DDoS Attacks with Randomized Traffic Innovation: Botnet Identification Challenges and Strategies

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks are usually launched through the $botnet$, an "army" of compromised nodes hidden in the network. Inferential tools for DDoS mitigation should accordingly enable an early and reliable discrimination of the normal users from the compromised ones. Unfortunately, the recent emergence of attacks performed at the application layer has multiplied the number of possibilities that a botnet can exploit to conceal its malicious activities. New challenges arise, which cannot be addressed by simply borrowing the tools that have been successfully applied so far to earlier DDoS paradigms. In this work, we offer basically three contributions: $i)$ we introduce an abstract model for the aforementioned class of attacks, where the botnet emulates normal traffic by continually learning admissible patterns from the environment; $ii)$ we devise an inference algorithm that is shown to provide a consistent (i.e., converging to the true solution as time progresses) estimate of the botnet possibly hidden in the network; and $iii)$ we verify the validity of the proposed inferential strategy over $real$ network traces.Comment: Submitted for publicatio

Therapeutic chemonucleolysis of the lumbosacral disk in a cadaveric model: lateral vs sternal technique.

The widespread use of advanced Imaging techniques has dramatically improved the diagnosis of caudaequina syndrome in geriatric small animal patients. Two different techniques (sternal vs lateralrecumbency) were tested in twelve cadavers for the L7-S1 disk injection under fluoroscopic guidance.Twelve dogs were enrolled in the study: eight intervertebral lumbosacral disks were injected with agelatinous radiopaque compound and the remnants four disks with an alcoholic radiopaque solution.The dogs were randomly positioned either in lateral recumbency with the lumbo-sacral joint in neutralposition (six dogs), or in sternal recumbency with the hind limbs extended cranially along the body andthe lumbosacral joint flexed (six dogs). The correct injection of the compounds within the lumbosacraldisk was checked both by computed tomography (CT) and gross anatomic examination. The lateraltechnique required less time of execution and minor attempts for the correct positioning of the needle.All the injected disks were visible on CT, while necroscopy resulted satisfactory only in five patients.Leakage of the compounds outside the disk was observed in two cases. The percutaneous injection inlateral recumbency under fluoroscopic guidance resulted rapid and feasible in a cadaveric model. Futureclinical trials are required to assess the safety of chemonucleolysis in diseased patients

KoKoo (Kontent Kooration) Evolving a Content Curation System To a comprehensive Editorial backend platform

The aim of this paper is to show how a prototypal system, designed as a general purpose stand-alone content curation tool could be evolved by following some alpha user's feedbacks to an comprehensive multi-service platform. The widespread diffusion of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets as long as the availability of mobile wideband services are increasing day by day the number of players in the ICT Market. In such a scenario, following the user needs becomes a critical issue, since it is likely for the users. to find products and services quite similar to the one you are offering, better fulfilling their needs. KOKOO (KOntent + KOO(Ù)ration) is a comprehensive platform made by Telecom Italia R&D division. It is a solution for solving the growing content provider needs to find new and most interesting news to offer to other users on different media, aggregating them in a personal journal with a similar look and feel. Chapter 2 will show the old system (presented also at Nem Summit 2012 showcase), chapter 3 will present user feedbacks and chapter 4 will show the new system and all of its aggregated services, stressing how this was designed by following user feedback

LCA applicata alle tecnologie alimentate da energia solare: peculiarità e limiti metodologici

La Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) rappresenta una metodologia valida ed affidabile per la valutazione degli impatti energetico-ambientali connessi al ciclo di vita delle tecnologie alimentate da fonti rinnovabili di energia. Il lavoro di seguito presentato focalizza l’attenzione sui sistemi alimentati da energia solare. Gli autori, dopo un’analisi degli studi di letteratura inerenti la LCA applicata ai sistemi solari termici e fotovoltaici, descrivono le principali questioni metodologiche connesse alla valutazione delle prestazioni energetico-ambientali di tali tecnologie

Life-cycle optimization of building performance: a collection of case studies

The building sector is one of the most impacting on the energy demand and on the environment in developed countries, together with industry and transports. The European Union introduced the topic of nearly zero-energy building (nZEB) and promoted a deep renovations in the existing building stock with the aim of reducing the energy consumption and environmental impacts of the building sector. The design of a nZEB, and in general of a low-energy building, involves different aspects like the economic cost, the comfort indoor, the energy consumption, the life cycle environmental impacts, the different points of view of policy makers, investors and inhabitants. Thus, the adoption of a multicriteria approach is often required in the design process to manage some potential conflicting domains. In detail, one of the most suitable approaches is to integrate the preliminary building design (or renovation) phase in a multi-objective optimization problem, allowing to rapidly compare many alternatives and to identify the most adapt interventions

Semi-Markov Models for Performance Evaluation of Telecommunication Networks in the Presence of Failures

Planning and deployment of next generation telecommunication networks based on the Third Generation Partnership Project IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) must take into account the occurrence of random failures causing performance degradations, in order to assess and maintain the Quality of Service offered by telecommunication service providers to their subscribers. In particular, core network signalling servers of IMS can be modelled as repairable multi-state elements where server states correspond to different performance levels. In this paper, we evaluate IMS signalling network performance in terms of the number of sessions handled by the network per time unit, by adopting a semi-Markov model for the IMS servers, which allows as well for non-exponential probability distributions of sojourn times, as often observed in practical network scenarios. Furthermore, a redundancy optimisation problem is solved in an IMS-based realistic scenario, to the aim of minimizing the deployment cost of a telecommunication network with a given availability requirement

L’insegnamento dell’italiano presso la scuola statale di Asmara: efficacia e criticità

L’Italien a été la langue dominante en Erythrée, avec la langue locale tigrigna, depuis le début de la colonisation italienne, en 1890, jusqu’à 1975. Qu’est-il resté de cet héritage linguistique? En premier lieu, cette étude analyse le processus socio-culturel et historique qui a vu l’italien glisser de langue seconde à langue étrangère, laissant sa position prioritaire à l’anglais. En deuxième lieu, elle veut analyser le niveau réel de connaissance de la langue italienne par les élèves de l’école Italienne d’Asmara, la plus grande institution scolaire italienne à l’étranger, avec ses 1,250 élèves et 85 enseignants. L’auteur, qui a enseigné pendant quatre ans dans cette école, propose les résultats d’un questionnaire proposé à 86 de ses élèves en 2018, visant à connaître leur autoévaluation sur la connaissance de la langue italienne et sur son utilisation, en plus de leurs préférences parmi les langues connues. En conclusion, l’essai soutient que la pénétration de l’italien en Erythrée est aujourd’hui fortement conditionnée par la politique du gouvernement d’Asmara, qui apprécie l’école italienne mais donne moins d’importance à la langue.From the beginning of Italian colonisation in Eritrea, in 1890, Italian was the main language alongside the local idiom, Tigrinya. Its supremacy lasted until 1975. What remains today of this linguistic heritage? First, this study analyses the route that brought Italian down from being second language to being foreign language, leaving the hegemony to English. Secondly, this study checks students’ level in Italian in the Italian School of Asmara, the largest public Italian school in the world, with its 1.250 students and 85 teachers. Having taught in this school for four years, the author presents the results of a survey carried out among 86 students in March 2018, showing their self-assessment of their proficiency in Italian and their language use, as well as the list of their favourite languages. In conclusion, the essay shows how the Eritrean government is restricting the diffusion of Italian, while at the same time appreciative of the value of the Italian School