Testing Against Independence with an Eavesdropper

We study a distributed binary hypothesis testing (HT) problem with communication and security constraints, involving three parties: a remote sensor called Alice, a legitimate decision centre called Bob, and an eavesdropper called Eve, all having their own source observations. In this system, Alice conveys a rate R description of her observation to Bob, and Bob performs a binary hypothesis test on the joint distribution underlying his and Alice's observations. The goal of Alice and Bob is to maximise the exponential decay of Bob's miss-detection (type II-error) probability under two constraints: Bob's false alarm-probability (type-I error) probability has to stay below a given threshold and Eve's uncertainty (equivocation) about Alice's observations should stay above a given security threshold even when Eve learns Alice's message. For the special case of testing against independence, we characterise the largest possible type-II error exponent under the described type-I error probability and security constraints.Comment: submitted to ITW 202

Implications of Physical Fault Injections on Single Chip Motes

Single-chip motes are wireless sensor nodes that integrate computation, communication, power and sensing on a single chip. We consider the security threats these novel devices are subject to when employed in safety-critical applications. Fault injection attacks are a prominent form of physical attacks that pose a threat to the normal and secure functioning of targeted devices, potentially compromising their intended behavior. These attacks have been studied mainly on commercial off-the-shelf devices which rely on external components such as crystal oscillators and passives. Such external components are absent from single-chip motes, resulting in a uniquely different attack surface compared to commercial systems. In this paper, we first survey the features of the common fault injection methods, and then study and compare their implications on single-chip motes

Debye–Hückel theory for refugees’ migration

Abstract In this paper, we follow the short-ranged Syrian refugees’ migration to Lebanon as documented by the UNHCR. We propose a model inspired by the Debye–Hückel theory and show that it properly predicts the refugees’ mobility while the gravity model fails. We claim that the interaction between origin cities attenuates and/or extenuates the flux to destinations, and consequently, in analogy with the effective charges of interacting particles in a plasma, these source cities are characterized by effective populations determined by their pairwise remoteness/closeness and defined by areas of control between the fighting parties

An Overview of Stem Cell Therapies for Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is referred to as a neurodegenerative disease which is a disease that targets specific brain regions and is characterized by neuronal death. PD is believed to be caused by the loss of nerve cells in the substantia nigra (SN), a dopamine releasing area (Dickson, 2012). Current treatments are directed at alleviating pain symptoms and slowing down the progression of disease, however, no cure currently exists. Recent advances in stem cell therapies raise new possibilities to treat neurodegenerative diseases. Stem cells have the ability to differentiate into neural cells, and thus, could potentially be used to restore neurogenesis and neuroplasticity (Lunn et al., 2011). There exist several cell types that can be applied in therapy including embryonic stem cells (ESCs), neural stem cells (NSCs), induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). PD which has localized neural degeneration to the SN may serve as a better model for stem cell therapy and displays greater success when compared to other neurodegenerative diseases that spread to several brain regions (Vasic et al., 2019). This review aims to discuss the several approaches used in stem cell therapy as well as the current challenges and shortcomings of this cell-based therapy

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Syria–Syria-distance. The Syria-Syria-Distance.csv contains the pairwise distance matrix between Syrian cities retrieved through the google API. (CSV 2 kB

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Distance. The Distance.csv contains the pairwise distance matrix between Origin and destination cities retrieved through the google API. (CSV 3 kB

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Migration data. The Migration Data.xlsx is an excel file whose first row contains the name of the Syrian origin cities while the first column contains the Lebanese destination cities. The entries refer to the number of refugees fleeing from the corresponding origin city to the destination. (XLSX 8 kB

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Density. The DensityMatrixSij.csv contains the population density between every Syrian city i and Lebanese city j. (CSV 7 kB

Electromagnetic Side Channel Leakage Improvements Using Free-Running Oscillator Clock Reference

Electromagnetic (EM) leakage can be seen near the radio\u27s center frequency when a mixed-signal chip wirelessly transmits data. The undesired signal provides information that can be exploited to decode encrypted data on the chip. This paper looks into how a free-running RC oscillator affects the EM leakage that is being seen through the on-chip radio and compares these results to a clock reference that is similar to a traditional crystal. The purpose of testing a free-running oscillator is to see how a more inconsistent clock reference would affect EM leakage through the radio in hopes of finding an additional countermeasure. The inconsistency of this clock reference is small enough that it is still compatible with IoT communication standards like IEEE 802.15.4. Meaning that devices using this alternative clock reference may not sacrifice any functionality and will have the added benefit of an increase in scalability and a decrease in power consumption. Along with capturing the activity near the carrier, data at the 3rd harmonic (3X the center frequency) is taken. The results of the RC oscillator tests show a decrease in amplitude near the center frequency and no visible EM leakage at 3X the center frequency, with a maximum difference of approximately 6.48 dBm when compared to the crystal-like clock reference. The decrease in signal power causes a reduction in the distance at which the leakage can be exploited. It can be assumed that this type of clock source can be used as a countermeasure, improving the EM side-channel leakage

Implications of Physical Fault Injections on Single Chip Motes

International audienceSingle-chip motes are wireless sensor nodes that integrate computation, communication, power and sensing on a single chip. We consider the security threats these novel devices are subject to when employed in safety-critical applications. Fault injection attacks are a prominent form of physical attacks that pose a threat to the normal and secure functioning of targeted devices, potentially compromising their intended behavior. These attacks have been studied mainly on commercial off-the-shelf devices which rely on external components such as crystal oscillators and passives. Such external components are absent from single-chip motes, resulting in a uniquely different attack surface compared to commercial systems. In this paper, we first survey the features of the common fault injection methods, and then study and compare their implications on single-chip motes