Realistic, Extensible DNS and mDNS Models for INET/OMNeT++

The domain name system (DNS) is one of the core services in today's network structures. In local and ad-hoc networks DNS is often enhanced or replaced by mDNS. As of yet, no simulation models for DNS and mDNS have been developed for INET/OMNeT++. We introduce DNS and mDNS simulation models for OMNeT++, which allow researchers to easily prototype and evaluate extensions for these protocols. In addition, we present models for our own experimental extensions, namely Stateless DNS and Privacy-Enhanced mDNS, that are based on the aforementioned models. Using our models we were able to further improve the efficiency of our protocol extensions.Comment: Published in: A. F\"orster, C. Minkenberg, G. R. Herrera, M. Kirsche (Eds.), Proc. of the 2nd OMNeT++ Community Summit, IBM Research - Zurich, Switzerland, September 3-4, 201

Distributed Systems Group Utilizing Cloud Storages for iSCSI: Is Security really expensive?

Cloud storage promises unlimited, flexible and cheap storages, including alltime availability and accessibility with the help of various technologies. Free-ofcharge offers for endusers allure customers the same way as professional, payas-you-go storages do. The delocalization of the data provokes security concerns especially regarding the confidentiality of the data. Even though encryption offers a straight-forward solution to this problem, the performance questions its applicability when it comes to the utilization of professional storage-approaches like iSCSI. In this white-paper, we propose a utilization of NoSQL-based cloudstorages like Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure for iSCSI. We evaluate the costs of a direct, bucket-based encryption and show, that in complex systems like iSCSI, the distance to the cloud represents the bottleneck instead of the encryption. Performance-boosting techniques like prefetching and caching improve the access and result in no practical overhead within such an utilization. Based on our own developed fully Java-based iSCSI target (jSCSI) and jClouds, our prototype represents, to the best of our knowledge, the first, free available, cloud-deployable iSCSI

Mapping verschiedener Datentypen auf ein sicheres Cloudlayer

In this thesis two generic approaches on how to store different datatypes to a cloud storage are proposed, thereby utilizing Treetank. As part of this thesis implementations for the proposed approaches have been implemented to evaluate their practicability and search out strengths as well as weaknesses. Current cloud storage systems, security concerns towards privacy, stability and integrity of data shared with “the Cloud” is discussed. An overview of Treetank, that originally was designed to be a native XML-Storage and grew into a powerful framework that allows for more than storing XML-structured data, is provided and evaluated since it is a basis for this works implementations.In the last years the system has been extended to support REST and XML as datatypes that are to be stored within Treetank. Files and block-based storage devices are datatypes that are evaluated as candidates of storing data in a cloud storage. Storing files is supported by many cloud storage systems, whereas mapping storage devices utilizing the iSCSI protocol to a cloud storage is a novel approach in this field of work

"You can find my CV on LinkedIn ..." - Privacy-Aware Distributed Social Networking for Research Facilities

Being a part of any social network becomes a necessity especially for the sake of self-presentation. Specialized social networks like LinkedIn are aware of these needs and offer tailored functionalities like referencing to relevant projects and topics including specific searching functionalities.Since the social data stored within any centralized social network represents an alluring mass of information, security and privacy concerns come up within their utilization. As a consequence, guidelines for their usage are deployed within institutions to increase awareness related to these concerns. Unfortunately, the specific toolsets deployed within universities for presenting users and projects support neither the sharing of group-based or public information nor the ability to create social connections between users especially not over the borders of single institutions.To combine the need of self-presentation with the ability of virtual social interaction, we present a prototype of a federated, distributed, social network tailored to the need of researchers. Our prototype is based on Diaspora, representing the largest distributed social platform nowadays. Enriched with automated, user-related profiles, our Diaspora-pod offers all members of the University of Konstanz the ability to interact in combination with automated university-profiles.Tightly integrated in the existing infrastructure of the University of Konstanz and hosted on trusted infrastructure, the described prototype offers not only user-defined sharing of personal profiles in a federated way. It also leverages from the centralized handling of profiles and reduces as a consequence the administrative overhead of maintaining any personal information.Based on its simple usage and the tight integration into the services of the University of Konstanz, our prototype has the potential to push university life to a new social level without generating concerns about security and privacy

A Multicast-Avoiding Privacy Extension for the Avahi Zeroconf Daemon

In today’s local networks, a significant amount of traffic is caused by Multicast packets, such as Multicast DNS Service Discovery (mDNS-SD), a widespread technique used for configurationless service distribution and discovery. It suffers from two major problems inherent in multicast: privacy and network load. We present a privacy extension for the Avahi Zeroconf Daemon that tackles both problems while being very efficient

Utilizing Cloud Storages for iSCSI : Is Security really expensive?

Cloud storage promises unlimited, flexible and cheap storages, including alltime availability and accessibility with the help of various technologies. Free-of-charge o ffers for endusers allure customers the same way as professional, pay-as-you-go storages do. The delocalization of the data provokes security concerns especially regarding the con dentiality of the data. Even though encryption offers a straight-forward solution to this problem, the performance questions its applicability when it comes to the utilization of professional storage-approaches like iSCSI. In this white-paper, we propose a utilization of NoSQL-based cloudstorages like Amazon S3 or Microsoft Azure for iSCSI. We evaluate the costs of a direct, bucket-based encryption and show, that in complex systems like iSCSI, the distance to the cloud represents the bottleneck instead of the encryption. Performance-boosting techniques like prefetching and caching improve the access and result in no practical overhead within such an utilization. Based on our own developed fully Java-based iSCSI target (jSCSI) and jClouds, our prototype represents, to the best of our knowledge, the rst, free available, cloud-deployable iSCSI

Process-based eco-hydrological modelling of nutrient loads to the Baltics from three Estonian catchments

It is now evident that fresh- and marine-water ecosystems have long been overloaded by nutrients that originate, among others, from land-based agriculture, and the manifold point-type anthropogenic sources, such as waste-water treatment plants. The situation in this sense is rather acute in the Baltic countries and their waters. This situation will not improve until we identify the true sources and pathways of pollutants and quantify their contribution, advance our process-understanding to describe the mechanisms through which the pollution occurs, and by what steps we may be able to influence that, and quantify what, if any such steps – today popularly termed ‘mitigation measures’ – may produce certain levels of benefit sustainably. Various advancements have already been made in a number of the above steps, but the applied mitigation measures are often local and scarce, their effects are often influenced by other unknown and uncontrolled factors, and their installation is too recent to yield noticeable changes due to e.g. the nutrient retention characteristics of the ecosystem. It is therefore of paramount importance that we monitor and use environmental data towards long-term planning in order to sustain or improve the state of our environment. Environmental modeling is a growingly important tool for future planning. One main branch of such modeling – the use of process-based models – is a generally data intensive, but in exchange rather detailed way of quantifying natural processes. As part of the greater context of the NORRA project, this Working Group reports on its work towards (a) cataloguing existing environmental data for selected pilot-watersheds of Estonia that are needed to run process-based simulation models for those watersheds; (b) identifying suitable, and feasibly usable models, and calibrate, validate and test them under Estonian conditions; (c) evaluating the models’ performance and capability to become decision support tools; and (d) and advising on data and knowledge gaps towards further future progress.submittedVersio

Process-based eco-hydrological modelling of nutrient loads to the Baltics from three Estonian catchments

It is now evident that fresh- and marine-water ecosystems have long been overloaded by nutrients that originate, among others, from land-based agriculture, and the manifold point-type anthropogenic sources, such as waste-water treatment plants. The situation in this sense is rather acute in the Baltic countries and their waters. This situation will not improve until we identify the true sources and pathways of pollutants and quantify their contribution, advance our process-understanding to describe the mechanisms through which the pollution occurs, and by what steps we may be able to influence that, and quantify what, if any such steps – today popularly termed ‘mitigation measures’ – may produce certain levels of benefit sustainably. Various advancements have already been made in a number of the above steps, but the applied mitigation measures are often local and scarce, their effects are often influenced by other unknown and uncontrolled factors, and their installation is too recent to yield noticeable changes due to e.g. the nutrient retention characteristics of the ecosystem. It is therefore of paramount importance that we monitor and use environmental data towards long-term planning in order to sustain or improve the state of our environment. Environmental modeling is a growingly important tool for future planning. One main branch of such modeling – the use of process-based models – is a generally data intensive, but in exchange rather detailed way of quantifying natural processes. As part of the greater context of the NORRA project, this Working Group reports on its work towards (a) cataloguing existing environmental data for selected pilot-watersheds of Estonia that are needed to run process-based simulation models for those watersheds; (b) identifying suitable, and feasibly usable models, and calibrate, validate and test them under Estonian conditions; (c) evaluating the models’ performance and capability to become decision support tools; and (d) and advising on data and knowledge gaps towards further future progress

Assessing the validity of impact pathways for child labour and well-being in social life cycle assessment

Background, aim and scope: Assuming that the goal of social life cycle assessment (SLCA) is to assess damage and benefits on its &lsquo;area of protection&rsquo; (AoP) as accurately as possible, it follows that the impact pathways, describing the cause effect relationship between indicator and the AoP, should have a consistent theoretical foundation so the inventory results can be associated with a predictable damage or benefit to the AoP. This article uses two concrete examples from the work on SLCA to analyse to what extent this is the case in current practice. One considers whether indicators included in SLCA approaches can validly assess impacts on the well-being of the stakeholder, whereas the other example addresses whether the &lsquo;incidence of child labour&rsquo; is a valid measure for impacts on the AoPs.Materials and methods: The theoretical basis for the impact pathway between the relevant indicators and the AoPs is analysed drawing on research from relevant scientific fields.Results: &nbsp; The examples show a lack of valid impact pathways in both examples. The first example shows that depending on the definition of &lsquo;well-being&rsquo;, the assessment of impacts on well-being of the stakeholder cannot be performed exclusively with the type of indicators which are presently used in SLCA approaches. The second example shows that the mere fact that a child is working tells little about how this may damage or benefit the AoPs, implying that the normally used indicator; &lsquo;incidence of child labour&rsquo; lacks validity in relation to predicting damage or benefit on the AoPs of SLCA.Discussion: New indicators are proposed to mitigate the problem of invalid impact pathways. However, several problems arise relating to difficulties in getting data, the usability of the new indicators in management situations, and, in relation to example one, boundary setting issues.Conclusions: The article shows that it is possible to assess the validity of the impact pathways in SLCA. It thereby point to the possibility of utilising the same framework that underpins the environmental LCA in this regard. It also shows that in relation to both of the specific examples investigated, the validity of the impact pathways may be improved by adopting other indicators, which does, however, come with a considerable &lsquo;price&rsquo;.Recommendations and perspectives: It is argued that there is a need for analysing impact pathways of other impact categories often included in SLCA in order to establish indicators that better reflect actual damage or benefit to the AoPs.<br /