Cloud Computing and Digital Forensics Challenges

Abstract—Nowadays, the storage of computer data ismoving rapidly toward cloud computing as an evolvinginformation technology phenomenon. Instead of building,maintaining, and managing a physical Information technologyinfrastructure, the organizations start to replace the physicalinfrastructure with remote and virtual environments that aremanaged by third parties. This shift has a significant impacton forensics investigators, hardware and software vendors, ITexperts, law enforcements and corporate audit departmentssince more crimes are committed with the involvement ofcomputers. Digital forensics helps courts and law enforcementagencies to collect valuable evidence for investigations. Thispaper presents a general overview of cloud computingand digital forensics. Also, it discusses the major benefitsand challenges of using cloud computing on digital forensics

Lightweight mutual authentication and privacy preservation schemes for IOT systems.

Internet of Things (IoT) presents a holistic and transformative approach for providing services in different domains. IoT creates an atmosphere of interaction between humans and the surrounding physical world through various technologies such as sensors, actuators, and the cloud. Theoretically, when everything is connected, everything is at risk. The rapid growth of IoT with the heterogeneous devices that are connected to the Internet generates new challenges in protecting and preserving user’s privacy and ensuring the security of our lives. IoT systems face considerable challenges in deploying robust authentication protocols because some of the IoT devices are resource-constrained with limited computation and storage capabilities to implement the currently available authentication mechanism that employs computationally expensive functions. The limited capabilities of IoT devices raise significant security and privacy concerns, such as ensuring personal information confidentiality and integrity and establishing end-to-end authentication and secret key generation between the communicating device to guarantee secure communication among the communicating devices. The ubiquity nature of the IoT device provides adversaries more attack surfaces which can lead to tragic consequences that can negatively impact our everyday connected lives. According to [1], authentication and privacy protection are essential security requirements. Therefore, there is a critical need to address these rising security and privacy concerns to ensure IoT systems\u27 safety. This dissertation identifies gaps in the literature and presents new mutual authentication and privacy preservation schemes that fit the needs of resource-constrained devices to improve IoT security and privacy against common attacks. This research enhances IoT security and privacy by introducing lightweight mutual authentication and privacy preservation schemes for IoT based on hardware biometrics using PUF, Chained hash PUF, dynamic identities, and user’s static and continuous biometrics. The communicating parties can anonymously communicate and mutually authenticate each other and locally establish a session key using dynamic identities to ensure the user’s unlinkability and untraceability. Furthermore, virtual domain segregation is implemented to apply security policies between nodes. The chained-hash PUF mechanism technique is implemented as a way to verify the sender’s identity. At first, this dissertation presents a framework called “A Lightweight Mutual Authentication and Privacy-Preservation framework for IoT Systems” and this framework is considered the foundation of all presented schemes. The proposed framework integrates software and hardware-based security approaches that satisfy the NIST IoT security requirements for data protection and device identification. Also, this dissertation presents an architecture called “PUF Hierarchal Distributed Architecture” (PHDA), which is used to perform the device name resolution. Based on the proposed framework and PUF architecture, three lightweight privacy-preserving and mutual authentication schemes are presented. The Three different schemes are introduced to accommodate both stationary and mobile IoT devices as well as local and distributed nodes. The first scheme is designed for the smart homes domain, where the IoT devices are stationary, and the controller node is local. In this scheme, there is direct communication between the IoT nodes and the controller node. Establishing mutual authentication does not require the cloud service\u27s involvement to reduce the system latency and offload the cloud traffic. The second scheme is designed for the industrial IoT domain and used smart poultry farms as a use case of the Industrial IoT (IIoT) domain. In the second scheme, the IoT devices are stationary, and the controller nodes are hierarchical and distributed, supported by machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. The third scheme is designed for smart cities and used IoV fleet vehicles as a use case of the smart cities domain. During the roaming service, the mutual authentication process between a vehicle and the distributed controller nodes represented by the Roadside Units (RSUs) is completed through the cloud service that stores all vehicle\u27s security credentials. After that, when a vehicle moves to the proximity of a new RSU under the same administrative authority of the most recently visited RSU, the two RSUs can cooperate to verify the vehicle\u27s legitimacy. Also, the third scheme supports driver static and continuous authentication as a driver monitoring system for the sake of both road and driver safety. The security of the proposed schemes is evaluated and simulated using two different methods: security analysis and performance analysis. The security analysis is implemented through formal security analysis and informal security analysis. The formal analysis uses the Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic (BAN) and model-checking using the automated validation of Internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) toolkit. The informal security analysis is completed by: (1) investigating the robustness of the proposed schemes against the well-known security attacks and analyze its satisfaction with the main security properties; and (2) comparing the proposed schemes with the other existing authentication schemes considering their resistance to the well-known attacks and their satisfaction with the main security requirements. Both the formal and informal security analyses complement each other. The performance evaluation is conducted by analyzing and comparing the overhead and efficiency of the proposed schemes with other related schemes from the literature. The results showed that the proposed schemes achieve all security goals and, simultaneously, efficiently and satisfy the needs of the resource-constrained IoT devices

THE EFFECT OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS AS MEASURED BY EDUCATION ON OUTCOMES IN SCLERODERMA (SYSTEMIC SCLEROSIS)

The goal of this study was to assess socioeconomic status (SES) as a social determinant of outcomes in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc). In systemic lupus erythematosus, SES has a large effect on outcomes. It is unknown what the effect of SES is on outcomes in SSc. SES is often measured by income, occupation and education. In SSc, highest education would be attained decades prior to disease onset whereas current income and occupation could be low due to SSc and thus would confound interpretation of effect of SES on SSc. Therefore, education was used as a measure of SES in this study. Bivariate, regression and survival analyses were used to study the effect of education on SSc outcome. Education had a very limited role as a risk factor of poor outcome in SSc. It had a significant statistical association with forced vital capacity in case of limited SSc only

DSCR Based Sensor-Pooling Protocol for Connected Vehicles in Future Smart Cities

Smart cities are racing to create a more connected Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) that rely on collecting data from every possible sensor such as a smart utility meter or a smart parking meter. The use of more sensors resulted in generating a lot of information that maps the smart city environment conditions to more real time data points that needed to be shared and analyzed among smart city nodes. One possibility, to carry and share the collected data, is in autonomous vehicles systems, which use the Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology. For example, in a Car-to-Parking-Meter or a Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications, short-range embedded sensors such as Bluetooth, Cameras, Lidar send the collected data to the vehicle’s Electronic Control Unit (ECU) or to a road side gateway for making collaborative decisions and react to the environment’s surrounding conditions. The goal of this research is to develop and test a DSRC based sensor-pooling protocol for vehicles to cooperatively communicate inclement weather or environment conditions. Five simulation experiments are setup using PreScan and Simulink to validate and study the scalability of the proposed solution. PreScan is an automotive simulation platform that is used for developing and testing Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS). The research findings proved that the DSRC can be used to effectively stream the short range sensors’ collected data over a long distance communications link

DSRC Performance Analysis in Foggy Environment for Intelligent Vehicles System

Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) is one of the fastest growing areas in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Research efforts has focused on developing a driver assistant alert system to warn driver in foggy environment. However, there is a lack of which effective V2V/V2I communication technology would be the best to extend and disseminate this information to nearby vehicles. In this paper, we examine the use of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) as a V2V communication mechanism to share the foggy conditions to nearby vehicles. The study also investigates the effect of changing the fog/air density on the DSRC performance in intelligent vehicles system. Simulation experiments are setup to study the influence of the fog density on the DSRC performance in communicating the road?s foggy conditions to nearby vehicles via DSRC communications. The research findings proved that the DSRC performance can persist through fog/air density changes, which helps to confirm that it can help making up for lost human visibility and driver safety experience has been improved on roads during foggy times. This finding aims to promote safe highway operations in foggy or smoky conditions

A Lightweight Message Authentication Framework in the Intelligent Vehicles System

Intelligent Vehicles System (IVS) supports a wide variety of Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) services such as vehicle visibility detection. In implementing this service, the message authentication is a vital design parameter that protects victim vehicles from being tricked into accepting false messages as legitimate ones and make a false decision based on the incoming message. However, implementing message authentication service is too expensive especially if vehicles, initially, don’t trust each others or there is no certificate of authority in place. In this research, we investigate the use of the Basic Safety Message (BSM) behavior over time as a metric to allow a receiving vehicle to anticipate at what distance it will continue to receive BSMs from within-range vehicles. Therefore, the victim vehicle would reject the BSM messages that fall outside its acceptance window. Simulation experiments are setup to study the realistic behavior of the BSM messages in different environment characteristics including changing the vehicle size, number of road lanes and vehicle speed. Research findings suggested that the lightweight message authentication can assist vehicles in estimating the duration for a trusted relationship among those that are located within range of each others

DSRC Performance Analysis in Foggy Environment for Intelligent Vehicles System

Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) is one of the fastest growing areas in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Research efforts has focused on developing a driver assistant alert system to warn driver in foggy environment. However, there is a lack of which effective V2V/V2I communication technology would be the best to extend and disseminate this information to nearby vehicles. In this paper, we examine the use of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) as a V2V communication mechanism to share the foggy conditions to nearby vehicles. The study also investigates the effect of changing the fog/air density on the DSRC performance in intelligent vehicles system. Simulation experiments are setup to study the influence of the fog density on the DSRC performance in communicating the road‟s foggy conditions to nearby vehicles via DSRC communications. The research findings proved that the DSRC performance can persist through fog/air density changes, which helps to confirm that it can help making up for lost human visibility and driver safety experience has been improved on roads during foggy times. This finding aims to promote safe highway operations in foggy or smoky conditions

Activating the environmental role of the Building envelope to improve the energy performance of social housing units in Giza Governorate- Egypt

The housing problem is one of the most complex problems in most countries of the world. Therefore, most countries resort to finding solutions and initiatives for social housing units that take into account the needs of users and fulfill their basic requirements. The Egyptian state has a major role in the construction and reconstruction of cities where huge initiatives have been taken to establish social housing units for low-income people. The main aim of this research paper was to improve energy performance within social housing units Sixth of October City by treating the building envelope and using thermal insulation for walls And choosing the type of low-emission glass in order to improve the energy performance of social housing buildings in the New Sixth of October City in Giza Governorate, and this was through an applied study of the Design Builder v 6.0 program for social housing units, taking into account the design determinants and variables such as orientation and type Glass used, occupancy rate and building materials used in the building envelope, down to how to improve their energy performance , The results of the simulation showed the effect of the architectural dimensions and the dimensions of the building materials, and their effects on thermal comfort and the rate of energy consumption through the treatment of the outer covering, thus proving the validity of the hypothesis, which is a thermal insulation thickness of 6 cm in the walls and 8 cm in the surface and the wall thickness of 25 cm, red brick and double-reflective glass 6 mm low emission E-Glass in the building envelope of social housing units works to improve the energy performance of social housing units and energy consumption can be saved by more than 50% over the base case

A Blockchain Application Prototype for the Internet of Things

The emergence of the Internet of things (IoT), associated with the explosion in the number of connected objects, and the growth in user needs, makes the Internet network very complex. IoT objects are diverse and heterogeneous, which requires establishing interoperability and efficient identity management on the one hand. On the other hand, centralized architectures such as cloud-based ones can have overhead and high latency, with a potential risk of failure. Facing these challenges, Blockchain technology, with its decentralized architecture based on a distributed peer-to-peer network, offers a new infrastructure that allows IoT objects to interact reliably and securely. In this paper, a new approach is proposed with a three-layer architecture: layer of sensing and collection of data made up of the IoT network, layer of processing and saving of data exchanges at the Blockchain level, and access and visualization layer via a web interface. The prototype implemented in this study allows all transactions (data exchanges) generated by IoT devices to be recorded and stored on a dedicated Blockchain, assuring the security of IoT objects\u27 communications. This prototype also enables access to and visualization of all data and information, thus enhancing the IoT network\u27s transparency

Variability of genetic - morphological traits of eleven seed strains of Mangifera indica L. growing in Upper Egypt

Mango (Mangifera indica L.) is one of the tastiest fruits in the world, with numerous advantages beyond their economic value. Eleven genotypes of mango various cultivars were examined for variability, heritability, and genetic advance, as well as multivariate analysis based on cluster and principal component analysis (PCA) for yield and some of its contributing traits during the two growing seasons, 2021 and 2022. All studied traits showed significant differences, and the phenotypic coefficients of variation (PCV) were found to be higher than genotypic coefficients of variation (GCV), supporting the idea that morphological (genetic) traits are more prevalent than environmental influence. All traits had substantial heritability ranging from 75.63 to 99.93 %, and the highest significant genetic advance (119.09 %) was for the number of fruits per tree than other traits. Four clusters were formed, i.e., clusters I and IV had four genotypes, cluster II had two, and cluster III had one genotype. The highest cluster mean values for fruit diameter, fruit mass, yield per tree, and the number of fruits per tree were found in Cluster II, followed by cluster I. Greater genetic divergence was found between ‘Zebda’  or ‘S9’ or ‘S10’ with most other genotypes, indicating that these genotypes may be used to study the characters’ broad range of variability and to yield high-quality recombinant lines. In light of the fact that mango is a very heterozygous crop, our current genetic results can be used for the selection of the appropriate parents in hybridization programs and in vegetative propagation to yield selective traits