34096143
On the Security of a Certified E-Mail Scheme
As a value-added service for standard e-mail systems, a certified e-mail scheme allows a sender to deliver a message to a receiver in a fair way in the sense that either the sender obtains a receipt from the receiver and the receiver accesses the content of the e-mail simultaneously, or neither party gets the expected item. In 2000, Ferrer-Gomila et al. [11] proposed a novel certified e-mail protocol. Their scheme is both efficient and optimistic, since it has only three steps and a trusted third party is not involved in normal cases. Later, Monteiro and Dahab [16] identified an attack on Ferrer-Gomila et al.’s scheme, and further presented a modified scheme. In this paper, we show that their improvement is still insecure by successfully identifying several weaknesses and security flaws. Our attacks also apply to Ferrer-Gomila et al.’s original scheme.
12290163
On the Security of the Lee-Hwang Group-Oriented Undeniable Signature Schemes
Undeniable signature is an intriguing concept introduced by Chaum and van Antwerpen at Crypto’89. In 1999, Lee and Hwang presented two group-oriented undeniable signature schemes with a trusted center. Their schemes are natural generalizations of Chaum’s zero knowledge undeniable signature scheme proposed in 1990. However, we find that the Lee-Hwang schemes are insecure. In this paper, we demonstrate five effective attacks on their schemes: four of them are insider universal forgeries, in which one dishonest member (maybe colluding with a verifier) can get a valid signature on any chosen massage, and another attack allows a dishonest member to prevent honest members from generating valid signatures. We also suggest heuristic improvements to overcome some of the problems involved in these attacks.
7849675
On the Security of a Group Signature Scheme with Forward Security
A group signature scheme allows a group member of a given group to sign messages on behalf of the group in an anonymous and unlinkable way. In case of a dispute, however, a designated group manager can reveal the signer of a valid group signature. Based on Song’s forward-secure group signature schemes, Zhang, Wu, and Wang proposed a new group signature scheme with forward security at ICICS 2003. Their scheme is very efficient on both communication and computation aspects. Unfortunately, their scheme is insecure. In this paper we present a security analysis to show that their scheme is linkable, untraceable, and forgeable.
8581433
An Abuse-Free Fair Contract-Signing Protocol Based on the RSA Signature
A fair contract-signing protocol allows two potentially mistrusted parities to exchange their commitments (i.e., digital signatures) to an agreed contract over the Internet in a fair way, so that either each of them obtains the other's signature, or neither party does. Based on the RSA signature scheme, a new digital contract-signing protocol is proposed in this paper. Like the existing RSA-based solutions for the same problem, our protocol is not only fair, but also optimistic, since the trusted third party is involved only in the situations where one party is cheating or the communication channel is interrupted. Furthermore, the proposed protocol satisfies a new property- abuse-freeness. That is, if the protocol is executed unsuccessfully, none of the two parties can show the validity of intermediate results to others. Technical details are provided to analyze the security and performance of the proposed protocol. In summary, we present the first abuse-free fair contract-signing protocol based on the RSA signature, and show that it is both secure and efficient.
10216231
On the Security of Two Threshold Signature Schemes with Traceable Signers
A (t,n) threshold signature scheme allows t or more group members to generate signatures on behalf of a group with n members, while any t-1 or less members cannot do the same thing. In 2001, based on a variant of ElGamal digital signature scheme, Li et al. proposed two (t,n) threshold signature schemes with traceable signers. One of their schemes needs the assistance of a mutually trusted center, while the other does not. In this paper, we present a security analysis on their schemes. We first point out that in fact signers in their schemes are untraceable, since anybody can convert a valid threshold signature into a new one such that another subset of group members will be wrongly considered as the signers of the new threshold signature for the same message. Furthermore, we demonstrate an attack to show that their second threshold signature scheme is insecure. In our attack, (n-t+1) colluding members can control the group secret key. Therefore, they can generate valid threshold signature for any message without the help of other members. Furthermore, honest members cannot detect this security flaw in the system, since any t members can generate threshold signatures according to the prescribed protocols.
17370273
On the Security of a Certified E-Mail Scheme with Temporal Authentication
Certified e-mail is a value-added service for standard e-mail systems, in which the intended recipient gets the mail content if and only if the mail originator receives a non-repudiation evidence that the message has been received by the recipient. As far as security is concerned, fairness is one of the most important requirements. Recently, Galdi and Giordano (2004) presented an optimistic protocol for certified e-mail with temporal authentication. In this paper, we analyze their protocol and demonstrate that it cannot achieve true fairness and has some other weaknesses. We further propose the improvements to avoid those security problems.
22971764
Integrating Semantic Web Services for Declarative Accesses in Natural Language
Although extensive research on Web services has been reported in the last decade, problems still remain due to the lack of natural language query support, the lack of automatic service discovery and composition, and the existence of a large number of existing web sites that are query driven. In this paper we introduce a framework that integrates some novel solutions to the above problems. Specifically we differentiate query-based services (QBS) from the traditional function-based services (FBS) and address the following issues: natural language user interface, automatic service discovery and composition, and semantic UDDI
16185032
Using Social Contextual Information to Match Criminal Identities
Criminal identity matching is crucial to crime investigation in law enforcement agencies. Existing techniques match identities that refer to the same individuals based on simple identity features. These techniques are subject to several problems. First, there is an effectiveness trade-off between the false negative and false positive rates. The improvement of one rate usually lowers the other. Second, in some situations such as identity theft, simple-feature-based techniques are unable to match identities that have completely different identity feature values. We argue that the information about the social context of an individual may provide additional information for revealing the individual’s identity, helping improve the effectiveness of identity matching techniques. We define two types of social contextual features: role-based personal features and social group features. Experiments showed that social contextual features, especially the structural similarity and the relational similarity, significantly improved the precision without lowering the recall of criminal identity matching tasks.
8431943
GPU-friendly warped display for scope-maintained video surveillance
In this paper, we propose an efficient technique for warped display of surveillance video signal. Usually, there are regions of interest (ROIs) in video surveillance, such as entrance or exit, and moving objects or persons. The surveillant has two or more conflicting goals in mind. He/She wants to blow up the ROIs, but also wants to have an overview of the whole surveillance scope. The proposed method solves this conflict by warping the input video signal in real time fashion. First, multiple ROIs are detected. Then, the mesh for texture mapping is deformed, according to the position and shape of the ROIs. The original video frame is mapped as a texture on the deformed mesh to produce the warped effect. Mesh deformation and texture mapping are accelerated by modern graphics processing units (GPU). By allocating more display space for ROIs, the proposed technique highlights such important regions and assists the surveillant to locate them effectively. By experiments, we show that the proposed method is effective and efficient.
12450638
A High Performance Application Representation for Reconfigurable Systems
Modern reconfigurable computing systems feature powerful hybrid architectures with multiple microprocessor cores, large reconfigurable logic arrays and distributed memory hierarchies. Mapping applications to these complex systems requires a representation that allows both hardware and software synthesis. Additionally, this representation must enable optimizations that exploit fine and coarse grained parallelism in order to effectively utilize the performance of the underlying reconfigurable architecture. Our work explores a representation based on the program dependence graph (PDG) incorporated with the static single-assignment (SSA) for synthesis to high performance reconfigurable devices. The PDG effectively describes control dependencies, while SSA yields precise data dependencies. When used together, these two representations provide a powerful, synthesizable form that exploits both fine and coarse grained parallelism. Compared to other commonly used representations for reconfigurable systems, the PDG+SSA form creates faster execution time, while using similar area.
5632600
"On-the-fly Programming: Using Code as an Expressive Musical Instrument"
On-the-fly programming is a style of programming in which the programmer/performer/composer augments and modifies the program while it is running, without stopping or restarting, in order to assert expressive, programmable control at runtime. Because of the fundamental powers of programming languages, we believe the technical and aesthetic aspects of on-the-fly programming are worth exploring.In this paper, we present a formalized framework for on-the-fly programming, based on the ChucK synthesis language, which supports a truly concurrent audio programming model with sample-synchronous timing, and a highly on-the-fly style of programming. We first provide a well-defined notion of on-the-fly programming. We then address four fundamental issues that confront the on-the-fly programmer: timing, modularity, conciseness, and flexibility. Using the features and properties of ChucK, we show how it solves many of these issues. In this new model, we show that (1) concurrency provides natural modularity for on-the-fly programming, (2) the timing mechanism in ChucK guarantees on-the-fly precision and consistency, (3) the Chuck syntax improves conciseness, and (4) the overall system is a useful framework for exploring on-the-fly programming. Finally, we discuss the aesthetics of on-the-fly performance.