Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On Seedless PRNGs and Premature Next

Pseudorandom number generators with input (PRNGs) are cryptographic algorithms that generate pseudorandom bits from accumulated entropic inputs (e.g., keystrokes, interrupt timings, etc.). This paper studies in particular PRNGs that are secure against premature next attacks (Kelsey et al., FSE ’98), a class of attacks leveraging the fact that a PRNG may produce an output (which could be seen by an adversary! ) before enough entropy has been accumulated. Practical designs adopt either unsound entropy-estimation methods to prevent such attacks (as in Linux’s /dev/random ) or sophisticated pool-based approaches as in Yarrow (MacOS/FreeBSD) and Fortuna (Windows). The only prior theoretical study of premature next attacks (Dodis et al., Algorithmica ’17) considers either a seeded setting or assumes constant entropy rate, and thus falls short of providing and validating practical designs. Assuming the availability of random seed is particularly problematic, first because this requires us to somehow generate a random seed without using our PRNG, but also because we must ensure that the entropy inputs to the PRNG remain independent of the seed. Indeed, all practical designs are seedless. However, prior works on seedless PRNGs (Coretti et al., CRYPTO ’19; Dodis et al., ITC ’21, CRYPTO’21) do not consider premature next attacks. The main goal of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of theoretically sound seedless PRNGs that are secure against premature next attacks. To this end, we make the following contributions: where seedless otherwise possible. 2. Given the above impossibility result, we investigate whether existing seedless pool-based approaches meant to overcome premature next attacks in practical designs provide meaningful guarantees in certain settings. Specifically, we show the following. We introduce a natural condition on the entropic and prove that it implies security of the round-robin entropy accumulation PRNG used by Windows 10, called Fortuna. our requires the input entropy to vary too wildly” within a given round-robin We prove that the “root pool” approach (also used in Windows 10) is secure for general entropy inputs, provided that the system’s state is not compromised after system startup. attacks
The Generals' Scuttlebutt: Byzantine-Resilient Gossip Protocols

One of the most successful applications of peer-to-peer communication networks is in the context of blockchain protocols, which-in Satoshi Nakamoto's own words-rely on the "nature of information being easy to spread and hard to stifle. " Significant efforts were invested in the last decade into analyzing the security of these protocols, and invariably the security arguments known for longest-chain Nakamoto-style consensus use an idealization of this tenet. Unfortunately, the real-world implementations of peer-topeer gossip-style networks used by blockchain protocols rely on a number of ad-hoc attack mitigation strategies that leave a glaring gap between the idealized communication layer assumed in formal security arguments for blockchains and the real world, where a wide array of attacks have been showcased. In this work we bridge this gap by presenting a Byzantineresilient network layer for blockchain protocols. For the first time we quantify the problem of network-layer attacks in the context of blockchain security models, and we develop a design that thwarts resource-restricted adversaries. Importantly, we focus on the proofof- stake setting due to its vulnerability to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks stemming from the well-known deficiency (compared to the proof-of-work setting) known as nothing at stake. We present a Byzantine-resilient gossip protocol, and we analyze it in the Universal Composition framework. In order to prove security, we show novel results on expander properties of random graphs. Importantly, our gossip protocol can be based on any given bilateral functionality that determines a desired interaction between two "adjacent" peers in the networking layer and demonstrates how it is possible to use application-layer information to make the networking-layer resilient to attacks. Despite the seeming circularity, we demonstrate how to prove the security of a Nakamoto-style longest-chain protocol given our gossip networking functionality, and hence, we demonstrate constructively how it is possible to obtain provable security across protocol layers, given only barebone point-to-point networking, majority of honest stake, and a verifiable random function.
VERICA - Verification of Combined Attacks: Automated formal verification of security against simultaneous information leakage and tampering

Physical attacks, including passive Side-Channel Analysis and active Fault Injection Analysis, are considered among the most powerful threats against physical cryptographic implementations. These attacks are well known and research provides many specialized countermeasures to protect cryptographic implementations against them. Still, only a limited number of combined countermeasures, i.e., countermeasures that protect implementations against multiple attacks simultaneously, were proposed in the past. Due to increasing complexity and reciprocal effects, design of efficient and reliable combined countermeasures requires longstanding expertise in hardware design and security. With the help of formal security specifications and adversary models, automated verification can streamline development cycles, increase quality, and facilitate development of robust cryptographic implementations.In this work, we revise and refine formal security notions for combined protection mechanisms and specifically embed them in the context of hardware implementations. Based on this, we present the first automated verification framework that can verify physical security properties of hardware circuits with respect to combined physical attacks. To this end, we conduct several case studies to demonstrate the capabilities and advantages of our framework, analyzing secure building blocks (gadgets), S-boxes build from Toffoli gates, and the ParTI scheme. For the first time, we reveal security flaws in analyzed structures due to reciprocal effects, highlighting the importance of continuously integrating security verification into modern design and development cycles.
Conceptual models and databases for searching the genome

Genomics is an extremely complex domain, in terms of concepts, their relations, and their representations in data. This tutorial introduces the use of ER models in the context of genomic systems: conceptual models are of great help for simplifying this domain and making it actionable. We carry out a review of successful models presented in the literature for representing biologically-relevant entities and grounding them in databases. We draw a difference between conceptual models that aim to explain the domain and conceptual models that aim to support database de-sign and heterogeneous data integration. Genomic experiments and/or sequences are described by several metadata, specifying information on the sampled organism, the used technology, and the organizational process behind the experiment. Instead, we call data the actual regions of the genome that have been read by sequencing technologies and encoded into a machine-readable representation. First, we show how data and metadata can be modeled, then we exploit the proposed models for designing search systems, visualizers, and analysis environments. Both domains of human genomics and viral genomics are addressed, surveying several use cases and applications of broader public interest. The tutorial is relevant to the EDBT community because it demonstrates the usefulness of conceptual models’ principles within very current domains; in addition, it offers a concrete example of conceptual models’ use, setting the premises for interdisciplinary collaboration with a greater public (possibly including life science researchers).
Hierarchical Galois Key Management Systems for Privacy Preserving AIaaS with Homomorphic Encryption

In the artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS) system in the client-server model, where the clients provide the data on the cloud and the server processes the data by using the deep neural network in the cloud, data privacy via homomorphic encryption is getting more important. Brakerski/Fan-Vercauteran (BFV) and Cheon-Kim-Kim-Song (CKKS) schemes are two representative homomorphic encryption schemes which support various arithmetic operations for encrypted data in the single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) manner. As the homomorphic operations in these schemes are performed component-wisely for encrypted message vectors, the rotation operations for various cyclic shifts of the encrypted message vector are required for useful advanced operations such as bootstrapping, matrix multiplication, and convolution in convolutional neural networks. Since the rotation operation requires different Galois keys for different cyclic shifts, the servers using the conventional BFV and CKKS schemes should ask the clients having their secret keys to generate and send all of the required Galois keys. In particular, in the advanced services that require rotation operations for many cyclic shifts such as deep convolutional neural networks, the total Galois key size can be hundreds of gigabytes. It imposes substantial burdens on the clients in the computation and communication cost aspects. In this paper, we propose a new concept of hierarchical Galois key generation method for homomorphic encryption to reduce the burdens
The PSGA, a lead-free CSP for high performance & high reliable packaging

The Polymer Stud Grid Array (PSGATM) is an innovative package and enters the market to fulfil the demands of the ongoing miniaturisation combined with cost reduction. This paper describes the processing of the PSGA substrate and the benefits of the PSGA for chip packaging. A full description of the qualification results for this new package technology is given. This qualification includes the determination of the thermal behaviour, the high frequency electrical characterisation and the first and second level reliability results. Both experimental testing as well as the use of simulation techniques result in an optimal design for this PSGA. The Polymer Stud Grid Array package The PSGA package consists of a polymer injection moulded body with a location for chip mounting (flip chip or wire bonding) and polymer studs for contacting to a PCB using standard SMT soldering techniques (Fig. 1). As the base for the PSGA, an optimised thermoplastic is used which is metal plated and structured using a high-speed laser.
Efficient Verification of the Wesolowski Verifiable Delay Function for Distributed Environments

Verifiable Delay Functions (VDFs) are a set of new cryptographic schemes ensuring that an agent has spent some time (evaluation phase) in a unparalleled computation. A key requirement for such a construction is that the verification of the computation’s correctness has to be done in a significantly shorter time than the evaluation phase. This has led VDFs to recently gain exposure in large-scale decentralized projects as a core component of consensus algorithms or spam-prevention mechanisms. In this work, due to the increasing relevance and the lack of literature, we will focus on the optimization of the verification phase of Wesolowski’s VDF and provide a three-axis of improvement concerning multi-exponentiation computation, prime testing techniques, and hashing tricks. We will show that our optimizations reduce the computation time of the verification phase between 12% and 35% for the range of parameters considered.
Property-Preserving Hash Functions and Combinatorial Group Testing

Property-preserving hash (PPH) function is a class of hash functions that allows an evaluation of the property of inputs from their hash values. Boyle et al. at ITCS 2019 recently introduced it and considered the robustness of PPH against an adversary who accesses the internal randomness of PPH, and proposed two robust PPH constructions for a weak form of Hamming distance predicate. The second construction received attention for its short hash value, although it relies on an ad-hoc security assumption. The first construction, which is entirely hash-based and based on the classical collision-resistance assumption, has been largely overlooked. We study their first construction and discover its close connection to a seemingly different field of hash/MAC-based (adversarial) error detection using the theory of Combinatorial Group Testing (CGT). We show some consequences of this discovery. In particular, we show that some existing proposals in the field of CGT-based error detection can be converted into a PPH for the Hamming distance property, and they immediately improve and generalize Boyle et al.’s hash-based PPH proposal. We also show that the idea of Boyle et al. is useful in the context of a variant of CGT problem.
Assessment of risks from occupational exposure to ionizing radiation

The assessment of health effects from occupational exposure to radiation presents a variety of problems resulting from the time dependent nature of the exposure data, the more favorable health frequently experienced by working populations, and limits imposed by the size of the populations and the magnitudes of the exposures received. A proportional hazards model is used to derive tests for determining if statistically significant effects are present and is also considered for point estimation. Because effects of the size expected from current estimates are unlikely to be detected in occupationally exposed groups, methods of calculating upper confidence limits are considered. Data from the Hanford plant are used to illustrate many of the problems and procedures.
Análisis prospectivo de los bioinsumos agrícolas en Colombia: una consulta a expertos Prospective analysis of agricultural bioinoculants in Colombia: an expert consultation

Productivity and sustainability of agriculture in Colombia can be influenced positively through the use of biodiversity for the production of bioinoculants. They were analyzed in the medium and long term, the future scenarios generated by the regulations involved in the technological advancement of bio-products through the application of a Delphi survey, with the participation of 23 experts in bio-products, taking into account the three dimensions sustainable development. Based on this study, it was found that 65% of the experts believe that the impact of innovation and technological development of the use of bio- products in agricultural production, has a high economic impact with a significant level of agreement (≥0.05). Additionally, 65% selected as the best scenario, in which conditions that promote greater development, access and application of bio-products, so that the rate of adoption of technology is increased by the producers to make. In conclusion, beyond the level of technological development is necessary to revise the legislative process for the marketing of bio-products, it was clear that the future success of the industry in the production of biological products depend on the management of innovative enterprises, efficient marketing thereof, education and transfer to producers and the progress of the investigation.
Agile into traditional organizations and hardware development

This master thesis presents a qualitative study conducted at Volvo Group Trucks Technology (GTT). GTT is a global leading automotive company, which is the second largest producer of trucks and transportation solutions within the commercial vehicle industry. This study has been done at Driver Electronics (DE) development department within Electrical & Electronics Engineering. The field of product development is growing more competitive because of an increasing speed of changing customer requirements and technologies. In order to stay competitive it is important to have a development process that can adjust to those changing requirements in an effective and efficient way. Consequently, Driver Electronics (DE) introduced the agile methodology about two years ago, which is a short iterative development process allowing high flexibility and fast feedback-loops. Almost no investigations regarding the new way of working have been done since agile was introduced at the department. A small investigation was made and found that the main unexplored area was working with agile in a small part of the company whilst the rest of the organization followed traditional development and waterfall model. The purpose of this thesis is to study what challenges emerge when agile is introduced in a traditional organization and how they can be managed. The study perspective is on processes at DE where the focus is on products that are inside the cabin of the truck and close to the end user. The products consist of both hardware and software components, which have significantly different development cycles. This created an interest to investigate in possibilities to work with agile in hardware development as well, which is the second purpose in this thesis. The research is a qualitative study, consisting of interviews at GTT and benchmarking studies at Saab Surveillance and Ericsson. Both the benchmarking companies have a similar organizational structure and products of both software and hardware, which provided a good comparison. As part of this study, two workshops were also conducted. An internal workshop was conducted with employees from GTT where the attendees had different perspectives and a second workshop with managers from Saab Surveillance, Ericsson and GTT. The result is presented as eight main challenges that emerge when agile is implemented in a traditional organization together with suggested solutions. One of the main things is to get supportive managers to get an agile distribution to other departments and get consisting teams in order to create self-organized teams. A main fact in an agile implementation is to understand the change management process, which is not negligible in this case either, for example a mindset change takes time. This thesis also presents several long-term recommendations as well as a specific “improvement tool”, which is used at Ericsson today.
Joint Oligopoly-Oligopsony Model with Wage Markdown Power

In imperfectly competitive markets, a producer-employer (cid:133)rm can be considered monopolist-monopsonist, facing downward sloping residual demand for product and upward sloping residual supply for labour. Firms can thereby exercise both product price markup and wage markdown powers. To study market outcomes in this setting, we de(cid:133)ne a Joint Oligopoly-Oligopsony Model (cid:150) an extended Cournot oligopoly model with imperfectly competitive labour market (cid:150)and investigate its welfare implications. We show that wage markdown power a⁄ects both (cid:133)rms(cid:146)input mix (cid:150) driving substitution of labour with non-labour variable inputs (cid:150) and the scales of inputs (including employment) and output. By introducing Worker Surplus into our welfare analysis, our model clari(cid:133)es the potentially e¢ ciency-enhancing function of labour union and minimum wage regulation, aimed at curbing oligopsony wage markdown power. Furthermore, we show that competition policy and minimum wage regulation are complements, not substitutes: a lax merger control, which permits consolidation of market structure, can weaken worker power by way of reducing e¢ cient minimum wage, as well as employment. Finally, we investigate the e⁄ects of (cid:147)superstar (cid:133)rms(cid:148)on market outcomes, allowing the superior e¢ ciency of superstar (cid:133)rms to be a common cause of market concentration and pricing power. Our theory explains the rise of average labour productivity, the fall of labour income share and wage stagnation at industry level. It also shows that the superstar (cid:133)rm phenomenon produces an ambiguous welfare e⁄ect once worker welfare is taken into consideration.
Hematogenesis Adaptation to Long-Term Hypoxia Acclimation in Zebraﬁsh ( Danio rerio )

: When ﬁsh live in the wild or are cultured artiﬁcially, they will inevitably suffer from hypoxia. At the same time, blood physiological indexes represent the physiological state of ﬁsh. In order to study the effect of long-term hypoxia acclimation on ﬁsh hematogenesis, we cultured zebraﬁsh embryos into adulthood in a hypoxia incubator (1.5 ± 0.2 mg/L). Then we compared the hematological parameters of zebraﬁsh cultured in normoxia and hypoxia conditions. Transcriptome sequencing analysis of the main hematopoietic tissue, the head kidney, was also compared between the two groups. Results showed that the number of erythrocytes increased signiﬁcantly in the long-term hypoxia acclimated group, while the size of several cell types, such as red blood cells, eosinophils, basophils, small lymphocytes and thrombocytes, decreased signiﬁcantly. The transcriptomic comparisons revealed that there were 6475 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two groups. A Gene Ontology (GO) annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis showed that hematopoiesis and cell proliferation signaling were the most signiﬁcantly enriched pathways in the head kidney of hypoxia acclimated zebraﬁsh. In addition, many genes involved in the hematopoietic process showed signiﬁcantly higher levels of expression in the hypoxia acclimated zebraﬁsh, when compared to the normoxia zebraﬁsh. When considered together, these data allowed us to conclude that long-term hypoxia can promote the hematopoiesis process and cell proliferation signaling in the zebraﬁsh head kidney, which resulted in higher red blood cell production. Higher numbers of red blood cells allow for better adaptation to the hypoxic environment. In conclusion, this study provides a basis for the in-depth understanding of the effects of hypoxia on hematogenesis in ﬁsh species.