Li, Xigao, Azad, Babak Amin, Rahmati, Amir, Nikiforakis, Nick.
2021.
Good Bot, Bad Bot: Characterizing Automated Browsing Activity. 2021 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP). :1589—1605.
As the web keeps increasing in size, the number of vulnerable and poorly-managed websites increases commensurately. Attackers rely on armies of malicious bots to discover these vulnerable websites, compromising their servers, and exfiltrating sensitive user data. It is, therefore, crucial for the security of the web to understand the population and behavior of malicious bots.In this paper, we report on the design, implementation, and results of Aristaeus, a system for deploying large numbers of "honeysites", i.e., websites that exist for the sole purpose of attracting and recording bot traffic. Through a seven-month-long experiment with 100 dedicated honeysites, Aristaeus recorded 26.4 million requests sent by more than 287K unique IP addresses, with 76,396 of them belonging to clearly malicious bots. By analyzing the type of requests and payloads that these bots send, we discover that the average honeysite received more than 37K requests each month, with more than 50% of these requests attempting to brute-force credentials, fingerprint the deployed web applications, and exploit large numbers of different vulnerabilities. By comparing the declared identity of these bots with their TLS handshakes and HTTP headers, we uncover that more than 86.2% of bots are claiming to be Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, yet are built on simple HTTP libraries and command-line tools.
Yao, Chunxing, Sun, Zhenyao, Xu, Shuai, Zhang, Han, Ren, Guanzhou, Ma, Guangtong.
2021.
Optimal Parameters Design for Model Predictive Control using an Artificial Neural Network Optimized by Genetic Algorithm. 2021 13th International Symposium on Linear Drives for Industry Applications (LDIA). :1–6.
Model predictive control (MPC) has become one of the most attractive control techniques due to its outstanding dynamic performance for motor drives. Besides, MPC with constant switching frequency (CSF-MPC) maintains the advantages of MPC as well as constant frequency but the selection of weighting factors in the cost function is difficult for CSF-MPC. Fortunately, the application of artificial neural networks (ANN) can accelerate the selection without any additional computation burden. Therefore, this paper designs a specific artificial neural network optimized by genetic algorithm (GA-ANN) to select the optimal weighting factors of CSF-MPC for permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives fed by three-level T-type inverter. The key performance metrics like THD and switching frequencies error (ferr) are extracted from simulation and this data are utilized to train and evaluate GA-ANN. The trained GA-ANN model can automatically and precisely select the optimal weighting factors for minimizing THD and ferr under different working conditions of PMSM. Furthermore, the experimental results demonstrate the validation of GA-ANN and robustness of optimal weighting factors under different torque loads. Accordingly, any arbitrary user-defined working conditions which combine THD and ferr can be defined and the optimum weighting factors can be fast and explicitly determined via the trained GA-ANN model.
Freire, Sávio, Rios, Nicolli, Pérez, Boris, Castellanos, Camilo, Correal, Darío, Ramač, Robert, Mandić, Vladimir, Taušan, Nebojša, López, Gustavo, Pacheco, Alexia et al..
2021.
How Experience Impacts Practitioners' Perception of Causes and Effects of Technical Debt. 2021 IEEE/ACM 13th International Workshop on Cooperative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE). :21–30.
Context: The technical debt (TD) metaphor helps to conceptualize the pending issues and trade-offs made during software development. Knowing TD causes can support in defining preventive actions and having information about effects aids in the prioritization of TD payment. Goal: To investigate the impact of the experience level on how practitioners perceive the most likely causes that lead to TD and the effects of TD that have the highest impacts on software projects. Method: We approach this topic by surveying 227 practitioners. Results: While experienced software developers focus on human factors as TD causes and external quality attributes as TD effects, low experienced developers seem to concentrate on technical issues as causes and internal quality issues and increased project effort as effects. Missing any of these types of causes could lead a team to miss the identification of important TD, or miss opportunities to preempt TD. On the other hand, missing important effects could hamper effective planning or erode the effectiveness of decisions about prioritizing TD items. Conclusion: Having software development teams composed of practitioners with a homogeneous experience level can erode the team's ability to effectively manage TD.
Janak, Jan, Retty, Hema, Chee, Dana, Baloian, Artiom, Schulzrinne, Henning.
2021.
Talking After Lights Out: An Ad Hoc Network for Electric Grid Recovery. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Communications, Control, and Computing Technologies for Smart Grids (SmartGridComm). :181–187.
When the electrical grid in a region suffers a major outage, e.g., after a catastrophic cyber attack, a “black start” may be required, where the grid is slowly restarted, carefully and incrementally adding generating capacity and demand. To ensure safe and effective black start, the grid control center has to be able to communicate with field personnel and with supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. Voice and text communication are particularly critical. As part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation, and Characterization Systems (RADICS) program, we designed, tested and evaluated a self-configuring mesh network prototype called the Phoenix Secure Emergency Network (PhoenixSEN). PhoenixSEN provides a secure drop-in replacement for grid's primary communication networks during black start recovery. The network combines existing and new technologies, can work with a variety of link-layer protocols, emphasizes manageability and auto-configuration, and provides services and applications for coordination of people and devices including voice, text, and SCADA communication. We discuss the architecture of PhoenixSEN and evaluate a prototype on realistic grid infrastructure through a series of DARPA-led exercises.