely how YB-1 regulates cell division
Critical Role for Cold Shock Protein YB-1 in Cytokinesis
High levels of the cold shock protein Y-box-binding protein-1, YB-1, are tightly correlated with increased cell proliferation and progression. However, the precise mechanism by which YB-1 regulates proliferation is unknown. Here, we found that YB-1 depletion in several cancer cell lines and in immortalized fibroblasts resulted in cytokinesis failure and consequent multinucleation. Rescue experiments indicated that YB-1 was required for completion of cytokinesis. Using confocal imaging we found that YB-1 was essential for orchestrating the spatio-temporal distribution of the microtubules, β-actin and the chromosome passenger complex (CPC) to define the cleavage plane. We show that phosphorylation at six serine residues was essential for cytokinesis, of which novel sites were identified using mass spectrometry. Using atomistic modelling we show how phosphorylation at multiple sites alters YB-1 conformation, allowing it to interact with protein partners. Our results establish phosphorylated YB-1 as a critical regulator of cytokinesis, defining precisely how YB-1 regulates cell division
Are Enhanced Warfighters Weapons, Means, or Methods of Warfare?
Advances in science and technology have made it possible to improve the physical and cognitive capabilities of warfighters by biomedical interventions, such as the administration of drugs, the implantation of devices, and the magnetic stimulation of the brain. These advances raise the question as to whether enhanced warfighters ought to be considered weapons, means of warfare, or methods of warfare, for the purposes of the law of armed conflict. An affirmative answer to this question would make human enhancement subject to various restrictions arising from the law of armed conflict as well as arms control law. This article disagrees with the suggestion that enhanced warfighters, or the enhancements themselves, could constitute biological agents and thus be prohibited by the Biological Weapons Convention. The article also rejects the notion that enhanced warfighters might amount to weapons more broadly. Placing human beings who possess moral agency on par with mere instruments of warfare distorts the accepted meaning of the law. At the same time, because means of warfare and methods of warfare are more malleable categories, there are at least some hypothetical scenarios where enhanced warfighters could fit within these categories