Quality of media traffic over Lossy internet protocol networks: Measurement and improvement.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is an active area of research in the world of communication. The high revenue made by the telecommunication companies is a motivation to develop solutions that transmit voice over other media rather than the traditional, circuit switching network. However, while IP networks can carry data traffic very well due to their besteffort nature, they are not designed to carry real-time applications such as voice. As such several degradations can happen to the speech signal before it reaches its destination. Therefore, it is important for legal, commercial, and technical reasons to measure the quality of VoIP applications accurately and non-intrusively. Several methods were proposed to measure the speech quality: some of these methods are subjective, others are intrusive-based while others are non-intrusive. One of the non-intrusive methods for measuring the speech quality is the E-model standardised by the International Telecommunication Union-Telecommunication Standardisation Sector (ITU-T). Although the E-model is a non-intrusive method for measuring the speech quality, but it depends on the time-consuming, expensive and hard to conduct subjective tests to calibrate its parameters, consequently it is applicable to a limited number of conditions and speech coders. Also, it is less accurate than the intrusive methods such as Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) because it does not consider the contents of the received signal. In this thesis an approach to extend the E-model based on PESQ is proposed. Using this method the E-model can be extended to new network conditions and applied to new speech coders without the need for the subjective tests. The modified E-model calibrated using PESQ is compared with the E-model calibrated using i ii subjective tests to prove its effectiveness. During the above extension the relation between quality estimation using the E-model and PESQ is investigated and a correction formula is proposed to correct the deviation in speech quality estimation. Another extension to the E-model to improve its accuracy in comparison with the PESQ looks into the content of the degraded signal and classifies packet loss into either Voiced or Unvoiced based on the received surrounding packets. The accuracy of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing the estimation of the new method that takes packet class into consideration with the measurement provided by PESQ as a more accurate, intrusive method for measuring the speech quality. The above two extensions for quality estimation of the E-model are combined to offer a method for estimating the quality of VoIP applications accurately, nonintrusively without the need for the time-consuming, expensive, and hard to conduct subjective tests. Finally, the applicability of the E-model or the modified E-model in measuring the quality of services in Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is illustrated

WSN-DS: A Dataset for Intrusion Detection Systems in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have become increasingly one of the hottest research areas in computer science due to their wide range of applications including critical military and civilian applications. Such applications have created various security threats, especially in unattended environments. To ensure the security and dependability of WSN services, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) should be in place. This IDS has to be compatible with the characteristics of WSNs and capable of detecting the largest possible number of security threats. In this paper a specialized dataset for WSN is developed to help better detect and classify four types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks: Blackhole, Grayhole, Flooding, and Scheduling attacks. This paper considers the use of LEACH protocol which is one of the most popular hierarchical routing protocols in WSNs. A scheme has been defined to collect data from Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) and then processed to produce 23 features. The collected dataset is called WSN-DS. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been trained on the dataset to detect and classify different DoS attacks. The results show that WSN-DS improved the ability of IDS to achieve higher classification accuracy rate. WEKA toolbox was used with holdout and 10-Fold Cross Validation methods. The best results were achieved with 10-Fold Cross Validation with one hidden layer. The classification accuracies of attacks were 92.8%, 99.4%, 92.2%, 75.6%, and 99.8% for Blackhole, Flooding, Scheduling, and Grayhole attacks, in addition to the normal case (without attacks), respectively

Botnet attacks detection in IoT environment using machine learning techniques

IoT devices with weak security designs are a serious threat to organizations. They are the building blocks of Botnets, the platforms that launch organized attacks that are capable of shutting down an entire infrastructure. Researchers have been developing IDS solutions that can counter such threats, often by employing innovation from other disciplines like artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of the issues that may be encountered when machine learning is used is dataset purity. Since they are not captured from perfect environments, datasets may contain data that could affect the machine learning process, negatively. Algorithms already exist for such problems. Repeated Edited Nearest Neighbor (RENN), Encoding Length (Explore), and Decremental Reduction Optimization Procedure 5 (DROP5) algorithm can filter noises out of datasets. They also provide other benefits such as instance reduction which could help reduce larger Botnet datasets, without sacrificing their quality. Three datasets were chosen in this study to construct an IDS: IoTID20, N-BaIoT and MedBIoT. The filtering algorithms, RENN, Explore, and DROP5 were used on them to filter noise and reduce instances. Noise was also injected and filtered again to assess the resilience of these filters. Then feature optimizations were used to shrink the dataset features. Finally, machine learning was applied on the processed dataset and the resulting IDS was evaluated with the standard supervised learning metrics: Accuracy, Precision, Recall, Specificity, F-Score and G-Mean. Results showed that RENN and DROP5 filtering delivered excellent results. DROP5, in particular, managed to reduce the dataset substantially without sacrificing accuracy. However, when noise got injected, the DROP5 accuracy went down and could not keep up. Of the three dataset, N-BaIoT delivers the best accuracy overall across the learning techniques

Android malicious attacks detection models using machine learning techniques based on permissions

The Android operating system is the most used mobile operating system in the world, and it is one of the most popular operating systems for different kinds of devices from smartwatches, IoT, and TVs to mobiles and cockpits in cars. Security is the main challenge to any operating system. Android malware attacks and vulnerabilities are known as emerging risks for mobile devices. The development of Android malware has been observed to be at an accelerated speed. Most Android security breaches permitted by permission misuse are amongst the most critical and prevalent issues threatening Android OS security. This research performs several studies on malware and non-malware applications to provide a recently updated dataset. The goal of proposed models is to find a combination of noise-cleaning algorithms, features selection techniques, and classification algorithms that are noise-tolerant and can achieve high accuracy results in detecting new Android malware. The results from the empirical experiments show that the proposed models are able to detect Android malware with an accuracy that reaches 87%, despite the noise in the dataset. We also find that the best classification results are achieved using the RF algorithm. This work can be extended in many ways by applying higher noise ratios and running more classifiers and optimizers

Fine Mapping of Genetic Variants in BIN1, CLU, CR1 and PICALM for Association with Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease

Recent genome-wide association studies of Alzheimer's disease (AD) have identified variants in BIN1, CLU, CR1 and PICALM that show replicable association with risk for disease. We have thoroughly sampled common variation in these genes, genotyping 355 variants in over 600 individuals for whom measurements of two AD biomarkers, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) 42 amino acid amyloid beta fragments (Aβ42) and tau phosphorylated at threonine 181 (ptau181), have been obtained. Association analyses were performed to determine whether variants in BIN1, CLU, CR1 or PICALM are associated with changes in the CSF levels of these biomarkers. Despite adequate power to detect effects as small as a 1.05 fold difference, we have failed to detect evidence for association between SNPs in these genes and CSF Aβ42 or ptau181 levels in our sample. Our results suggest that these variants do not affect risk via a mechanism that results in a strong additive effect on CSF levels of Aβ42 or ptau181

WSN-DS: A Dataset for Intrusion Detection Systems in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have become increasingly one of the hottest research areas in computer science due to their wide range of applications including critical military and civilian applications. Such applications have created various security threats, especially in unattended environments. To ensure the security and dependability of WSN services, an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) should be in place. This IDS has to be compatible with the characteristics of WSNs and capable of detecting the largest possible number of security threats. In this paper a specialized dataset for WSN is developed to help better detect and classify four types of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks: Blackhole, Grayhole, Flooding, and Scheduling attacks. This paper considers the use of LEACH protocol which is one of the most popular hierarchical routing protocols in WSNs. A scheme has been defined to collect data from Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) and then processed to produce 23 features. The collected dataset is called WSN-DS. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) has been trained on the dataset to detect and classify different DoS attacks. The results show that WSN-DS improved the ability of IDS to achieve higher classification accuracy rate. WEKA toolbox was used with holdout and 10-Fold Cross Validation methods. The best results were achieved with 10-Fold Cross Validation with one hidden layer. The classification accuracies of attacks were 92.8%, 99.4%, 92.2%, 75.6%, and 99.8% for Blackhole, Flooding, Scheduling, and Grayhole attacks, in addition to the normal case (without attacks), respectively

Empirical Evaluation of Noise Influence on Supervised Machine Learning Algorithms Using Intrusion Detection Datasets

Optimizing the detection of intrusions is becoming more crucial due to the continuously rising rates and ferocity of cyber threats and attacks. One of the popular methods to optimize the accuracy of intrusion detection systems (IDSs) is by employing machine learning (ML) techniques. However, there are many factors that affect the accuracy of the ML-based IDSs. One of these factors is noise, which can be in the form of mislabelled instances, outliers, or extreme values. Determining the extent effect of noise helps to design and build more robust ML-based IDSs. This paper empirically examines the extent effect of noise on the accuracy of the ML-based IDSs by conducting a wide set of different experiments. The used ML algorithms are decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), artificial neural networks (ANNs), and Naïve Bayes (NB). In addition, the experiments are conducted on two widely used intrusion datasets, which are NSL-KDD and UNSW-NB15. Moreover, the paper also investigates the use of these ML algorithms as base classifiers with two ensembles of classifiers learning methods, which are bagging and boosting. The detailed results and findings are illustrated and discussed in this paper

Innovative Secure Mobile Banking Services

Due to the widespread use of computer technologies in almost all aspects of life, organisations that are connected to the Internet started extending their services to their customers to include new applications and services that satisfy their customersâ?? desires to make better businesses. One of these emerging applications is mobile banking. The term mobile banking (or m-banking) describes the banking services that the user can perform via a mobile device ubiquitously at anytime and from anywhere. In order for users to access their accounts, they need a mobile device and network connectivity. Therefore, sitting in front of a computer is not a requirement anymore; accessing accounts can occur while users are waiting their turn at the dentist clinic or relaxing at the beach! This paper explores the opportunities of using mobile technology in the electronic banking (e-banking) sector to enhance existing banking services by moving toward m-banking using mobile devices and wireless media that can provide opportunities for ubiquitous access to the banking services as mobile technologies can be used at anytime and from anywhere. The technical problems encountered while using the mobile devices presents some technical difficulties and challenges for the m-banking. In this paper we introduce a mobile system that demonstrates the flexibility gained out of this technology and covers the major aspects of such kind of applications. The proposed system covers two parts: the customer services (user interface) and the security aspects. In the user interface part, banking facility is provided to the user through the mobile device to implement banking transactions. The model provides customers with the services: billing payments, transferring of funds, viewing of customerâ??s accounts and transactions, allowing the user to change his/her password and request a cheque book. The application takes into consideration security aspects, it satisfies the following security requirements: Authentication, Confidentiality and Authorisation. This paper introduces the advantages and disadvantages of using mobility in the banking sector. Furthermore, this paper also presents the security, suitability and feasibility aspects of using m-banking in terms of technology and usability