Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reading Thieves' Cant: Automatically Identifying and Understanding Dark Jargons from Cybercrime Marketplaces

Underground communication is invaluable for understanding cybercrimes. However, it is often obfuscated by the extensive use of dark jargons , innocently-looking terms like “popcorn” that serves sinister purposes (buy-ing/selling drug, seeking crimeware, etc.). Discovery and understanding of these jargons have so far relied on manual effort, which is error-prone and cannot catch up with the fast evolving underground ecosystem. In this paper, we present the ﬁrst technique, called Cantreader , to automatically detect and understand dark jargon. Our approach employs a neural-network based embedding technique to analyze the semantics of words, detecting those whose contexts in legitimate documents are signiﬁcantly different from those in underground communication. For this purpose, we enhance the existing word embedding model to support semantic comparison across good and bad corpora, which leads to the detection of dark jargons. To further understand them, our approach utilizes projection learning to identify a jargon’s hypernym that sheds light on its true meaning when used in underground communication. Running Cantreader over one million traces collected from four underground forums, our approach automatically reported 3,462 dark jargons and their hypernyms, including 2,491 never known before. The study further reveals how these jargons are used (by 25% of the traces) and evolve and how they help cybercriminals communicate on legitimate forums.
Skeleton Subspace Deformation with Displacement Map

Skeleton Subspace Deformation (SSD) is a novel Free Form Deformation technology (FFD), and plays an important role in character animation, interactive game and other fields. In this paper, we present a new layered algorithm of SSD. After a preliminary conventional SSD, a displacement map is constructed based on the pose of the skeleton and the original surface. And then synthesize the displacement map with the defectively deformed surface and thus solve the inherent problems of conventional SSD, called "collapse" and "pinch". The experiment shows the effectiveness of this algorithm to create the realistic skin for an animated character.
Identification and genomic characterization of influenza viruses with different origin in Mexican pigs

Swine influenza is a worldwide disease, which causes damage to the respiratory system of pigs. The H1N1 and H3N2 subtypes circulate mainly in the swine population of Mexico. There is evidence that new subtypes of influenza virus have evolved genetically and have been rearranged with human viruses and from other species; therefore, the aim of our study was to identify and characterize the genetic changes that have been generated in the different subtypes of the swine influenza virus in Mexican pigs. By sequencing and analyzing phylogenetically the eight segments that form the virus genome, the following subtypes were identified: H1N1, H3N2, H1N2 and H5N2; of which, a H1N1 subtype had a high genetic relationship with the human influenza virus. In addition, a H1N2 subtype related to the porcine H1N2 virus reported in the United States was identified, as well as, two other viruses of avian origin from the H5N2 subtype. Particularly for the H5N2 subtype, this is the first time that its presence has been reported in Mexican pigs. The analysis of these sequences demonstrates that in the swine population of Mexico, circulate viruses that have suffered punctual-specific mutations and rearrangements of their proteins with different subtypes, which have successfully adapted to the Mexican swine population.
Non-Intrusive Historical Assessment of Internet-Facing Services in the Internet of Things

Abstract The expansion of Internet has led to a variety of directly accessible devices and services. Nowadays, companies tend to increase the number of Internetfacing services in order to ensure higher visibility, and accessibility towards end-users. Nonetheless, this profound expansion towards an “Internet of Things” brings new opportunities to malicious actors. As a result, novel cyber-physical attacks bring new challenges to systems administrators in order to accommodate traditional user requests with security prerequisites. Therefore, in this paper we propose a novel approach for historical Internet connectivity assessment of services. The technique uses the output of the popular Shodan search engine to infer the lifetime of different Internet-facing services. Experimental results conducted on IP address blocks attributed to six different institutions distributed across four sectors (university, telecommunications, banking, and power) show different possible service lifetime patterns.
Schrödinger's RAT: Profiling the Stakeholders in the Remote Access Trojan Ecosystem

Remote Access Trojans (RATs) are a class of malware that give an attacker direct, interactive access to a victim’s personal computer, allowing the attacker to steal private data from the computer, spy on the victim in realtime using the camera and microphone, and interact directly with the victim via a dialog box. RATs are used for surveillance, information theft, and extortion of victims. In this work, we report on the attackers and victims for two popular RATs, njRAT and DarkComet. Using the malware repository VirusTotal, we find all instances of these RATs and identify the domain names of their controllers. We then register those domains that have expired and direct them to our measurement infrastructure, allowing us to determine the victims of these campaigns. We investigate several techniques for excluding network scanners and sandbox executions of malware samples in order to filter apparent infections that are not real victims of the campaign. Our results show that over 99% of the 828,137 IP addresses that connected to our sinkhole are likely not real victims. We report on the number of victims, how long RAT campaigns remain active, and the geographic relationship between victims and attackers.
Factors Influencing High School Students’ Interest in pSTEM

The transition from high school to college is an important choice point for the pursuit of physical science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (pSTEM) career paths, with students in the United States switching from course selection that is proscribed by state graduation requirements in high school to choosing classes and paths of study more freely in college. Here two studies examine whether social factors identified to inhibit interest in pSTEM within college students similarly affect high school students, and in particular whether these factors could contribute to gender differences in interest in pursuing pSTEM. We find a lower sense of social and ability belonging and lower self-efficacy among female than male high school students pursuing pSTEM classes. In addition, for females but not males, social belonging significantly predicts intentions to continue to pursue pSTEM, highlighting the importance of considering whether low social belonging inhibits intentions to pursue pSTEM for female but not male students. We also find that perceptions of pSTEM fields as requiring innate brilliance more than hard work selectively discourage female students from intending to further pursue pSTEM. Together the studies highlight the potential impact of both subjective self-perceptions and perceptions about pSTEM fields on students’ interest in pSTEM and further identify processes that may selectively dissuade high school females from pursuing pSTEM career paths relative to males.
Longitudinal imaging of reading and naming recovery after stroke

ABSTRACT Background: Functional neuroimaging techniques can provide a unique window into the neural basis of language recovery after a stroke. The functional neuroimaging literature on post-stroke language recovery is complex; multiple factors such as the time post-stroke, degree of initial impairment, nature of the task, and lesion location and size influence recovery patterns. Some of these factors may not be applicable across different stroke participants, and therefore, influence recovery trajectories in vastly different manners across patients. Aims: The aim of this paper is to examine longitudinal changes in brain activation patterns of reading and naming recovery in participants with posterior cerebral artery (PCA) strokes with varying degrees of initial language impairment. Methods & Procedures: Five participants with PCA strokes and five healthy controls underwent language testing and functional MRI with a covert reading task and an overt picture-naming task. Stroke participants underwent language testing and scanning at the three time points: 2–5 weeks (T1, subacute phase), 4–7 months (T2, chronic phase), and 11–13 months (T3, chronic phase). Healthy controls underwent language testing and fMRI once. Outcomes & Results: Language testing indicated that there were varying degrees of reading and naming recovery or decline from the subacute to the chronic phase. With regard to task-based fMRI, we found that for most participants, naming consistently activated a diffuse bilateral network of frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital regions across the three time points. In contrast, for the reading task, functional activation across the three time points was more left lateralized with a right to left shift in peak activation from the subacute to the chronic phase. Conclusions: These results indicate that the patterns of activation during language processing is highly dependent on the task and phase of recovery, and these results may have implications for neurally targeted non-invasive brain stimulation techniques.
Heuristics for publishing dynamic content as structured data with schema.org

Publishing fast changing dynamic data as open data on the web in a scalable manner is not trivial. So far the only approaches describe publishing as much data as possible, which then leads to problems, like server capacity overload, network latency or unwanted knowledge disclosure. With this paper we show ways how to publish dynamic data in a scalable, meaningful manner by applying context-dependent publication heuristics. The outcome shows that the application of the right publication heuristics in the right domain can improve the publication performance significantly. Good knowledge about the domain help choosing the right publication heuristic and hence lead to very good publication results.
Prime-and-Trap Malaria Vaccination To Generate Protective CD8+ Liver-Resident Memory T Cells

Tissue-resident memory CD8+ T (Trm) cells in the liver are critical for long-term protection against pre-erythrocytic Plasmodium infection. Such protection can usually be induced with three to five doses of i.v. administered radiation-attenuated sporozoites (RAS). To simplify and accelerate vaccination, we tested a DNA vaccine designed to induce potent T cell responses against the SYVPSAEQI epitope of Plasmodium yoelii circumsporozoite protein. In a heterologous “prime-and-trap” regimen, priming using gene gun–administered DNA and boosting with one dose of RAS attracted expanding Ag-specific CD8+ T cell populations to the liver, where they became Trm cells. Vaccinated in this manner, BALB/c mice were completely protected against challenge, an outcome not reliably achieved following one dose of RAS or following DNA-only vaccination. This study demonstrates that the combination of CD8+ T cell priming by DNA and boosting with liver-homing RAS enhances formation of a completely protective liver Trm cell response and suggests novel approaches for enhancing T cell–based pre-erythrocytic malaria vaccines.
Characterization of Spleen Transcriptome and Immunity Against Avian Colibacillosis After Immunization With Recombinant Attenuated Salmonella Vaccine Strains

Avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) causes extraintestinal infections in poultry. Vaccines targeting APEC in chickens have been partially successful, but many lack heterologous protection. Recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccine (RASV) strains can induce broad immunity against Salmonella and be modified to deliver E. coli antigens. Along with vaccine characteristics, understanding the host response is crucial for developing improved vaccines. The objectives of this study were to evaluate host responses to vaccination with an RASV producing E. coli common pilus (ECP) and assess protection against APEC infection in chickens. Four-day-old White Leghorn chickens were unvaccinated or orally vaccinated and boosted 2 weeks later with RASV χ8025(pYA3337), RASV χ8025(pYA4428) carrying ecp operon genes, or a combination of χ8025(pYA3337) and χ8025(pYA4428) (Combo). To assess host responses, serum IgY and intestinal IgA antibody titers were measured, and spleen samples (n = 4/group) were collected from unvaccinated and Combo vaccinated 4-week-old chickens for RNA-seq. Vaccine protection potential against Salmonella and APEC was evaluated in vitro using bacterial inhibition assays. Five-week-old chickens were challenged via air sac with either an APEC O2 or O78 strain. E. coli was enumerated from internal organs, and gross colibacillosis lesions were scored at necropsy. RASV immunized chickens elicited anti-E. coli antibodies. The spleen transcriptome revealed that 93% (89/96) of differentially expressed genes (DEG) were more highly expressed in Combo vaccinated compared to unvaccinated chickens, with signal as the most significantly impacted category. RNA-seq analysis also revealed altered cellular and metabolic processes, response to stimulus after vaccination, and immune system processes. Six DEG including genes linked to transcription regulation, actin cytoskeleton, and signaling were highly positively correlated with antibody levels. Samples from RASV immunized chickens showed protection potential against Salmonella strains using in vitro assays, but a variable response was found for APEC strains. After APEC challenges, significant differences were not detected for bacterial loads or gross lesions scores, but χ8025(pYA3337) immunized and χ8025(pYA4428) immunized chickens had significantly fewer number of APEC-O2-positive samples than unvaccinated chickens. This study shows that RASVs can prime the immune system for APEC infection, and is a first step toward developing improved therapeutics for APEC infections in chickens.
Low‐copy nuclear markers in Isoëtes (Isoëtaceae) identified with transcriptomes

Premise of the Study Few genetic markers provide phylogenetic information in closely related species of Isoëtes (Isoëtaceae). We describe the development of primers for several putative low‐copy nuclear markers to resolve the phylogeny of Isoëtes, particularly in the southeastern United States. Methods and Results We identified regions of interest in Isoëtes transcriptomes based on low‐copy genes in other plants. Primers were designed for these regions and tested with 16 taxa of Isoëtes and one species of Lycopodium. Parts of the pgiC, gapC, and IBR3 gene regions show phylogenetic signal within the North American and Mediterranean clades of Isoëtes. Conclusions Transcriptome data prove useful for identification and primer design of low‐copy genes. Three new markers show potential for inferring phylogenies in regional clades of Isoëtes, and possibly across the entire genus.
An Empirical Study of Web Resource Manipulation in Real-world Mobile Applications

Mobile apps have become the main channel for accessing Web services. Both Android and iOS feature inapp Web browsers that support convenient Web service integration through a set of Web resource manipulation APIs. Previous work have revealed the attack surfaces of Web resource manipulation APIs and proposed several defense mechanisms. However, none of them provides evidence that such attacks indeed happen in the real world, measures their impacts, and evaluates the proposed defensive techniques against real attacks. This paper seeks to bridge this gap with a large-scale empirical study on Web resource manipulation behaviors in real-world Android apps. To this end, we first define the problem as cross-principal manipulation (XPM) of Web resources, and then design an automated tool named XPMChecker to detect XPM behaviors in apps. Through a study on 80,694 apps from Google Play, we find that 49.2% of manipulation cases are XPM, 4.8% of the apps have XPM behaviors, and more than 70% XPM behaviors aim at top Web sites. More alarmingly, we discover 21 apps with obvious malicious intents, such as stealing and abusing cookies, collecting user credentials and impersonating legitimate parties. For the first time, we show the presence of XPM threats in real-world apps. We also confirm the existence of such threats in iOS apps. Our experiments show that popular Web service providers are largely unaware of such threats. Our measurement results contribute to better understanding of such threats and the development of more effective and usable countermeasures.
Joint Dimensioning of Outdoor Heterogeneous Radio Access Networks (HetNet) using Monte Carlo Simulation

Abstract The experienced mobile traffic increase in the recent years made traffic capacity the bottleneck instead of the coverage constraints, calling for significantly higher density of the base stations. Heterogeneous radio access networks (HetNet) provide a possible solution to this problem, combining various wireless technologies. In this paper we investigated the joint dimensioning of the co-existent radio access networks, the relation between the required macro and small cell densities to meet a certain traffic demand, and compared the two main, competing technological solutions, namely small cells and Wi-Fi, suitable to complement an LTE (macrocell) network.
Single Events Induced By Heavy Ions and Laser Pulses in Silicon Schottky Diodes

This paper is dedicated to the investigation of single-event effects (SEEs) in different types of silicon Schottky diodes using heavy ions and laser pulses. The objectives are both to progress in heavy ions and laser correlations using simple devices and to further understand the impact of optical and electrical parameters on photogeneration in Schottky diodes to contribute to the use of pulsed lasers for single-event sensitivity studies. Heavy ion test results on planar and trenched commercial Schottky diodes are presented. Based on these results, pulsed laser tests and transient measurements were performed on the sensitive devices. Destructive single events were evidenced with both techniques. Significant parameters of the laser tests, such as backside aperture of the device, electrical and optical configuration are discussed. These investigations show the potential of laser testing for Schottky diode SEE sensitivity study.
Performance Analysis of Granular versus Traditional Neural Network Classifiers: Preliminary Results

A recent trend in Machine Learning is to augment the transparency of traditional classification models using Granular Computing techniques. This approach has been found particularly useful in the neural networks field since most successful neural systems often require complex structures to behave like universal approximators. However, there is a widely-held view stating that, to build an interpretable classifier, one might have to sacrifice some prediction accuracy. We want to challenge this belief by exploring the performance of a recently introduced granular classifier termed Fuzzy-Rough Cognitive Networks against low-level (i.e., traditional) neural networks. The simulation results have shown that this neural system can attain quite competitive prediction rates while featuring a shallow, granular architecture. As a bigger picture, this study paves the way for conducting a more thorough evaluation of granular versus low-level neural classifiers in the near future.
55 nm Ultra-Low-Power Local Oscillator for EPCglobal Gen2v2 Standardized Passive UHF RFID Tags

This paper deals with the development of an ultra-low-power local oscillator for use in passive UHF RFID tags. The oscillator is intended to provide the clock signal for digital processing and serves as the basis for generating the backscatter link frequency (BLF). The BLF must be adjustable depending on the reader query and be within specified tolerances to comply with the EPCglobal Gen2v2 standard. Besides the main requirement of the oscillator, an extremely low power consumption is essential. To meet this challenge, the design uses a current-starved, three-stage ring oscillator. Since the circuit is to be integrated in 55 nm technology from Globalfoundries, this topology offers the advantage of not requiring passive components that would be difficult to integrate. To provide the bias voltages for the current-starving, a reference circuit is utilized. The results of the simulations show a low power consumption of about 381nW at an oscillation frequency of 5.82 MHz.
Plateau limit-based tri-histogram equalisation for image enhancement

An adaptive plateau limit-based histogram equalisation algorithm is suggested to enhance digital images. Histogram of the image is clipped with a plateau limit to avoid over enhancement. The plateau limit is derived from the average of the mean and the median intensity values to offer the improved enhancement. Clipped histogram is subdivided into three parts, using histogram subdivision limit parameters that are calculated on the basis of the standard deviation of the image. Histogram of individual sub-image is equalised independently and then combined into a single enhanced image. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed plateau limit-based tri-histogram equalisation algorithm enhances the image quality. Compared with the other traditional plateau and non-plateau limit-based histogram equalisation algorithms, quantitative and visual quality assessments effectively validate the superiority of the proposed algorithm.
Every data structure deserves lock-free memory reclamation

Memory-management support for lock-free data structures is well known to be a tough problem. Recent work has successfully reduced the overhead of such schemes. However, applying memory-management support to a data structure remains complex and, in many cases, requires redesigning the data structure. In this paper, we present the first lock-free memory-management scheme that is applicable to general (arbitrary) lock-free data structures and that can be applied automatically via a compiler plug-in. In addition to the simplicity of incorporating to data structures, this scheme provides low overhead and does not rely on the lock freedom of any OS services.
DOPLE: A Double Protective Physical Layer Encryption Scheme for OFDM Systems

In the era of wireless communication, the security of transmission, especially physical layer security, has become a big concern. In this paper, we propose an efficient physical layer encryption scheme for the OFDM based wireless systems. The scheme employs the time domain encryption to protect the entire physical layer frame in two steps. First, transmitted data in Presentation Protocol Data Unit (PPDU) is protected with an iterative encryption algorithm that can effectively deal with known plaintext and ciphertext attacks. Second, Long Training Sequence (LTS) is also encrypted to prevent the adversary from performing correct channel synchronization. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme under different attack scenarios, and evaluate the performance of our scheme with the simulation experiments.