2228641
Server-based inference of Internet link lossiness
The problem of inferring the packet loss characteristics of Internet links using server-based measurements is investigated. Unlike much of existing work on network tomography that is based on active probing, we make inferences based on passive observation of end-to-end client-server traffic. Our work on passive network tomography focuses on identifying lossy links (i.e., the trouble spots in the network). We have developed three techniques for this purpose based on random sampling, linear optimization, and Bayesian inference using Gibbs sampling, respectively. We evaluate the accuracy of these techniques using both simulations and Internet packet traces. We find that these techniques can identify most of the lossy links in the network with a manageable false positive rate. For instance, simulation results indicate that the Gibbs sampling technique has over 80% coverage with a false positive rate under 5%. Furthermore, this technique provides a confidence indicator on its inference. We also perform inference based on Internet traces gathered at the busy microsoft.com Web site. However, validating these inferences is a challenging problem. We present a method for indirect validation that suggests that the false positive rate is manageable.
8456748
Friends Troubleshooting Network: Towards Privacy-Preserving, Automatic Troubleshooting
Content sharing is a popular usage of peer-to-peer systems for its inherent scalability and low cost of maintenance. In this paper, we leverage this nature of peer-to-peer systems to tackle a new problem: automatic misconfiguration troubleshooting. In this setting, machine configurations from the peers are “shared” to diagnose the misconfigurations on a sick machine. A key challenge for such a troubleshooting system is privacy preservation. To this end, we construct Friends Troubleshooting Network (FTN), a peer-to-peer overlay network, where the links between peer machines reflect the friendship of their owners. To preserve privacy, we use historyless and futureless random-walk in the FTN, during which search along with parameter aggregation are carried out for the purpose of troubleshooting. Many of our techniques can be applied to other application scenarios that require privacy-preserving distributed computing and information aggregation. We have also identified a number of open challenges that remain to be addressed.
7336686
Online aggregation
Aggregation in traditional database systems is performed in batch mode: a query is submitted, the system processes a large volume of data over a long period of time, and, eventually, the final answer is returned. This archaic approach is frustrating to users and has been abandoned in most other areas of computing. In this paper we propose a new online aggregation interface that permits users to both observe the progress of their aggregation queries and control execution on the fly. After outlining usability and performance requirements for a system supporting online aggregation, we present a suite of techniques that extend a database system to meet these requirements. These include methods for returning the output in random order, for providing control over the relative rate at which different aggregates are computed, and for computing running confidence intervals. Finally, we report on an initial implementation of online aggregation in POSTGRES.
17331850
A Systematic Approach to Uncover Security Flaws in GUI Logic
To achieve end-to-end security, traditional machine-to-machine security measures are insufficient if the integrity of the human-computer interface is compromised. GUI logic flaws are a category of software vulnerabilities that result from logic bugs in GUI design/implementation. Visual spoofing attacks that exploit these flaws can lure even security- conscious users to perform unintended actions. The focus of this paper is to formulate the problem of GUI logic flaws and to develop a methodology for uncovering them in software implementations. Specifically, based on an in-depth study of key subsets of Internet Explorer (IE) browser source code, we have developed a formal model for the browser GUI logic and have applied formal reasoning to uncover new spoofing scenarios, including nine for status bar spoofing and four for address bar spoofing. The IE development team has confirmed all these scenarios and has fixed most of them in their latest build. Through this work, we demonstrate that a crucial subset of visual spoofing vulnerabilities originate from GUI logic flaws, which have a well-defined mathematical meaning allowing a systematic analysis.
42916380
Policy-enabled handoffs across heterogeneous wireless networks
"Access is the killer app" is the vision of the Daedalus project at UC Berkeley. Being able to be connected seamlessly anytime anywhere to the best network still remains an unfulfilled goal. Often, even determining the "best" network is a challenging task because of the widespread deployment of overlapping wireless networks. We describe a policy-enabled handoff system that allows users to express policies on what is the "best" wireless system at any moment, and make tradeoffs among network characteristics and dynamics such as cost, performance and power consumption. We designed a performance reporting scheme estimating current network conditions, which serves as input to the policy specification. A primary goal of this work is to make it possible to balance the bandwidth load across networks with comparable performance. To avoid the problem of handoff instability, i.e., many mobile hosts making the same handoff decision at essentially the same time, we designed randomization into our mechanism. Given the current "best" network, our system determines whether the handoff is worthwhile based on the handoff overhead and potential network usage duration.
1302015
An evaluation of scalable application-level multicast built using peer-to-peer overlays
Structured peer-to-peer overlay networks such as CAN, Chord, Pastry, and Tapestry can be used to implement Internet-scale application-level multicast. There are two general approaches to accomplishing this: tree building and flooding. This paper evaluates these two approaches using two different types of structured overlay: 1) overlays which use a form of generalized hypercube routing, e.g., Chord, Pastry and Tapestry, and 2) overlays which use a numerical distance metric to route through a Cartesian hyperspace, e.g., CAN. Pastry and CAN are chosen as the representatives of each type of overlay. To the best of our knowledge, this paper reports the first head-to-head comparison of CAN-style versus Pastry-style overlay networks, using multicast communication workloads running on an identical simulation infrastructure. The two approaches to multicast are independent of overlay network choice, and we provide a comparison of flooding versus tree-based multicast on both overlays. Results show that the tree-based approach consistently outperforms the flooding approach. Finally, for tree-based multicast, we show that Pastry provides better performance than CAN.
16403613
Gradient Adaptive Image Restoration and Enhancement
Various methods have been proposed for image enhancement and restoration. The main difficulty is how to enhance the structures uniformly while suppressing the noise without artifacts. In this paper, we tackle this problem in the gradient domain instead of the traditional intensity domain. By enhancing the gradient field, we can enhance the structure uniformly without overshooting at the boundary. Because the gradient field is very sensitive to noise, we apply an orientation-isotropy adaptive filter to the gradient field, suppressing the gradients in the noise regions while enhancing along the object boundaries. Thus we obtain a modulated gradient field, which is usually not integrable. We reconstruct the enhanced image from the modulated gradient field with least square errors by solving a Poisson equation. This method can enhance the object contrast uniformly, suppress the noise with no artifacts, and avoid setting stopping time as in PDE methods. Experiments on noisy images show the efficacy of our method.
29040872
A Variant to Turing's Theory of Computing Machines
The principal purpose of this paper is to offer a theory which is closely related to Turing's [1] but is more economical in the basic operations. I t will be proved that a theoretically simple basic machine can be imagined and specified such tha t all partial recursive functions (and hence all solvable computation problems) can be computed by it and tha t only four basic types of instruction are employed for the programs: shift left one space, shift right one space, mark a blank space, conditional transfer. In particular, erasing is dispensable, one symbol for marking is sufficient, and one kind of transfer is enough. The reduction is somewhat similar to the realization of, for instance, the definability of conjunction and implication in terms of negation and disjunction, or of the definability of all these in terms of Sheffer's stroke function. As a result, i t becomes less direct to prove that certain things can be done by the machines, but a little easier to prove that certain things cannot be done. This serf-contained theory will b e presented, as far as possible, in a language which is familiar to those who are engaged in the use and construction of largescale computers. Turing's theory of computable functions antedated but has not much influenced the extensive actual construction of digital computers. These two aspects of theory and practice have been developed almost entirely independently of each other. The main reason is undoubtedly that logicians are interested in questions radically different from those with which the applied mathematicians and electrical engineers are primarily concerned. I t cannot, however, fail to strike one as rather strange that often the same concepts are expressed by very different terms in the two developments. One is even inclined to ask whether a rapprochement might not produce some good effect. This paper wiU, it is believed, be of use to those who wish to compare and connect the two approaches. Extensive use of Turing [1] and Kleene [2] (Chapter XI I I ) will be made, although the exposition is sufficient in itself.
8697079
Input don't care sequences in FSM networks
We present an approach to compute all input don't care sequences for a component in an FSM network with an arbitrary topology. In a cascade FSM network, Kim and Newborn's (K-N) procedure [13] exactly computes all input don't care sequences for the driven machine. However, for a component in a general FSM network the exact computation of input don't care sequences is unsolved. We demonstrate that this problem can be reduced to one for a cascade circuit. This reduction uses the notion ofan abstract driving machine. In some cases, the exact computation and exploitation of these sequences may be too expensive. We propose methods to compute subsets of input don't care sequences. We discuss the implementation of these algorithms using implicit methods. We also present approximate methods for managing the complexity of large FSM networks. Finally, we give some preliminary results on small networks. •This projectwas supportedby DARPA undercontractnumberJFBI90-073 and NSF undercontractnumber EMC-84-19744.
15118493
Anomaly intrusion detection using multi-objective genetic fuzzy system and agent-based evolutionary computation framework
In this paper, we present a multi-objective genetic fuzzy system for anomaly intrusion detection. The proposed system extracts accurate and interpret able fuzzy rule-based knowledge from network data using an agent-based evolutionary computation framework. The experimental results on KDD-Cup99 intrusion detection benchmark data demonstrate that our system can achieve high detection rate for intrusion attacks and low false positive rate for normal network traffic.
11673267
Object-based video compression scheme with optimal bit allocation among shape, motion and texture
In object-based video, the encoding of the video data is decoupled into the encoding of shape, motion and texture information, which enables certain functionalities like content-based interactivity and scalability. However, the problem of how to jointly encode these separate signals to reach the best coding efficiency has never been solved thoroughly. In this paper, we present an operational rate-distortion optimal bit allocation scheme that provides a solution to this problem. Our approach is based on the Lagrangian relaxation and dynamic programming. Experimental results indicate that the proposed optimal encoding approach has considerable gains over an ad-hoc method without optimization. Furthermore the proposed algorithm is much more efficient than exhaustive search.