My Favorite Things

Abstract

The following bibliography is a collection of materials on the Internet, on Internet and Libraries, and on the role of technology in education. It consists of books, articles from scholarly journals, popular magazines, and posts from different Internet publications. Points of view which are enthusiastic about the Internet as an education resource and those points of view which treat the Internet as a new part of the problem are present on the list.     

How the Web is used to support collaborative writing

We present 19 systems that have been developed over the past decade to support collaborative writing over the Web. The aim of this article is to present the state of the art on the use of the Web for collaborative writing and thus (1) help designers improve current systems or define future systems, and (2) help users choose the most appropriate system to support their needs. Among available systems, groups can select from tools to write a document (on- or off-line), collect comments about a document, or maintain a Web site. The lack of experimental data concerning Web-based applications forces designers to use other sources of information to guide their design choices, such as a list of functions that an ideal collaborative writing tool should offer. This list has revealed several potential points for improvement.     

ISM INTERVIEWS Mark Barmann

Abstract

Despite the importance of the topic, there are very few books about MIS economics, and most of those that are available are of an academic nature. One book that does offer a practical and unique view of how MIS managers can justify the “worth” of their systems is reviewed in this column. Also reviewed are two books offering strong opinions about two different MIS concerns – implementing CASE and improving productivity with structured walkthroughs.     

Hyper-Encryption: Eternal Secrecy Using the Bounded Storage and Limited Access Models

ABSTRACT

The efficacy of a cryptosystem rests on the assumptions that are implemented in its security proofs. Computational cryptosystems assume an upper bound on the computational capability of an adversary. A shortcoming of this assumption is that as computing technology advances over time it obviates the processing limitations that are observed or projected when the upper bound was determined. An information theoretic cryptosystem does not make assumptions about the computational capabilities of an adversary and thus it provides the blueprint for cryptosystems that can guarantee the unconditional security of a ciphertext. However, an assumption that both information-theoretic and computational cryptosystems make is that a secret key always remains a secret. Hence, they are both vulnerable to the threat from an adversary who is able to obtain the secret key. Upon obtaining the key the adversary can not only decrypt ciphertexts that are encrypted using the key in the future but also retroactively decrypt those that were encrypted using it in the past. This paper discusses the bounded storage and limited access models and their implementation in hyper-encryption, which is a cryptosystem that assures not only the infinite robustness of a ciphertext but also guarantees its eternal secrecy in the event of key compromise.     

Efficient and secure data hiding in encrypted images: A new approach using chaos

ABSTRACT

The recent trends in technology have made it possible to reproduce and share digital media more easily and more rapidly. This leads to the problem of exploiting the media illegitimately. To alleviate this problem, many cryptographic techniques are used to secure the data by encrypting them. However, the cloaked form of encrypted data attracts the intruder and shows the way to malicious attacks. Due to this, in recent times steganography has drawn more attention to secure the data. This article presents a new technique that embeds data in intermediate significant bit (ISB) and least significant bit (LSB) planes of the cover image. The method employs chaotic maps to generate random locations to hide the data bits as well as permutation order to encrypt the cover image. The cover image is first encrypted by applying permutation order, then embedding is carried out on the random locations generated. After embedding, the decrypted cover image is transmitted. This method provides two-level security in extracting the hidden data. Experimental outcomes (PSNR, MSE, NAE, and NCC) confirm that the method is proficient. The randomness of the values generated by chaotic maps is assessed by the NIST standard test suite.     

Automated book location and classification method using RFID tags for smart libraries

PurposeThere are hundreds of thousands of books in libraries, causing problems in searching and counting books. To overcome these problems, this research presents a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) dataset and a new automated book location classification model using the RSSI dataset.Materials and methodIn this study, a RSSI signals dataset was collected using a mobile vehicle from 3279 books. These books are randomly placed on six benches, 24 cabinets, and 144 racks. The primary objective of this work is to detect book position automatically using a simple learning model. Thus, a new automated book position detection model is presented and this model is tested on the RSSI dataset collected. (i) Multiscale principal component analysis (MSPCA) is considered a pre-processing method. (ii) Iterative minimum redundancy maximum relevance (ImRMR) algorithm was used to select the most informative features automatically. (iii) The most informative features selected are classified using the Decision Trees (DT) and Ensemble Bagged Trees (BT) algorithms. Three cases are defined according to bench, cabinet, and rack.ResultsThe recommended model yielded 97.34% 98.26% and 93.1% overall accuracies using the bench, cabinet, and rack cases consecutively deploying the BT classifier with 10-fold cross-validation.ConclusionsThe presented book position classification model reached above 90% for all cases and these results calculated and finding clearly demonstrates that this model is ready to use in a big library for book position detection.     

STAFF DEVELOPMENT The Role of Training in the Organization

Abstract

Although end-user computing has had a major impact on the information systems business, few books adequately discuss the subject. This column reviews three books that address some important aspects of end-user computing — how it can change the way people work, the benefits that can result from this change, and economic justifications for it.     

From the Archives: Polish Interwar MFA's Cipher Compromised?

Abstract

A 1940 report suggests that the cryptosystem used by the interbellum Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been compromised, enabling the Germans to read the encrypted diplomatic traffic of the Poles and learn about their plans in advance.     

Towards the Design of a Secure and Fault Tolerant Cloud Storage in a Multi-Cloud Environment

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the problem of data security and fault tolerance in the Cloud. The application of the proposed model includes organizations, business groups, and establishments where the data are highly confidential and need to be kept in a very secure manner among a number of users. The paper recommends a model to enhance the security measure and a model to increase the fault tolerance capability. To increase the overall security, the security measure needs to be followed at the user side. The work is carried out on a multi-cloud environment where the data are encrypted, split, and stored. The storage details are held by the owner in a file that is encrypted and the key is retained by a set of owners using secret sharing scheme. The model would work continuously when one of the Cloud Service Providers goes in for a failure and another model has been proposed which would work when two Cloud Service Providers go down. The method increases the security and provides improved fault tolerance.     

A privacy-preserving multi-keyword ranked retrieval scheme in cloud computing

ABSTRACT

Big data and cloud computing could bring security problems. In order to ensure data security and user privacy, people would choose to store data in the cloud with ciphertext. How to search data efficiently and comprehensively without decryption has become the focus of this paper. In this paper, we propose an efficient privacy protection scheme. In this scheme, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is adopted to encrypt the data. It can reduce the computing cost of encryption and decryption uploading the encrypted files and indexes to the cloud server. Then it can authorize users to generate trap door using hash conflict function, and send it to Cloud Service Provider (CSP) for searching for matched ciphertext. The CSP uses the Apriori algorithm to extend keywords and search index to match the ciphertext. In this paper, we will use the Apriori algorithm to extend the keywords’ semantics, match the index list based on these keywords, and return the requested file-set which is more consistent with the user’s search. Experiments show that compared with traditional methods, files can be encrypted, decrypted, and recovered more quickly when we use this method. It can also ensure the privacy of data and reduce the communication overhead.     

Weak Password Security: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT

Portable Document Format (PDF) is a file format developed by Adobe Systems for representing documents in a manner that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and operating system. A PDF file can describe documents containing any combination of text, graphics, and images in a device independent and/or resolution independent format. It is now used everywhere across academic, technical, and governmental institutions. For secure communication, this platform and hardware independent file can be used as a secure cover media for voluminous data concealing. The methods develop so far for data hiding in PDF files satisfy low-embedding characteristics. In this work, we have developed two techniques. The first searches trash spaces in the PDF file and replaces them with the encrypted secret data. The second technique is useful for storing voluminous encrypted secret data without disturbing any format, features, or characteristics of the file. The practical implementation of this has been done on Microsoft platform. Experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed techniques.     

A concept analysis of Jonathan Swift'sA tale of a Tub andGulliver's Travels

Part 1. The core of the concept analysis method is a dictionary of 43,000 words to each of which is assigned up to 5 of 168 concepts. Computer programs read each word of a text and produce a concept frequency profile of the text.Part 2. Comparisons of concept profiles ofTub andGulliver and Swift's own contemporary texts, as well as a composite text of 18th century writers, reveal thatGulliver is conceptually different fromTub and its coevals. The fourth book ofGulliver (Houyhnhnms) is significantly different from the first three books. The last two books ofGulliver (Laputa and Houyhnhnms) are more likeTub than are the first two books (Lilliput and Brobdingnag).Part 3. The concepts and words supporting these distinctions suggest two strands in Swift's thinking: the first, pessimism about the human condition; the second, interest in the quotidian world. Finally, such issues as disambiguation of homonyms, scoring of phrases, and the role of syntax are considered.Julius Laffal is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry (in Psychology) at Yale University. He was Director of Research and Psychological Services at Connecticut Valley Hospital from 1969 to 1985. He has been Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan University, and Professor in Residence, Psychology, at University of Connecticut. He is the author ofNormal and Pathological Language (1965) andA Concept Dictionary of English with Computer Programs for Content Analysis (1990).     

密文域高嵌入率图像全位面可逆数据隐藏

目的 针对现有的加密域可逆信息隐藏算法未能充分利用图像的全部位平面的问题,提出了一种密文域高嵌入率图像全位面可逆数据隐藏。方法 对载体图像进行加密,然后将隐蔽信息嵌入到加密图像中,进行隐蔽传输,发送给接收者。本文将灰度图像的8个位平面都用来进行数据嵌入,并把每个位平面划分成不重叠的块,分为非连续块（块内像素值0,1都存在）和连续块（块内为全0或全1像素值）,按块进行重排列且将排列前的块标签嵌入到重排列图像中,使用流密码对图像进行加密。在数据嵌入阶段,提出了带修正信息的像素预测方法用于非连续块的嵌入。连续块中,保持块内右下角像素值不变,用于连续块的恢复,其他位置嵌入数据;非连续块中,对预测正确的像素嵌入数据,预测错误的像素保持不变。结果 实验过程实现了多种密文域可逆数据隐藏算法,本文进行大量对比实验,并在BOSSbase和BOWS-2数据集上进行验证,与其他方法比较,本文方法在BOSSbase和BOWS-2数据集上的嵌入率分别提升了42.1%和43.3%。结论 提出的加密图像可逆数据隐藏方案,通过对不同性质的块采用不同方法进行数据嵌入,利用图像全位面信息,使得方案能够获得更高的嵌入率,表明了本文方法的有效性。     

THE BATTLE OF THE SEALS

This article is primarily about the seals of the National Security Agency (NSA) and its Central Security Service (CSS). Specifically, this article provides, for the first time, a copy of the NSA seal that preceded the current one, a copy of the CSS seal, and their respective histories. A brief biography of the current CSS Deputy Chief and a very brief history about CSS itself is also provided. A number of references are made to James Bamford's two books: Body of Secrets (May 2001) and The Puzzle Palace (1982). My intention is not to nitpick his works. Rather, I simply wish to clarify points that readers may find confusing, especially since he is the world's leading authority on NSA. I not only admire Bamford's investigative journalism, but also strive toward the very high standard that he has set.     

Timestamp-Based Digital Envelope for Secure Communication Using HECC

ABSTRACT

Secure communication in wireless network is necessary to access remote resources in a controlled and efficient way. For validation and authentication in e-banking and e-commerce transactions, digital signatures using public key cryptography is extensively employed. To maintain confidentiality, Digital Envelope, which is the combination of the encrypted message and signature with the encrypted symmetric key, is also used. In this paper we propose a timestamp-based authentication scheme with a modified Digital Envelope using hyperelliptic curve cryptosystem. HECC have advantages over the existing public key cryptosystems for its small key size and high security in wireless networks where resources are constrained. We have compared the performance of the proposed scheme with that of ECC and present a security analysis to show that our scheme can resist various attacks related to wireless networks.     

农业古籍断句标点模式研究

农业古籍的整理已经引起了众多学者和专家的注意,但是,对于农业古籍的自动断句、标点模式的研究仍付之阙如。本研究探索并总结出部分农业古籍断句、标点识别模式。首先采用句法特征词断句法、同义语标志词法进行初步断句;进而利用反义复合词、引书标志、时序、数量词、重叠字词、动名结构及比较句法进一步对子句进行断句、标点;最后使用农业用语和禁用模式表进一步提高断句、标点后农业古籍的可读性和准确性。经测试表明,断句、标点的平均准确率分别达到48%和35%,证明本方法具有一定的正确性和可行性。     

Selected Bioterrorism Web Sites for the Health Care Community and Consumer

SUMMARY

For the people of the United States, the threat of bio-terrorism has become a reality. To respond to the recent outbreak of anthrax cases and to prepare for future threats, the health care community, civil authorities, and general public need access to reliable, up-to-date information. The Web is one tool that can be used to deliver this information. This article briefly defines bioterrorism, identifies major biological agents, looks at the potential impact of an attack and provides a selected list of Web sites for consumers and health care professionals. The selection criteria used to evaluate the sites included sponsorship, currency, content (factual information), and audience. Most of the sites are from government organizations, educational institutions, or professional associations.     

Fast but approximate homomorphic k-means based on masking technique

Nowadays, computing on encrypted data seems to be more practical than a few years ago, thanks to the emergence of new Homomorphic Encryption schemes. In this paper, an algorithm based on Homomorphic Encryption for Arithmetic of Approximate Numbers (Cheon et al., in: Takagi, Peyrin (eds) Advances in cryptology—ASIACRYPT 2017, Springer, Cham, pp 409–437, 2017) (HEAAN, or also CKKS) scheme, that is able to perform a secure k-means algorithm which processes encrypted data, has been studied and presented. The performance of the classifier running on encrypted data has been evaluated using a standard k-means algorithm that works on plain data as a supervised structure, since the results are obtained by approximated computations. The main point of this paper is to take existent theoretical techniques (for example approximations of \(\text {sgn}(x)\)), to use them and to observe if they are valid in practical applications. The output of the algorithm is a set of k encrypted masks that can be applied to the original dataset in order to obtain different clusters. The setting is a standard client–server one. The workload is heavily server-centric, as the client only has to execute a light masking algorithm at the end of each iteration, which, excluding the decryption, is faster than a plain k-means iteration; the main disadvantage concerns the accuracy of the results. Experiments show that the algorithm can be executed fairly quickly: the execution time of the training phase is on the order of seconds, while classification is on the order of tenths of a second.

     

结合Kd-树和熵编码的密文图像可逆数据隐藏

目的 密文图像可逆数据隐藏技术既可以保证载体内容不被泄露,又可以传递秘密信息,在军事、医疗等方面发挥着重要的作用。然而,以往的大多数方法存在图像冗余未被充分利用、数据嵌入容量不足等问题。为解决这些问题,提出了一种结合Kd-树和熵编码的高容量密文图像可逆数据隐藏算法。方法 该方法在图像加密之前需要对图像应用中值边缘检测(median-edge detector,MED)算法计算预测误差,并把得到的预测误差绝对值图像划分为两个区域:S0区域和S1区域。根据Kd-树标签算法和熵编码生成辅助信息,在对图像使用加密密钥K_e加密之后嵌入辅助信息,生成加密图像;在秘密数据嵌入阶段,根据附加信息和数据隐藏密钥嵌入秘密数据,生成载密图像;在解密阶段可以根据附加信息、图像加密密钥和数据隐藏密钥提取秘密数据并无损恢复图像。结果 实验测试了BOWS-2(break our watermarking system 2nd)数据集,平均嵌入容量为3.910 bit/像素。与现有的几种方法进行比较,该算法可以获得更高的秘密数据嵌入容量。结论 该方法在图像加密前腾出空间,与相关算法相比,实现了更高的嵌入容量,并且可以实现原始图像的无损恢复。