OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
ResVR: Joint Rescaling and Viewport Rendering of Omnidirectional Images
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

With the advent of virtual reality technology, omnidirectional image (ODI) rescaling techniques are increasingly embraced for reducing transmitted and stored file sizes while preserving high image quality. Despite this progress, current ODI rescaling methods predominantly focus on enhancing the quality of images in equirectangular projection (ERP) format, which overlooks the fact that the content viewed on head mounted displays (HMDs) is actually a rendered viewport instead of an ERP image. In this work, we emphasize that focusing solely on ERP quality results in inferior viewport visual experiences for users. Thus, we propose ResVR, which is the first comprehensive framework for the joint Rescaling and Viewport Rendering of ODIs. ResVR allows obtaining LR ERP images for transmission while rendering high-quality viewports for users to watch on HMDs. In our ResVR, a novel discrete pixel sampling strategy is developed to tackle the complex mapping between the viewport and ERP, enabling end-to-end training of ResVR pipeline. Furthermore, a spherical pixel shape representation technique is innovatively derived from spherical differentiation to significantly improve the visual quality of rendered viewports. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our ResVR outperforms existing methods in viewport rendering tasks across different fields of view, resolutions, and view directions while keeping a low transmission overhead.
The Division Problem of Chances
Venue: arXiv cs.GT 2024
Year: 2024

In frequently repeated matching scenarios, individuals may require diversification in their choices. Therefore, when faced with a set of potential outcomes, each individual may have an ideal lottery over outcomes that represents their preferred option. This suggests that, as people seek variety, their favorite choice is not a particular outcome, but rather a lottery over them as their peak for their preferences. We explore matching problems in situations where agents' preferences are represented by ideal lotteries. Our focus lies in addressing the challenge of dividing chances in matching, where agents express their preferences over a set of objects through ideal lotteries that reflect their single-peaked preferences. We discuss properties such as strategy proofness, replacement monotonicity, (Pareto) efficiency, in-betweenness, non-bossiness, envy-freeness, and anonymity in the context of dividing chances, and propose a class of mechanisms called URC mechanisms that satisfy these properties. Subsequently, we prove that if a mechanism for dividing chances is strategy proof, (Pareto) efficient, replacement monotonic, in-between, non-bossy, and anonymous (or envy free), then it is equivalent in terms of welfare to a URC mechanism.
The Security Performance Analysis of Blockchain System Based on Post-Quantum Cryptography -- A Case Study of Cryptocurrency Exchanges
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

The current blockchain system for cryptocurrency exchanges primarily employs elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) for generating key pairs in wallets, and elliptic curve digital signature algorithms (ECDSA) for generating signatures in transactions. Consequently, with the maturation of quantum computing technology, the current blockchain system faces the risk of quantum computing attacks. Quantum computers may potentially counterfeit signatures produced by ECDSA. Therefore, this study analyzes the vulnerabilities of the current blockchain system to quantum computing attacks and proposes a post-quantum cryptography (PQC)-based blockchain system to enhance security by addressing and improving each identified weakness. Furthermore, this study proposes PQC-based wallets and PQC-based transactions, utilizing PQC digital signature algorithms to generate PQC-based signatures for the inputs in PQC-based transactions, thereby preventing signatures from being counterfeited by quantum computing. Experimental results demonstrate that the efficiency of the Dilithium algorithm, a PQC digital signature algorithm, in producing wallets, generating signatures, and verifying signatures surpasses that of ECDSA in the current blockchain system. Furthermore, the Dilithium algorithm also exhibits a higher security level.
Sugarcane Health Monitoring With Satellite Spectroscopy and Machine Learning: A Review
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Research into large-scale crop monitoring has flourished due to increased accessibility to satellite imagery. This review delves into previously unexplored and under-explored areas in sugarcane health monitoring and disease/pest detection using satellite-based spectroscopy and Machine Learning (ML). It discusses key considerations in system development, including relevant satellites, vegetation indices, ML methods, factors influencing sugarcane reflectance, optimal growth conditions, common diseases, and traditional detection methods. Many studies highlight how factors like crop age, soil type, viewing angle, water content, recent weather patterns, and sugarcane variety can impact spectral reflectance, affecting the accuracy of health assessments via spectroscopy. However, these variables have not been fully considered in the literature. In addition, the current literature lacks comprehensive comparisons between ML techniques and vegetation indices. We address these gaps in this review. We discuss that, while current findings suggest the potential for an ML-driven satellite spectroscopy system for monitoring sugarcane health, further research is essential. This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of previous research to aid in unlocking this potential and advancing the development of an effective sugarcane health monitoring system using satellite technology.
Smart Grids Secured By Dynamic Watermarking: How Secure?
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Unconditional security for smart grids is defined. Cryptanalyses of the watermarked security of smart grids indicate that watermarking cannot guarantee unconditional security unless the communication within the grid system is unconditionally secure. The successful attack against the dynamically watermarked smart grid remains valid even with the presence of internal noise from the grid. An open question arises: if unconditionally authenticated secure communications within the grid, together with tamper resistance of the critical elements, are satisfactory conditions to provide unconditional security for the grid operation.
Membership Information Leakage in Federated Contrastive Learning
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Federated Contrastive Learning (FCL) represents a burgeoning approach for learning from decentralized unlabeled data while upholding data privacy. In FCL, participant clients collaborate in learning a global encoder using unlabeled data, which can serve as a versatile feature extractor for diverse downstream tasks. Nonetheless, FCL is susceptible to privacy risks, such as membership information leakage, stemming from its distributed nature, an aspect often overlooked in current solutions. This study delves into the feasibility of executing a membership inference attack on FCL and proposes a robust attack methodology. The attacker's objective is to determine if the data signifies training member data by accessing the model's inference output. Specifically, we concentrate on attackers situated within a client framework, lacking the capability to manipulate server-side aggregation methods or discern the training status of other clients. We introduce two membership inference attacks tailored for FCL: the \textit{passive membership inference attack} and the \textit{active membership inference attack}, contingent on the attacker's involvement in local model training. Experimental findings across diverse datasets validate the effectiveness of our attacks and underscore the inherent privacy risks associated with the federated contrastive learning paradigm.
HookChain: A new perspective for Bypassing EDR Solutions
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

In the current digital security ecosystem, where threats evolve rapidly and with complexity, companies developing Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions are in constant search for innovations that not only keep up but also anticipate emerging attack vectors. In this context, this article introduces the HookChain, a look from another perspective at widely known techniques, which when combined, provide an additional layer of sophisticated evasion against traditional EDR systems. Through a precise combination of IAT Hooking techniques, dynamic SSN resolution, and indirect system calls, HookChain redirects the execution flow of Windows subsystems in a way that remains invisible to the vigilant eyes of EDRs that only act on Ntdll.dll, without requiring changes to the source code of the applications and malwares involved. This work not only challenges current conventions in cybersecurity but also sheds light on a promising path for future protection strategies, leveraging the understanding that continuous evolution is key to the effectiveness of digital security. By developing and exploring the HookChain technique, this study significantly contributes to the body of knowledge in endpoint security, stimulating the development of more robust and adaptive solutions that can effectively address the ever-changing dynamics of digital threats. This work aspires to inspire deep reflection and advancement in the research and development of security technologies that are always several steps ahead of adversaries.
Implementation of Entropically Secure Encryption: Securing Personal Health Data
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Entropically Secure Encryption (ESE) offers unconditional security with shorter keys compared to the One-Time Pad. In this paper, we present the first implementation of ESE for bulk encryption. The main computational bottleneck for bulk ESE is a multiplication in a very large finite field. This involves multiplication of polynomials followed by modular reduction. We have implemented polynomial multiplication based on the gf2x library, with some modifications that avoid inputs of vastly different length, thus improving speed. Additionally, we have implemented a recently proposed efficient reduction algorithm that works for any polynomial degree. We investigate two use cases: X-ray images of patients and human genome data. We conduct entropy estimation using compression methods whose results determine the key lengths required for ESE. We report running times for all steps of the encryption. We discuss the potential of ESE to be used in conjunction with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), in order to achieve full information-theoretic security of QKD-protected links for these use cases.
Mitigating Data Sharing in Public Cloud using Blockchain
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Public Cloud Computing has become a fundamental part of modern IT infrastructure as its adoption has transformed the way businesses operate. However, cloud security concerns introduce new risks and challenges related to data protection, sharing, and access control. A synergistic integration of blockchain with the cloud holds immense potential. Blockchain's distributed ledger ensures transparency, immutability, and efficiency as it reduces the reliance on centralized authorities. Motivated by this, our framework proposes a secure data ecosystem in the cloud with the key aspects being Data Rights, Data Sharing, and Data Validation. Also, this approach aims to increase its interoperability and scalability by eliminating the need for data migration. This will ensure that existing public cloud-based systems can easily deploy blockchain enhancing trustworthiness and non-repudiation of cloud data.
Anomaly Detection for Incident Response at Scale
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We present a machine learning-based anomaly detection product, AI Detect and Respond (AIDR), that monitors Walmart's business and system health in real-time. During the validation over 3 months, the product served predictions from over 3000 models to more than 25 application, platform, and operation teams, covering 63\% of major incidents and reducing the mean-time-to-detect (MTTD) by more than 7 minutes. Unlike previous anomaly detection methods, our solution leverages statistical, ML and deep learning models while continuing to incorporate rule-based static thresholds to incorporate domain-specific knowledge. Both univariate and multivariate ML models are deployed and maintained through distributed services for scalability and high availability. AIDR has a feedback loop that assesses model quality with a combination of drift detection algorithms and customer feedback. It also offers self-onboarding capabilities and customizability. AIDR has achieved success with various internal teams with lower time to detection and fewer false positives than previous methods. As we move forward, we aim to expand incident coverage and prevention, reduce noise, and integrate further with root cause recommendation (RCR) to enable an end-to-end AIDR experience.
Attacks on Third-Party APIs of Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

Large language model (LLM) services have recently begun offering a plugin ecosystem to interact with third-party API services. This innovation enhances the capabilities of LLMs, but it also introduces risks, as these plugins developed by various third parties cannot be easily trusted. This paper proposes a new attacking framework to examine security and safety vulnerabilities within LLM platforms that incorporate third-party services. Applying our framework specifically to widely used LLMs, we identify real-world malicious attacks across various domains on third-party APIs that can imperceptibly modify LLM outputs. The paper discusses the unique challenges posed by third-party API integration and offers strategic possibilities to improve the security and safety of LLM ecosystems moving forward. Our code is released at https://github.com/vk0812/Third-Party-Attacks-on-LLMs.
How to Parameterize Asymmetric Quantization Ranges for Quantization-Aware Training
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

This paper investigates three different parameterizations of asymmetric uniform quantization for quantization-aware training: (1) scale and offset, (2) minimum and maximum, and (3) beta and gamma. We perform a comprehensive comparative analysis of these parameterizations' influence on quantization-aware training, using both controlled experiments and real-world large language models. Our particular focus is on their changing behavior in response to critical training hyperparameters, bit width and learning rate. Based on our investigation, we propose best practices to stabilize and accelerate quantization-aware training with learnable asymmetric quantization ranges.
A Closer Look at Classification Evaluation Metrics and a Critical Reflection of Common Evaluation Practice
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Classification systems are evaluated in a countless number of papers. However, we find that evaluation practice is often nebulous. Frequently, metrics are selected without arguments, and blurry terminology invites misconceptions. For instance, many works use so-called 'macro' metrics to rank systems (e.g., 'macro F1') but do not clearly specify what they would expect from such a `macro' metric. This is problematic, since picking a metric can affect research findings, and thus any clarity in the process should be maximized. Starting from the intuitive concepts of bias and prevalence, we perform an analysis of common evaluation metrics. The analysis helps us understand the metrics' underlying properties, and how they align with expectations as found expressed in papers. Then we reflect on the practical situation in the field, and survey evaluation practice in recent shared tasks. We find that metric selection is often not supported with convincing arguments, an issue that can make a system ranking seem arbitrary. Our work aims at providing overview and guidance for more informed and transparent metric selection, fostering meaningful evaluation.
Examining the robustness of LLM evaluation to the distributional assumptions of benchmarks
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Benchmarks have emerged as the central approach for evaluating Large Language Models (LLMs). The research community often relies on a model's average performance across the test prompts of a benchmark to evaluate the model's performance. This is consistent with the assumption that the test prompts within a benchmark represent a random sample from a real-world distribution of interest. We note that this is generally not the case; instead, we hold that the distribution of interest varies according to the specific use case. We find that (1) the correlation in model performance across test prompts is non-random, (2) accounting for correlations across test prompts can change model rankings on major benchmarks, (3) explanatory factors for these correlations include semantic similarity and common LLM failure points.
CarbonCP: Carbon-Aware DNN Partitioning with Conformal Prediction for Sustainable Edge Intelligence
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2024
Year: 2024

This paper presents a solution to address carbon emission mitigation for end-to-end edge computing systems, including the computing at battery-powered edge devices and servers, as well as the communications between them. We design and implement, CarbonCP, a context-adaptive, carbon-aware, and uncertainty-aware AI inference framework built upon conformal prediction theory, which balances operational carbon emissions, end-to-end latency, and battery consumption of edge devices through DNN partitioning under varying system processing contexts and carbon intensity. Our experimental results demonstrate that CarbonCP is effective in substantially reducing operational carbon emissions, up to 58.8%, while maintaining key user-centric performance metrics with only 9.9% error rate.
Humans prefer interacting with slow, less realistic butterfly simulations
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

How should zoomorphic, or bio-inspired, robots indicate to humans that interactions will be safe and fun? Here, a survey is used to measure how human willingness to interact with a simulated butterfly robot is affected by different flight patterns. Flapping frequency, flap to glide ratio, and flapping pattern were independently varied based on a literature review of butterfly and moth flight. Human willingness to interact with these simulations and demographic information were self-reported via an online survey. Low flapping frequency and greater proportion of gliding were preferred, and prior experience with butterflies strongly predicted greater interaction willingness. The preferred flight parameters correspond to migrating butterfly flight patterns that are rarely directly observed by humans and do not correspond to the species that inspired the wing shape of the robot model. The most realistic butterfly simulations were among the least preferred. An analysis of animated butterflies in popular media revealed a convergence on slower, less realistic flight parameters. This iterative and interactive artistic process provides a model for determining human preferences and identifying functional requirements of robots for human interaction. Thus, the robotic design process can be streamlined by leveraging animated models and surveys prior to construction.
Two-Source and Affine Non-Malleable Extractors for Small Entropy
Venue: arXiv cs.CC 2024
Year: 2024

Non-malleable extractors are generalizations and strengthening of standard randomness extractors, that are resilient to adversarial tampering. Such extractors have wide applications in cryptography and explicit construction of extractors. In the well-studied models of two-source and affine non-malleable extractors, the previous best constructions only work for entropy rate $>2/3$ and $1-γ$ respectively by Li (FOCS' 23). We present explicit constructions of two-source and affine non-malleable extractors that match the state-of-the-art constructions of standard ones for small entropy. Our main results include two-source and affine non-malleable extractors (over $\mathsf{F}_2$) for sources on $n$ bits with min-entropy $k \ge \log^C n$ and polynomially small error, matching the parameters of standard extractors by Chattopadhyay and Zuckerman (STOC' 16, Annals of Mathematics' 19) and Li (FOCS' 16), as well as those with min-entropy $k = O(\log n)$ and constant error, matching the parameters of standard extractors by Li (FOCS' 23). Our constructions significantly improve previous results, and the parameters (entropy requirement and error) are the best possible without first improving the constructions of standard extractors. In addition, our improved affine non-malleable extractors give strong lower bounds for a certain kind of read-once linear branching programs, recently introduced by Gryaznov, Pudlák, and Talebanfard (CCC' 22) as a generalization of several well-studied computational models. These bounds match the previously best-known average-case hardness results given by Chattopadhyay and Liao (CCC' 23) and Li (FOCS' 23), where the branching program size lower bounds are close to optimal, but the explicit functions we use here are different.\ Our results also suggest a possible deeper connection between non-malleable extractors and standard ones.
Motor Focus: Fast Ego-Motion Prediction for Assistive Visual Navigation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Assistive visual navigation systems for visually impaired individuals have become increasingly popular thanks to the rise of mobile computing. Most of these devices work by translating visual information into voice commands. In complex scenarios where multiple objects are present, it is imperative to prioritize object detection and provide immediate notifications for key entities in specific directions. This brings the need for identifying the observer's motion direction (ego-motion) by merely processing visual information, which is the key contribution of this paper. Specifically, we introduce Motor Focus, a lightweight image-based framework that predicts the ego-motion - the humans (and humanoid machines) movement intentions based on their visual feeds, while filtering out camera motion without any camera calibration. To this end, we implement an optical flow-based pixel-wise temporal analysis method to compensate for the camera motion with a Gaussian aggregation to smooth out the movement prediction area. Subsequently, to evaluate the performance, we collect a dataset including 50 clips of pedestrian scenes in 5 different scenarios. We tested this framework with classical feature detectors such as SIFT and ORB to show the comparison. Our framework demonstrates its superiority in speed (> 40FPS), accuracy (MAE = 60pixels), and robustness (SNR = 23dB), confirming its potential to enhance the usability of vision-based assistive navigation tools in complex environments.