OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
HEAP: Reliable Assessment of BGP Hijacking Attacks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2016
Year: 2016

The detection of BGP prefix hijacking attacks has been the focus of research for more than a decade. However, state-of-the-art techniques fall short of detecting more elaborate types of attack. To study such attacks, we devise a novel formalization of Internet routing, and apply this model to routing anomalies in order to establish a comprehensive attacker model. We use this model to precisely classify attacks and to evaluate their impact and detectability. We analyze the eligibility of attack tactics that suit an attacker's goals and demonstrate that related work mostly focuses on less impactful kinds of attacks. We further propose, implement and test the Hijacking Event Analysis Program (HEAP), a new approach to investigate hijacking alarms. Our approachis designed to seamlessly integrate with previous work in order to reduce the high rates of false alarms inherent to these techniques. We leverage several unique data sources that can reliably disprove malicious intent. First, we make use of an Internet Routing Registry to derive business or organisational relationships between the parties involved in an event. Second, we use a topology-based reasoning algorithm to rule out events caused by legitimate operational practice. Finally, we use Internet-wide network scans to identify SSL/TLS-enabled hosts, which helps to identify non-malicious events by comparing public keys prior to and during an event. In our evaluation, we prove the effectiveness of our approach, and show that day-to-day routing anomalies are harmless for the most part. More importantly, we use HEAP to assess the validity of publicly reported alarms. We invite researchers to interface with HEAP in order to cross-check and narrow down their hijacking alerts.
Combining Gradient Boosting Machines with Collective Inference to Predict Continuous Values
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2016
Year: 2016

Gradient boosting of regression trees is a competitive procedure for learning predictive models of continuous data that fits the data with an additive non-parametric model. The classic version of gradient boosting assumes that the data is independent and identically distributed. However, relational data with interdependent, linked instances is now common and the dependencies in such data can be exploited to improve predictive performance. Collective inference is one approach to exploit relational correlation patterns and significantly reduce classification error. However, much of the work on collective learning and inference has focused on discrete prediction tasks rather than continuous. %target values has not got that attention in terms of collective inference. In this work, we investigate how to combine these two paradigms together to improve regression in relational domains. Specifically, we propose a boosting algorithm for learning a collective inference model that predicts a continuous target variable. In the algorithm, we learn a basic relational model, collectively infer the target values, and then iteratively learn relational models to predict the residuals. We evaluate our proposed algorithm on a real network dataset and show that it outperforms alternative boosting methods. However, our investigation also revealed that the relational features interact together to produce better predictions.
Less-forgetting Learning in Deep Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2016
Year: 2016

A catastrophic forgetting problem makes deep neural networks forget the previously learned information, when learning data collected in new environments, such as by different sensors or in different light conditions. This paper presents a new method for alleviating the catastrophic forgetting problem. Unlike previous research, our method does not use any information from the source domain. Surprisingly, our method is very effective to forget less of the information in the source domain, and we show the effectiveness of our method using several experiments. Furthermore, we observed that the forgetting problem occurs between mini-batches when performing general training processes using stochastic gradient descent methods, and this problem is one of the factors that degrades generalization performance of the network. We also try to solve this problem using the proposed method. Finally, we show our less-forgetting learning method is also helpful to improve the performance of deep neural networks in terms of recognition rates.
LSTM-based Encoder-Decoder for Multi-sensor Anomaly Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2016
Year: 2016

Mechanical devices such as engines, vehicles, aircrafts, etc., are typically instrumented with numerous sensors to capture the behavior and health of the machine. However, there are often external factors or variables which are not captured by sensors leading to time-series which are inherently unpredictable. For instance, manual controls and/or unmonitored environmental conditions or load may lead to inherently unpredictable time-series. Detecting anomalies in such scenarios becomes challenging using standard approaches based on mathematical models that rely on stationarity, or prediction models that utilize prediction errors to detect anomalies. We propose a Long Short Term Memory Networks based Encoder-Decoder scheme for Anomaly Detection (EncDec-AD) that learns to reconstruct 'normal' time-series behavior, and thereafter uses reconstruction error to detect anomalies. We experiment with three publicly available quasi predictable time-series datasets: power demand, space shuttle, and ECG, and two real-world engine datasets with both predictive and unpredictable behavior. We show that EncDec-AD is robust and can detect anomalies from predictable, unpredictable, periodic, aperiodic, and quasi-periodic time-series. Further, we show that EncDec-AD is able to detect anomalies from short time-series (length as small as 30) as well as long time-series (length as large as 500).
Millimeter-Wave Human Blockage at 73 GHz with a Simple Double Knife-Edge Diffraction Model and Extension for Directional Antennas
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

This paper presents 73 GHz human blockage measurements for a point-to-point link with a 5 m transmitter-receiver separation distance in an indoor environment, with a human that walked at a speed of approximately 1 m/s at a perpendicular orientation to the line between the transmitter and receiver, at various distances between them. The experiment measures the shadowing effect of a moving human body when using directional antennas at the transmitter and receiver for millimeter-wave radio communications. The measurements were conducted using a 500 Megachips-per-second wideband correlator channel sounder with a 1 GHz first null-to-null RF bandwidth. Results indicate high shadowing attenuation is not just due to the human blocker but also is due to the static directional nature of the antennas used, leading to the need for phased-array antennas to switch beam directions in the presence of obstructions and blockages at millimeter-waves. A simple model for human blockage is provided based on the double knife-edge diffraction (DKED) model where humans are approximated by a rectangular screen with infinite vertical height, similar to the human blockage model given by the METIS project.
Distributed Nonconvex Multiagent Optimization Over Time-Varying Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2016
Year: 2016

We study nonconvex distributed optimization in multiagent networks where the communications between nodes is modeled as a time-varying sequence of arbitrary digraphs. We introduce a novel broadcast-based distributed algorithmic framework for the (constrained) minimization of the sum of a smooth (possibly nonconvex and nonseparable) function, i.e., the agents' sum-utility, plus a convex (possibly nonsmooth and nonseparable) regularizer. The latter is usually employed to enforce some structure in the solution, typically sparsity. The proposed method hinges on Successive Convex Approximation (SCA) techniques coupled with i) a tracking mechanism instrumental to locally estimate the gradients of agents' cost functions; and ii) a novel broadcast protocol to disseminate information and distribute the computation among the agents. Asymptotic convergence to stationary solutions is established. A key feature of the proposed algorithm is that it neither requires the double-stochasticity of the consensus matrices (but only column stochasticity) nor the knowledge of the graph sequence to implement. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed framework is the first broadcast-based distributed algorithm for convex and nonconvex constrained optimization over arbitrary, time-varying digraphs. Numerical results show that our algorithm outperforms current schemes on both convex and nonconvex problems.
Continuous Adaptation of Multi-Camera Person Identification Models through Sparse Non-redundant Representative Selection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2016
Year: 2016

The problem of image-base person identification/recognition is to provide an identity to the image of an individual based on learned models that describe his/her appearance. Most traditional person identification systems rely on learning a static model on tediously labeled training data. Though labeling manually is an indispensable part of a supervised framework, for a large scale identification system labeling huge amount of data is a significant overhead. For large multi-sensor data as typically encountered in camera networks, labeling a lot of samples does not always mean more information, as redundant images are labeled several times. In this work, we propose a convex optimization based iterative framework that progressively and judiciously chooses a sparse but informative set of samples for labeling, with minimal overlap with previously labeled images. We also use a structure preserving sparse reconstruction based classifier to reduce the training burden typically seen in discriminative classifiers. The two stage approach leads to a novel framework for online update of the classifiers involving only the incorporation of new labeled data rather than any expensive training phase. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on multi-camera person re-identification datasets, to demonstrate the feasibility of learning online classification models in multi-camera big data applications. Using three benchmark datasets, we validate our approach and demonstrate that our framework achieves superior performance with significantly less amount of manual labeling.
Adaptive Neighborhood Graph Construction for Inference in Multi-Relational Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2016
Year: 2016

A neighborhood graph, which represents the instances as vertices and their relations as weighted edges, is the basis of many semi-supervised and relational models for node labeling and link prediction. Most methods employ a sequential process to construct the neighborhood graph. This process often consists of generating a candidate graph, pruning the candidate graph to make a neighborhood graph, and then performing inference on the variables (i.e., nodes) in the neighborhood graph. In this paper, we propose a framework that can dynamically adapt the neighborhood graph based on the states of variables from intermediate inference results, as well as structural properties of the relations connecting them. A key strength of our framework is its ability to handle multi-relational data and employ varying amounts of relations for each instance based on the intermediate inference results. We formulate the link prediction task as inference on neighborhood graphs, and include preliminary results illustrating the effects of different strategies in our proposed framework.
Adaptive Learning a Hidden Hypergraph
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

Learning a hidden hypergraph is a natural generalization of the classical group testing problem that consists in detecting unknown hypergraph $H_{un}=H(V,E)$ by carrying out edge-detecting tests. In the given paper we focus our attention only on a specific family $\mathcal{F}(t,s,\ell)$ of localized hypergraphs for which the total number of vertices $|V| = t$, the number of edges $|E|\le s$, $s\ll t$, and the cardinality of any edge $|e|\le\ell$, $\ell\ll t$. Our goal is to identify all edges of $H_{un}\in \mathcal{F}(t,s,\ell)$ by using the minimal number of tests. We provide an adaptive algorithm that matches the information theory bound, i.e., the total number of tests of the algorithm in the worst case is at most $s\ell\log_2 t(1+o(1))$.
Harnessing Self-Interference in Full-Duplex Relaying: An Analog Filter-and-Forward Approach
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

This paper studies a full-duplex filter-and-forward (FD-FF) relay system in frequency-selective channels. Conventionally, the loop-back signal at the FD relay is treated as harmful self-interference and needs to be significantly suppressed via both analog- and digital-domain cancellation. However, the performance of the conventional self-interference cancellation approach is fundamentally limited due to the quantization error induced by the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with limited dynamic range. In this paper, we consider an analog filter-and-forward design to help avoid the quantization error, and surprisingly show that the maximum achievable rate of such an FD-FF relay system is in fact regardless of the loop-back channel at the FD relay. We characterize the maximum achievable rate of this channel by jointly optimizing the transmit power allocation over frequency at the source and the frequency response of the filter at the relay, subject to their individual power constraints. Although this problem is non-convex, we obtain its optimal solution by applying the Lagrange duality method. By simulations it is shown that the proposed joint source and relay optimization achieves rate gains over other heuristic designs, and is also advantageous over the conventional approach by cancelling the relay loop-back signal as self-interference, especially when the residual self-interference after cancellation is still significant.
Badge System Analysis and Design
Venue: arXiv cs.SI 2016
Year: 2016

To incentivize users' participations and steer their online activities, online social networks start to provide users with various kinds of rewards for their contributions to the sites. The most frequently distributed rewards include account levels, reputation scores, different kinds of badges, and even material awards like small gifts and cash back, etc. Attracted by these rewards, users will spend more time using the network services. In this paper, we will mainly focus on "badges reward systems" but the proposed models can be applied to other reward systems as well. Badges are small icons attached to users' homepages and profiles denoting their achievements. People like to accumulate badge for various reasons and different badges can have specific values for them. Meanwhile, to get badges, they also need to exert efforts to finish the required tasks, which can lead to certain costs. To understand and model users' motivations in badge achievement activities, we will study an existing badge system launched inside a real-world online social network, Foursquare, in this paper. At the same time, to maximize users' contributions to online social networks, social network system designers need to determine the optimal badge system mechanism carefully. Badge system mechanism describes various detailed aspects of the system and can involve many parameters, e.g., categories of existing badges, number of badges available as well as the minimum contributions required to obtain the badges, which all need to be designed with meticulous investigations. Based on the model of users' badges accumulating activities, in this paper, we will also study how to design the badge system that can incentivize the maximum users' contributions to the social networks.
Information-Theoretic Lower Bounds on Bayes Risk in Decentralized Estimation
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

We derive lower bounds on the Bayes risk in decentralized estimation, where the estimator does not have direct access to the random samples generated conditionally on the random parameter of interest, but only to the data received from local processors that observe the samples. The received data are subject to communication constraints, due to quantization and the noise in the communication channels from the processors to the estimator. We first derive general lower bounds on the Bayes risk using information-theoretic quantities, such as mutual information, information density, small ball probability, and differential entropy. We then apply these lower bounds to the decentralized case, using strong data processing inequalities to quantify the contraction of information due to communication constraints. We treat the cases of a single processor and of multiple processors, where the samples observed by different processors may be conditionally dependent given the parameter, for noninteractive and interactive communication protocols. Our results recover and improve recent lower bounds on the Bayes risk and the minimax risk for certain decentralized estimation problems, where previously only conditionally independent sample sets and noiseless channels have been considered. Moreover, our results provide a general way to quantify the degradation of estimation performance caused by distributing resources to multiple processors, which is only discussed for specific examples in existing works.
A Bayesian Network Model of the Bit Error Rate for Cognitive Radio Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

In addition to serve as platforms for dynamic spectrum access, cognitive radios can also serve as a method for improving the performance of wireless communication systems by smartly adjusting their operating parameters according to the environment and requirements. The uncertainty always present in the environment makes the practical implementation of the latter application difficult. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic graphical model, Bayesian network that captures the causal relationships among the variables bit energy to noise spectral density ratio (EbN0), carrier to interference ratio (C/I), modulation scheme (MOD), Doppler phase shift (Dop_Phi), and bit error rate (BER). BER indicates how the communication link is performing. The goal of our proposed Bayesian network is to use the BER as evidence in order to infer the behavior of the other variables, so the cognitive radio can learn how the conditions of the environment are, and based on that knowledge make better informed decisions. This model along with the method used to build it are described in this paper.
On the Performance of DCSK MIMO Relay Cooperative Diversity in Nakagami-m and Generalized Gaussian Noise Scenarios
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2016
Year: 2016

Chaotic Communications have drawn a great deal of attention to the wireless communication industry and research due to its limitless meritorious features, including excellent anti-fading and anti-intercept capabilities and jamming resistance exempli gratia. Differential Chaos Shift Keying (DCSK) is of particular interest due to its low-complexity and low-power and many attractive properties. However, most of the DCSK studies reported in the literature considered the additive white Gaussian noise environment in non-cooperative scenarios. Moreover, the analytical derivations and evaluation of the error rates and other performance metrics are generally left in an integral form and evaluated using numerical techniques. To circumvent on these issues, this work is dedicated to present a new approximate error rates analysis of multi-access multiple-input multiple-output dual-hop relaying DCSK cooperative diversity (DCSK-CD) in Nakagami-m fading channels (enclosing the Rayleigh fading as a particular case). Based on this approximation, closed-form expressions for the average error rates are derived for multiple relaying protocols, namely the error-free and the decode-and-forward relaying. Testing results validate the accuracy of the derived analytical expressions.
Business Process Mining
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2016
Year: 2016

One of the most valuable assets of an organization is its organizational data. The analysis and mining of this potential hidden treasure can lead to much added-value for the organization. Process mining is an emerging area that can be useful in helping organizations understand the status quo, check for compliance and plan for improving their processes. The aim of process mining is to extract knowledge from event logs of today's organizational information systems. Process mining includes three main types: discovering process models from event logs, conformance checking and organizational mining. In this paper, we briefly introduce process mining and review some of its most important techniques. Also, we investigate some of the applications of process mining in industry and present some of the most important challenges that are faced in this area.
Nearest Neighbor-based Rendezvous for Sparsely Connected Mobile Agents
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2016
Year: 2016

In this paper a convergent, nearest-neighbor, control protocol is suggested for agents with nontrivial dynamics. The protocol guarantees convergence to a common point in space even if each agent is restricted to communicate with a single nearest neighbor. The neighbor, however, is required to lie outside an arbitrarily small priority zone surrounding the agent. The control protocol consists of two layers interconnected in a provably-correct manner. The first layer provides the guidance signal to a rendezvous point assuming that the agents have first order dynamics. The other layer converts in a decentralized manner the guidance signal to a control signal that suits realistic agents such as UGVs, UAVs and holonomic agents with second order dynamics.
A Survey of Point-of-interest Recommendation in Location-based Social Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2016
Year: 2016

Point-of-interest (POI) recommendation that suggests new places for users to visit arises with the popularity of location-based social networks (LBSNs). Due to the importance of POI recommendation in LBSNs, it has attracted much academic and industrial interest. In this paper, we offer a systematic review of this field, summarizing the contributions of individual efforts and exploring their relations. We discuss the new properties and challenges in POI recommendation, compared with traditional recommendation problems, e.g., movie recommendation. Then, we present a comprehensive review in three aspects: influential factors for POI recommendation, methodologies employed for POI recommendation, and different tasks in POI recommendation. Specifically, we propose three taxonomies to classify POI recommendation systems. First, we categorize the systems by the influential factors check-in characteristics, including the geographical information, social relationship, temporal influence, and content indications. Second, we categorize the systems by the methodology, including systems modeled by fused methods and joint methods. Third, we categorize the systems as general POI recommendation and successive POI recommendation by subtle differences in the recommendation task whether to be bias to the recent check-in. For each category, we summarize the contributions and system features, and highlight the representative work. Moreover, we discuss the available data sets and the popular metrics. Finally, we point out the possible future directions in this area and conclude this survey.