OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Ermittlung von Verwundbarkeiten mit elektronischen Koedern
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2004
Year: 2004

Electronic bait (honeypots) are network resources whose value consists of being attacked and compromised. These are often computers which do not have a task in the network, but are otherwise indestinguishable from regular computers. Such bait systems could be interconnected (honeynets). These honeynets are equipped with special software, facilitating forensic anylisis of incidents. Taking average of the wide variety of recorded data it is possible to learn considerable more about the behaviour of attackers in networks than with traditional methods. This article is an introduction into electronic bait and a description of the setup and first experiences of such a network deployed at RWTH Aachen University. ----- Als elektronische Koeder (honeypots) bezeichnet man Netzwerkressourcen, deren Wert darin besteht, angegriffen und kompromittiert zu werden. Oft sind dies Computer, die keine spezielle Aufgabe im Netzwerk haben, aber ansonsten nicht von regulaeren Rechnern zu unterscheiden sind. Koeder koennen zu Koeder-Netzwerken (honeynets) zusammengeschlossen werden. Sie sind mit spezieller Software ausgestattet, die die Forensik einer eingetretenen Schutzzielverletzung erleichtert. Durch die Vielfalt an mitgeschnittenen Daten kann man deutlich mehr ueber das Verhalten von Angreifern in Netzwerken lernen als mit herkoemmlichen forensischen Methoden. Dieser Beitrag stellt die Philosophie der Koeder-Netzwerke vor und beschreibt die ersten Erfahrungen, die mit einem solchen Netzwerk an der RWTH Aachen gemacht wurden.
A Low Cost Distributed Computing Approach to Pulsar Searches at a Small College
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2004
Year: 2004

We describe a distributed processing cluster of inexpensive Linux machines developed jointly by the Astronomy and Computer Science departments at Haverford College which has been successfully used to search a large volume of data from a recent radio pulsar survey. Analysis of radio pulsar surveys requires significant computational resources to handle the demanding data storage and processing needs. One goal of this project was to explore issues encountered when processing a large amount of pulsar survey data with limited computational resources. This cluster, which was developed and activated in only a few weeks by supervised undergraduate summer research students, used existing decommissioned computers, the campus network, and a script-based, client-oriented, self-scheduled data distribution approach to process the data. This setup provided simplicity, efficiency, and "on-the-fly" scalability at low cost. The entire 570 GB data set from the pulsar survey was processed at Haverford over the course of a ten-week summer period using this cluster. We conclude that this cluster can serve as a useful computational model in cases where data processing must be carried out on a limited budget. We have also constructed a DVD archive of the raw survey data in order to investigate the feasibility of using DVD as an inexpensive and easily accessible raw data storage format for pulsar surveys. DVD-based storage has not been widely explored in the pulsar community, but it has several advantages. The DVD archive we have constructed is reliable, portable, inexpensive, and can be easily read by any standard modern machine.
An agent framework for dynamic agent retraining: Agent academy
Venue: arXiv cs.MA 2004
Year: 2004

Agent Academy (AA) aims to develop a multi-agent society that can train new agents for specific or general tasks, while constantly retraining existing agents in a recursive mode. The system is based on collecting information both from the environment and the behaviors of the acting agents and their related successes/failures to generate a body of data, stored in the Agent Use Repository, which is mined by the Data Miner module, in order to generate useful knowledge about the application domain. Knowledge extracted by the Data Miner is used by the Agent Training Module as to train new agents or to enhance the behavior of agents already running. In this paper the Agent Academy framework is introduced, and its overall architecture and functionality are presented. Training issues as well as agent ontologies are discussed. Finally, a scenario, which aims to provide environmental alerts to both individuals and public authorities, is described an AA-based use case.
The First-Order Theory of Sets with Cardinality Constraints is Decidable
Venue: arXiv cs.LO 2004
Year: 2004

We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is undecidable. Our language allows relating the cardinalities of sets to the values of integer variables, and can distinguish finite and infinite sets. We use quantifier elimination to show the decidability and obtain an elementary upper bound on the complexity. Precise program analyses can use our decidability result to verify representation invariants of data structures that use an integer field to represent the number of stored elements.
Technological networks and the spread of computer viruses
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2004
Year: 2004

Computer infections such as viruses and worms spread over networks of contacts between computers, with different types of networks being exploited by different types of infections. Here we analyze the structures of several of these networks, exploring their implications for modes of spread and the control of infection. We argue that vaccination strategies that focus on a limited number of network nodes, whether targeted or randomly chosen, are in many cases unlikely to be effective. An alternative dynamic mechanism for the control of contagion, called throttling, is introduced and argued to be effective under a range of conditions.
Modeling and Validating Hybrid Systems Using VDM and Mathematica
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2004
Year: 2004

Hybrid systems are characterized by the hybrid evolution of their state: A part of the state changes discretely, the other part changes continuously over time. Typically, modern control applications belong to this class of systems, where a digital controller interacts with a physical environment. In this article we illustrate how a combination of the formal method VDM and the computer algebra system Mathematica can be used to model and simulate both aspects: the control logic and the physics involved. A new Mathematica package emulating VDM-SL has been developed that allows the integration of differential equation systems into formal specifications. The SAFER example from Kelly (1997) serves to demonstrate the new simulation capabilities Mathematica adds: After the thruster selection process, the astronaut's actual position and velocity is calculated by numerically solving Euler's and Newton's equations for rotation and translation. Furthermore, interactive validation is supported by a graphical user interface and data animation.
On the hardness of distinguishing mixed-state quantum computations
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2004
Year: 2004

This paper considers the following problem. Two mixed-state quantum circuits Q and R are given, and the goal is to determine which of two possibilities holds: (i) Q and R act nearly identically on all possible quantum state inputs, or (ii) there exists some input state that Q and R transform into almost perfectly distinguishable outputs. This problem may be viewed as an abstraction of the following problem: given two physical processes described by sequences of local interactions, are the processes effectively the same or are they different? We prove that this problem is a complete promise problem for the class QIP of problems having quantum interactive proof systems, and is therefore PSPACE-hard. This is in sharp contrast to the fact that the analogous problem for classical (probabilistic) circuits is in AM, and for unitary quantum circuits is in QMA.
Word Sense Disambiguation by Web Mining for Word Co-occurrence Probabilities
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2004
Year: 2004

This paper describes the National Research Council (NRC) Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) system, as applied to the English Lexical Sample (ELS) task in Senseval-3. The NRC system approaches WSD as a classical supervised machine learning problem, using familiar tools such as the Weka machine learning software and Brill's rule-based part-of-speech tagger. Head words are represented as feature vectors with several hundred features. Approximately half of the features are syntactic and the other half are semantic. The main novelty in the system is the method for generating the semantic features, based on word \hbox{co-occurrence} probabilities. The probabilities are estimated using the Waterloo MultiText System with a corpus of about one terabyte of unlabeled text, collected by a web crawler.
Hypermedia Learning Objects System - On the Way to a Semantic Educational Web
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2004
Year: 2004

While eLearning systems become more and more popular in daily education, available applications lack opportunities to structure, annotate and manage their contents in a high-level fashion. General efforts to improve these deficits are taken by initiatives to define rich meta data sets and a semanticWeb layer. In the present paper we introduce Hylos, an online learning system. Hylos is based on a cellular eLearning Object (ELO) information model encapsulating meta data conforming to the LOM standard. Content management is provisioned on this semantic meta data level and allows for variable, dynamically adaptable access structures. Context aware multifunctional links permit a systematic navigation depending on the learners and didactic needs, thereby exploring the capabilities of the semantic web. Hylos is built upon the more general Multimedia Information Repository (MIR) and the MIR adaptive context linking environment (MIRaCLE), its linking extension. MIR is an open system supporting the standards XML, Corba and JNDI. Hylos benefits from manageable information structures, sophisticated access logic and high-level authoring tools like the ELO editor responsible for the semi-manual creation of meta data and WYSIWYG like content editing.
On Global Warming (Softening Global Constraints)
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2004
Year: 2004

We describe soft versions of the global cardinality constraint and the regular constraint, with efficient filtering algorithms maintaining domain consistency. For both constraints, the softening is achieved by augmenting the underlying graph. The softened constraints can be used to extend the meta-constraint framework for over-constrained problems proposed by Petit, Regin and Bessiere.
There Goes the Neighborhood: Relational Algebra for Spatial Data Search
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2004
Year: 2004

We explored ways of doing spatial search within a relational database: (1) hierarchical triangular mesh (a tessellation of the sphere), (2) a zoned bucketing system, and (3) representing areas as disjunctive-normal form constraints. Each of these approaches has merits. They all allow efficient point-in-region queries. A relational representation for regions allows Boolean operations among them and allows quick tests for point-in-region, regions-containing-point, and region-overlap. The speed of these algorithms is much improved by a zone and multi-scale zone-pyramid scheme. The approach has the virtue that the zone mechanism works well on B-Trees native to all SQL systems and integrates naturally with current query optimizers - rather than requiring a new spatial access method and concomitant query optimizer extensions. Over the last 5 years, we have used these techniques extensively in our work on SkyServer.sdss.org, and SkyQuery.net.
Hash sort: A linear time complexity multiple-dimensional sort algorithm
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2004
Year: 2004

Sorting and hashing are two completely different concepts in computer science, and appear mutually exclusive to one another. Hashing is a search method using the data as a key to map to the location within memory, and is used for rapid storage and retrieval. Sorting is a process of organizing data from a random permutation into an ordered arrangement, and is a common activity performed frequently in a variety of applications. Almost all conventional sorting algorithms work by comparison, and in doing so have a linearithmic greatest lower bound on the algorithmic time complexity. Any improvement in the theoretical time complexity of a sorting algorithm can result in overall larger gains in implementation performance.. A gain in algorithmic performance leads to much larger gains in speed for the application that uses the sort algorithm. Such a sort algorithm needs to use an alternative method for ordering the data than comparison, to exceed the linearithmic time complexity boundary on algorithmic performance. The hash sort is a general purpose non-comparison based sorting algorithm by hashing, which has some interesting features not found in conventional sorting algorithms. The hash sort asymptotically outperforms the fastest traditional sorting algorithm, the quick sort. The hash sort algorithm has a linear time complexity factor -- even in the worst case. The hash sort opens an area for further work and investigation into alternative means of sorting.
On computing the fixpoint of a set of boolean equations
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2004
Year: 2004

This paper presents a method for computing a least fixpoint of a system of equations over booleans. The resulting computation can be significantly shorter than the result of iteratively evaluating the entire system until a fixpoint is reached.
Authenticated tree parity machine key exchange
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2004
Year: 2004

The synchronisation of Tree Parity Machines (TPMs), has proven to provide a valuable alternative concept for secure symmetric key exchange. Yet, from a cryptographer's point of view, authentication is at least as important as a secure exchange of keys. Adding an authentication via hashing e.g. is straightforward but with no relation to Neural Cryptography. We consequently formulate an authenticated key exchange within this concept. Another alternative, integrating a Zero-Knowledge protocol into the synchronisation, is also presented. A Man-In-The-Middle attack and even all currently known attacks, that are based on using identically structured TPMs and synchronisation as well, can so be averted. This in turn has practical consequences on using the trajectory in weight space. Both suggestions have the advantage of not affecting the previously observed physics of this interacting system at all.
Journal of New Democratic Methods: An Introduction
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2004
Year: 2004

This paper describes a new breed of academic journals that use statistical machine learning techniques to make them more democratic. In particular, not only can anyone submit an article, but anyone can also become a reviewer. Machine learning is used to decide which reviewers accurately represent the views of the journal's readers and thus deserve to have their opinions carry more weight. The paper concentrates on describing a specific experimental prototype of a democratic journal called the Journal of New Democratic Methods (JNDM). The paper also mentions the wider implications that machine learning and the techniques used in the JNDM may have for representative democracy in general.
Invariant Stochastic Encoders
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2004
Year: 2004

The theory of stochastic vector quantisers (SVQ) has been extended to allow the quantiser to develop invariances, so that only "large" degrees of freedom in the input vector are represented in the code. This has been applied to the problem of encoding data vectors which are a superposition of a "large" jammer and a "small" signal, so that only the jammer is represented in the code. This allows the jammer to be subtracted from the total input vector (i.e. the jammer is nulled), leaving a residual that contains only the underlying signal. The main advantage of this approach to jammer nulling is that little prior knowledge of the jammer is assumed, because these properties are automatically discovered by the SVQ as it is trained on examples of input vectors.
Scalable XSLT Evaluation
Venue: arXiv cs.DB 2004
Year: 2004

XSLT is an increasingly popular language for processing XML data. It is widely supported by application platform software. However, little optimization effort has been made inside the current XSLT processing engines. Evaluating a very simple XSLT program on a large XML document with a simple schema may result in extensive usage of memory. In this paper, we present a novel notion of \emph{Streaming Processing Model} (\emph{SPM}) to evaluate a subset of XSLT programs on XML documents, especially large ones. With SPM, an XSLT processor can transform an XML source document to other formats without extra memory buffers required. Therefore, our approach can not only tackle large source documents, but also produce large results. We demonstrate with a performance study the advantages of the SPM approach. Experimental results clearly confirm that SPM improves XSLT evaluation typically 2 to 10 times better than the existing approaches. Moreover, the SPM approach also features high scalability.
Proofing Tools Technology at Neurosoft S.A.
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2004
Year: 2004

The aim of this paper is to present the R&D activities carried out at Neurosoft S.A. regarding the development of proofing tools for Modern Greek. Firstly, we focus on infrastructure issues that we faced during our initial steps. Subsequently, we describe the most important insights of three proofing tools developed by Neurosoft, i.e. the spelling checker, the hyphenator and the thesaurus, outlining their efficiencies and inefficiencies. Finally, we discuss some improvement ideas and give our future directions.
Source Coding With Distortion Side Information At The Encoder
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2004
Year: 2004

We consider lossy source coding when side information affecting the distortion measure may be available at the encoder, decoder, both, or neither. For example, such distortion side information can model reliabilities for noisy measurements, sensor calibration information, or perceptual effects like masking and sensitivity to context. When the distortion side information is statistically independent of the source, we show that in many cases (e.g, for additive or multiplicative distortion side information) there is no penalty for knowing the side information only at the encoder, and there is no advantage to knowing it at the decoder. Furthermore, for quadratic distortion measures scaled by the distortion side information, we evaluate the penalty for lack of encoder knowledge and show that it can be arbitrarily large. In this scenario, we also sketch transform based quantizers constructions which efficiently exploit encoder side information in the high-resolution limit.
The Password Change Phase is Still Insecure
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2004
Year: 2004

In 2004, W. C. Ku and S. M. Chen proposed an efficient remote user authentication scheme using smart cards to solve the security problems of Chien et al.'s scheme. Recently, Hsu and Yoon et al. pointed out the security weaknesses of the Ku and Chen's scheme Furthermore, Yoon et al. also proposed a new efficient remote user authentication scheme using smart cards. Yoon et al. also modified the password change phase of Ku and Chen's scheme. This paper analyzes that password change phase of Yoon et al's modified scheme is still insecure.
Maple+GrTensorII libraries for cosmology
Venue: arXiv cs.SC 2004
Year: 2004

The article mainly presents some results in using MAPLE platform for computer algebra and GrTensorII package in doing calculations for theoretical and numerical cosmology
The Generalized Pignistic Transformation
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2004
Year: 2004

This paper presents in detail the generalized pignistic transformation (GPT) succinctly developed in the Dezert-Smarandache Theory (DSmT) framework as a tool for decision process. The GPT allows to provide a subjective probability measure from any generalized basic belief assignment given by any corpus of evidence. We mainly focus our presentation on the 3D case and provide the complete result obtained by the GPT and its validation drawn from the probability theory.
A Model for Fine-Grained Alignment of Multilingual Texts
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2004
Year: 2004

While alignment of texts on the sentential level is often seen as being too coarse, and word alignment as being too fine-grained, bi- or multilingual texts which are aligned on a level in-between are a useful resource for many purposes. Starting from a number of examples of non-literal translations, which tend to make alignment difficult, we describe an alignment model which copes with these cases by explicitly coding them. The model is based on predicate-argument structures and thus covers the middle ground between sentence and word alignment. The model is currently used in a recently initiated project of a parallel English-German treebank (FuSe), which can in principle be extended with additional languages.
CrocoPat 2.1 Introduction and Reference Manual
Venue: arXiv cs.PL 2004
Year: 2004

CrocoPat is an efficient, powerful and easy-to-use tool for manipulating relations of arbitrary arity, including directed graphs. This manual provides an introduction to and a reference for CrocoPat and its programming language RML. It includes several application examples, in particular from the analysis of structural models of software systems.
Field Geology with a Wearable Computer: First Results of the Cyborg Astrobiologist System
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2004
Year: 2004

We present results from the first geological field tests of the `Cyborg Astrobiologist', which is a wearable computer and video camcorder system that we are using to test and train a computer-vision system towards having some of the autonomous decision-making capabilities of a field-geologist. The Cyborg Astrobiologist platform has thus far been used for testing and development of these algorithms and systems: robotic acquisition of quasi-mosaics of images, real-time image segmentation, and real-time determination of interesting points in the image mosaics. The hardware and software systems function reliably, and the computer-vision algorithms are adequate for the first field tests. In addition to the proof-of-concept aspect of these field tests, the main result of these field tests is the enumeration of those issues that we can improve in the future, including: dealing with structural shadow and microtexture, and also, controlling the camera's zoom lens in an intelligent manner. Nonetheless, despite these and other technical inadequacies, this Cyborg Astrobiologist system, consisting of a camera-equipped wearable-computer and its computer-vision algorithms, has demonstrated its ability of finding genuinely interesting points in real-time in the geological scenery, and then gathering more information about these interest points in an automated manner.