On truthful auction mechanisms for electricity allocation with multiple time slots

Multimedia Tools and Applications - As technology evolves and electricity demand rises, an increasing number of researches have focused on the efficient electricity allocation mechanisms so as to...     

Strongly polynomial-time truthful mechanisms in one shot

One of the main challenges in algorithmic mechanism design is to turn (existing) efficient algorithmic solutions into efficient truthful mechanisms. Building a truthful mechanism is indeed a difficult process since the underlying algorithm must obey certain “monotonicity” properties and suitable payment functions need to be computed (this task usually represents the bottleneck in the overall time complexity).     

Pricing schemes for digital content with DRM mechanisms

In this paper, utilizing game-theoretic model, we examine the impact of collaborative structure, content quality, and network environment on the development of pricing scheme and DRM protection policy of digital content. DRM protection level decreases and pirating activities becomes relatively tolerable as the content provider and platform provider operate collaboratively. Depending on the market structure, higher content quality may strengthen or weaken the adoption of DRM. However, it would seem that, as the network environment becomes more decentralized and uncontrolled, weaker DRM protection should be a better strategy.     

Fast schemes for online record linkage

The process of integrating large volumes of data coming from disparate data sources, in order to detect records that refer to the same entities, has always been an important problem in both academia and industry. This problem becomes significantly more challenging when the integration involves a huge amount of records and needs to be conducted in a real-time fashion to address the requirements of critical applications. In this paper, we propose two novel schemes for online record linkage, which achieve very fast response times and high levels of recall and precision. Our proposed schemes embed the records into a Bloom filter space and employ the Hamming Locality-Sensitive Hashing technique for blocking. Each Bloom filter is hashed to a number of hash tables in order to amplify the probability of formulating similar Bloom filter pairs. The main theoretical premise behind our first scheme relies on the number of times a Bloom filter pair is formulated in the hash tables of the blocking mechanism. We prove that this number strongly depends on the distance of that Bloom filter pair. This correlation allows us to estimate in real-time the Hamming distances of Bloom filter pairs without performing the comparisons. The second scheme is progressive and achieves high recall, upfront during the linkage process, by continuously adjusting the sequence in which the hash tables are scanned, and also guarantees, with high probability, the identification of each similar Bloom filter pair. Our experimental evaluation, using four real-world data sets, shows that the proposed schemes outperform four state-of-the-art methods by achieving higher recall and precision, while being very efficient.     

Source code verification of a secure payment applet

This paper discusses a case study in formal verification and development of secure smart card applications. An elementary Java Card electronic purse applet is presented whose specification can be simply formulated as “in normal operation, the applet’s balance field can only be decreased, never increased”. The applet features a challenge-response mechanism which allows legitimate terminals to increase the balance by putting the applet into a special operation mode. A systematic approach is used to guarantee a secure flow of control within the applet: appropriate transition properties are first formalized as a finite state machine, then incorporated in the specification, and finally formally verified using the Loop translation tool and the PVS theorem prover.     

Ciphertext verification security of symmetric encryption schemes

This paper formally discusses the security problem caused by the ciphertext verification,presenting a new security notion named IND-CVA(indistinguishability under ciphertext verification attacks) to characterize the privacy of encryption schemes in this situation. Allowing the adversary to access to both encryption oracle and ciphertext verification oracle,the new notion IND-CVA is slightly stronger than IND-CPA(indistinguishability under chosen-plaintext attacks) but much weaker than IND-CCA(indistinguisha...     

Query verification schemes for cloud-hosted databases: a brief survey

Database query verification schemes provide correctness guarantees for database queries. Typically such guarantees are required and advisable where queries are executed on untrusted servers. This need to verify query results, even though they may have been executed on one’s own database, is something new that has arisen with the advent of cloud services. The traditional model of hosting one’s own databases on one’s own servers did not require such verification because the hardware and software were both entirely within one’s control, and therefore fully trusted. However, with the economical and technological benefits of cloud services beckoning, many are now considering outsourcing both data and execution of database queries to the cloud, despite obvious risks. This survey paper provides an overview into the field of database query verification and explores the current state of the art in terms of query execution and correctness guarantees provided for query results. We also provide indications towards future work in the area.     

面向智能终端的快捷支付“双花攻击”检测模型

双花攻击是基于去中心化结构的数字加密货币交易过程中存在的重要安全问题。主流的数字加密货币通过牺牲交易时间,等待全体节点验证的交易确认块数量达到预设值来对抗双花攻击。在手机、平板电脑等智能终端上由于硬件资源的限制以及对快捷支付的需求,以交易时间为代价的对抗方式显然无法满足应用场景的需求。对此,文章将人工免疫理论应用到数字加密货币的快捷支付中,提出一种面向智能终端的快捷支付双花攻击检测模型。该模型结合人工免疫理论,利用异常交易数据在每个交易节点训练免疫检测器,通过免疫进化与免疫应答机制对双花攻击进行快速检测并全网通报。实验结果证明,该模型能够有效预防数字加密货币快捷支付中的双花攻击。     

Fast in-place verification of data dependencies

Several fast and space-optimal sequential and parallel algorithms for solving the satisfaction problem of functional and multivalued dependencies (FDs and MVDs) are presented. Two frameworks to verify an MVD for a relation and their implementation by exploring the existing fast space-optimal sorting techniques are described. The space optimality means that only a constant amount of extra memory space is needed for the sequential implementations, and O(M) amount of extra memory space for parallel algorithms that use M processors. This feature makes the algorithms attractive whenever space is a critical resource and I/O transfers should be reduced to the minimal, as is often the case for relational database systems. The time requirements for in-place FD and MVD verification are given in terms of M and of N, which is the number of tuples in a relation. The effect of relation modification on FD and MVD verification is examined     

网络商店的付费机制与信息安全分析

随着因特网的发展与普及,产生了更多的商机,造就出各种不同型态的网络商店,同时也衍生出不同的付费方式,例如电子钱包、网上银行、在线ATM等等。面对众多付费方式的选择时,不同市场必须选搭各种付费制度,当市场导入新制付费制度后,除了增加新制付费制度给予消费者选择外,并能让原来的市场消费者对于新付费机制产生消费学习性,最终消费者会依个人意志选择最利己的付费机制。通过调查分析,网络商店提供付费机制使用的便利性、易用性、实时性、精确性、安全性对消费者态度有显著正向的影响。     

A mechanism that provides incentives for truthful feedback in peer-to-peer systems

We propose a mechanism for providing the incentives for reporting truthful feedback in a peer-to-peer system for exchanging services (or content). This mechanism is to complement reputation mechanisms that employ ratings’ feedback on the various transactions in order to provide incentives to peers for offering better services to others. Under our approach, each of the transacting peers (rather than just the client) submits a rating on the performance of their mutual transaction. If these are in disagreement, then both transacting peers are punished, since such an occasion is a sign that one of them is lying. The severity of each peer’s punishment is determined by his corresponding non-credibility metric; this is maintained by the mechanism and evolves according to the peer’s record. When under punishment, a peer does not transact with others. We model the punishment effect of the mechanism in a peer-to-peer system as a Markov chain that is experimentally proved to be very accurate. According to this model, the credibility mechanism leads the peer-to-peer system to a desirable steady state isolating liars. Then, we define a procedure for the optimization of the punishment parameters of the mechanism for peer-to-peer systems of various characteristics. We experimentally prove that this optimization procedure is effective and necessary for the successful employment of the mechanism in real peer-to-peer systems. Then, the optimized credibility mechanism is combined with reputation-based policies to provide a complete solution for high performance and truthful rating in peer-to-peer systems. The combined mechanism was experimentally proved to deal very effectively with large fractions of collaborated liar peers that follow static or dynamic rational lying strategies in peer-to-peer systems with dynamically renewed population, while the efficiency loss induced to sincere peers by the presence of liars is diminished. Finally, we describe the potential implementation of the mechanism in real peer-to-peer systems.     

Fast verification,testing, and generation of large primes

We present a prime certification method which permits shorter certificates of primality than the method analyzed by Pratt. We analyze the expected time required by a stochastic method for showing that n is prime, given a factorization of n ? 1. We use this method, together with Rabin's stochastic method for verifying compositeness, to obtain an algorithm for generating arbitrarily large primes and short certificates of their primality. We give plausibility arguments that this method can generate primes larger than n in expected time polynomial in log n. We analyze several such prime generation algorithms.     

On improving the efficiency of truthful routing in MANETs with selfish nodes

In Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), nodes depend upon each other for routing and forwarding packets. However, nodes belonging to independent authorities in MANETs may behave selfishly and may not forward packets to save battery and other resources. To stimulate cooperation, nodes are rewarded for their forwarding service. Since nodes spend different cost to forward packets, it is desirable to reimburse nodes according to their cost so that nodes get incentive while the least total payment is charged to the sender. However, to maximize their utility, nodes may tell lie about their cost. This poses the requirement of truthful protocols, which maximizes the utility of nodes only when they declare their true cost. Anderegg and Eidenbenz recently proposed a truthful routing protocol, named ad hoc-VCG. This protocol incurs the route discovery overhead of O(n³), where n is the number of nodes in the network. This routing overhead is likely to become prohibitively large as the network size grows. Moreover, it leads to low network performance due to congestion and interference. We present a low-overhead truthful routing protocol for route discovery in MANETs with selfish nodes by applying mechanism design. The protocol, named LOTTO (Low Overhead Truthful rouTing prOtocol), finds a least cost path for data forwarding with a lower routing overhead of O(n²). We conduct an extensive simulation study to evaluate the performance of our protocol and compare it with ad hoc-VCG. Simulation results show that our protocol provides a much higher packet delivery ratio, generates much lower overhead and has much lower end-to-end delay.     

The verification of the protection mechanisms of high-level language machines

A practical methodology for the verification of the protection mechanisms for high-level language machines is presented. It is argued that, although the methodology is informal, it does not lack precision—a feature not found in other informal verification attempts. The methodology has the advantage of ensuring both the correctness and the completeness of the protection mechanisms. The use of the methodology in the verification of systems similar to the Burroughs B6700/6800 is illustrated.     

Generation of test data for verification of caching mechanisms and address translation in microprocessors

This paper considers the problem of test data generation for the core-level verification of microprocessors; namely, the problem of constructing a test program on the basis of its abstract form (test template). To solve this problem, we propose an algorithm reducing it to a problem of resolving constraints. This paper addresses the verification of memory-handling instructions (taking into account such microprocessor features as caching and address translation).     

Broadcasting schemes for hypercubes with background traffic

Optimal broadcasting schemes for interconnection networks (INs) are most essential for the efficient interprocess communication amongst parallel computers. In this paper two novel broadcasting schemes are proposed for hypercube computers with bursty background traffic and a single-port mode of message passing communication. The schemes utilize a maximum entropy (ME) based queue-by-queue decomposition algorithm for arbitrary queueing network models (QNMs) [D.D. Kouvatsos, I. Awan, Perform. Eval. 51 (2003) 191] and are based on binomial trees and graph theoretic concepts. It is shown that the overall cost of the one-to-all broadcasting scheme is given by max{ω₁,ω₂,…,ω_2ⁿ/2}, where ω_i, i=1,2,…,2ⁿ/2 is the total weight at each leaf node of the binomial tree and n is the degree of the hypercube. Moreover, the upper bound of the total cost of the neighbourhood broadcasting scheme is determined by ∑_i=1^Fmax{ω_i}, where F is an upper bound of the number of steps and is equal to 1.33⌈log₂(n−1)⌉+1. Evidence based on empirical studies indicates the suitability of the schemes for achieving optimal broadcasting costs.     

Numerical schemes for investment models with singular transactions

This paper considers an infinite horizon investment-consumption model in which a single agent consumes and distributes his wealth between two assets, a bond and a stock. The problem of maximization of the total utility from consumption is treated, when state (amount allocated in assets) and control (consumption, rates of trading) constraints are present. The value function is characterized as the unique viscosity solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation which, actually, is a Variational Inequality with gradient constraints. Numerical schemes are then constructed in order to compute the value function and the location of the free boundaries of the so-called transaction regions. These schemes are a combination of implicit and explicit schemes; their convergence is obtained from the uniqueness of viscosity solutions to the HJB equation.