Instagram Mobile Application Digital Forensics

In this research, we developed a plugin for our automated digital forensics framework to extract and preserve the evidence from the Android and the IOS-based mobile phone application, Instagram. This plugin extracts personal details from Instagram users, e.g., name, user name, mobile number, ID, direct text or audio, video, and picture messages exchanged between different Instagram users. While developing the plugin, we identified resources available in both Android and IOS-based devices holding key forensics artifacts. We highlighted the poor privacy scheme employed by Instagram. This work, has shown how the sensitive data posted in the Instagram mobile application can easily be reconstructed, and how the traces, as well as the URL links of visual messages, can be used to access the privacy of any Instagram user without any critical credential verification. We also employed the anti-forensics method on the Instagram Android’s application and were able to restore the application from the altered or corrupted database file, which any criminal mind can use to set up or trap someone else. The outcome of this research is a plugin for our digital forensics ready framework software which could be used by law enforcement and regulatory agencies to reconstruct the digital evidence available in the Instagram mobile application directories on both Android and IOS-based mobile phones.     

Content-based mobile spam classification using stylistically motivated features

The feature of brevity in mobile phone messages makes it difficult to distinguish lexical patterns to identify spam. This paper proposes a novel approach to spam classification of extremely short messages using not only lexical features that reflect the content of a message but new stylistic features that indicate the manner in which the message is written. Experiments on two mobile phone message collections in two different languages show that the approach outperforms previous content-based approaches significantly, regardless of language.     

Content information desired by Chinese users for effective use of information appliances

Many studies have been conducted to determine how to present information on mobile phones in such a way as to enhance usability, but those studies have not considered what information users need for effective decision making. To investigate what users want from mobile phones, we carried out a content preparation study. A questionnaire was constructed based on prior results from website content research, traditional usability studies on consumer electronics, and extensive study on various types of mobile phones; it was completed by 375 Chinese industrial participants. The statistical results revealed nine major factors of mobile phone content: information relating to input/search, functions, operation, multimedia functions, stored files, phone calls, help/service, accessory functions, and messages. Also, users of different ages and genders evidenced different requirements for mobile phone content, especially concerning accessory and multimedia functions. This study suggests guidelines for mobile phone designers targeted at the Chinese market and provides a base for content study of other information appliances.     

A scalable group communication mechanism for mobile agents

Many multi-agent applications based on mobile agents require message propagation among group of agents. A fast and scalable group communication mechanism can considerably improve performance of these applications. Unfortunately, most of the existing approaches do not scale well and disseminate messages slowly when the number of agents grows.In this paper, we propose Sama, a new group communication mechanism, to speed up message delivery for a group of mobile agents on a heterogeneous internetwork. The main contribution of Sama is distribution and parallelization of message propagation in an efficient way to achieve scalability and high-speed of message delivery to group members. Sama uses message dispatcher objects (MDOs), which are stationary agents on each host, to propagate messages concurrently. The proposed mechanism is independent of agent locations and transparently delivers messages to the group using constant number of remote messages. It also transparently recovers from host failures. We also present a Hop-Ring protocol that considerably improves the performance of message dissemination in Sama. Our experimental results show that message propagation in Sama is significantly fast compared to the previously proposed methods.     

Using targeted Bayesian network learning for suspect identification in communication networks

This paper proposes a machine learning application to identify mobile phone users suspected of involvement in criminal activities. The application characterizes the behavioral patterns of suspect users versus non-suspect users based on usage metadata such as call duration, call distribution, interaction time preferences and text-to-call ratios while avoiding any access to the content of calls or messages. The application is based on targeted Bayesian network learning method. It generates a graphical network that can be used by domain experts to gain intuitive insights about the key features that can help identify suspect users. The method enables experts to manage the trade-off between model complexity and accuracy using information theory metrics. Unlike other graphical Bayesian classifiers, the proposed application accomplishes the task required of a security company, namely an accurate suspect identification rate (recall) of at least 50% with no more than a 1% false identification rate. The targeted Bayesian network learning method is also used for additional tasks such as anomaly detection, distinction between “relevant” and “irrelevant” anomalies, and for associating anonymous telephone numbers with existing users by matching behavioral patterns.     

Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration

Vibration offers many potential benefits for the use of mobile phones. In this paper, we propose a new method of rendering live football game on mobile phones using vibration. A mobile phone is “synchronized” with the ball in the real field. By holding the phone, users are able to experience dynamic movements of the ball, to know attacking directions and which team is leading the attack. The usability test of our system shows that vibrotactile display is suitable for rendering live football information on mobile phones by adopting designed coding schemes with a right training process.      

Android移动开发优化策略

随着手机功能的不断提升,越来越多的用户使用手机不仅仅是因为可以打电话、发短信,而是可以用来替代个人电脑的部分功能。在硬件条件受限的情况下,对手机应用程序进行优化可以提升手机的响应速度并且可以给用户提供一个良好的用户体验,文章给出了Android系统下应用开发的一些优化策略。     

An Ecosystem for Learning and Using Sensor-Driven IM Status Messages

The Nomatic prototype system and communications ecosystem automatically infers users' place, activity, and availability from sensors on their handheld devices or laptop computers and then reports this information to their instant-messaging contacts.In our system, Nomatic (nomad and automatic), we explore a way to amplify and leverage this passive style of content creation by focusing on status messages. These short bits of text are usually created by users in the context of small communities of people who monitor each other for playor work-related distributed coordination. Status messages appear in instant-messaging (IM) clients as short customizable phrases such as "at lunch" or "out of the office." Commercial services also provide facilities for communicating status without IM (for example, Facebook, Twitter, and Jaiku). By simply attaching sensor data to the status information that users enter in IM, we can create a rich ecosystem of context-aware applications that benefit users. At the most basic level, keeping status content up to date helps mitigate the increasing problem of interruptions in mobile communications, but there are many other potential uses of such data. To be effective, we must keep this ecosystem in balance by supporting the user's ability to provide status information, supporting other users' ability to understand that data, and effectively motivating both types of users to keep their status information accurate.     

基于J2ME的非法短信屏蔽与举报系统设计与开发

手机短信作为人们获取信息的重要途径,但随着其业务的日趋发展,大量非法和不良短信大肆侵入手机。系统是基于J2ME平台设计出一种非法短信屏蔽与举报软件.该系统由两大主要功能模块组成,一个是拦截非法短信模块,另一个是向相应的通信运营商设置的举报中心发送举报短信模块,且该系统凭借其平台无关性,可以运行于各种载有JAVA虚拟机的手机上。     

基于网络编码的手机用户群文件共享和同步

为了快速、准确的实现一跳范围内手机用户群的文件共享,以达到手机用户之间进行协同工作的目的,在Android操作平台上设计、实施了本系统。在系统中提出了基于网络编码的可靠广播算法来保证文件传输的可靠性和快速性,并通过基于机会编码的全网同步算法来实现任一时刻手机群中各节点文件同步。通过真实实验验证了系统中文件共享的时延并不会随着手机群中节点数目的增加而增加,文件同步时网络中数据量大幅度下降,因此相比并发共享等其它方法,系统提供了一种快速、可靠的手机群文件共享和同步方法。     

实时监测预警智能系统的实现

本系统将多种探测传感相融合,报警信息以短消息形式通过公用GSM网络传输到相关手机用户。系统还能大致估计入侵人数和入侵位置,自动记录入侵时间等,且能将报警信息自动归档存人数据库。文中对系统结构功能以及系统的算法软件设计作了基本介绍。     

垃圾短信过滤方法的分析与研究

针对垃圾短信的现状,提出了一种结合信任技术、黑名单过滤技术、关键字过滤技术等的解决方案。该解决方案需要广大手机用户、移动运营商、政府监管部门的共同参与,才能最终达到治理垃圾短信的目的。     

You never call: Demoting unused contacts on mobile phones using DMTR

Throughout their lives, people gather contacts on their mobile phones. Some of these are unused contacts—contacts that have not been used for a long time and are less likely to be used in future calls. These contacts compete for the users’ attention and the mobile phone’s limited screen capacity. To address this problem, we developed a prototype contact list interface called DMTR, which automatically demotes unused contacts by presenting them in a smaller font at the bottom of the contact list. In phase I of this research, we asked 18 participants to assess for how long they had not used each of their mobile phone contacts. Results show that 47% of all their contacts had not been used for over 6?months or had never been used at all. In phase II, we demoted these unused contacts using DMTR and asked our participants to locate contacts that they had recently used, with and without the prototype. Results indicate that the use of DMTR reduced both the number of key strokes and the retrieval time significantly. The majority of participants indicated that it was easier for them to access their contacts using DMTR and that they would like to use it in their next mobile phone. The results provide strong evidence for the demotion principle suggested by the user-subjective approach.     

基于Android平台的新农村手机号码银行安全服务策略

手机在农村已广泛使用,但容易丢失,往往给相应用户造成诸多不便或经济损失。本文以搭建的湖南农业农村信息化综合服务平台呼叫中心项目为基础,针对农村安卓手机用户构建一款呼叫信息安全保存、恢复机制的模块。该模块可以将用户电话号码、重要通信记录和短信信息像银行职能一样上传到服务器保存,并下载恢复,同时也可利用综合服务平台浏览自己保存的相关信息,进一步提高手机信息的安全性,为农村信息化发展保驾护航。     

基于Web的手机信息管理平台的设计与实现

提出了一种通过Web方式来管理个人手机信息的管理平台解决方案,该平台采用了一种融合MD5和对称加密算法的混合加密技术实现单方加密多方解密的安全应用模型,保证了手机备份信息的安全存放。用户通过该平台不但可以轻松地实现个人手机信息的备份、恢复和整合,还可以随时随地获取自己备份的信息。     

Private and Secure Service Discovery via Progressive and Probabilistic Exposure

The involvement of only the necessary users and service providers for service discovery in pervasive computing environments is challenging. Without prudence, users' and service providers' requests or service information, their identities, and their presence information may be sacrificed. We identify that the problem may be as difficult as a chicken-and-egg problem, in which both users and service providers want the other parties to expose sensitive information first. In this paper, we propose a progressive and probabilistic approach to solve the problem. Users and service providers expose partial information in turn and avoid unnecessary exposure if there is any mismatch. Although 1 or 2 bits of information are exchanged in each message, we prove that the process converges and that the false-positive overhead decreases quickly. Experiments and hypothesis tests show that security properties hold. We implemented the approach and the performance measurements show that the approach runs efficiently on PDAs.     

Recommending items in pervasive scenarios: models and experimental analysis

In this paper, we propose and investigate the effectiveness of fully decentralized, collaborative filtering techniques. These are particularly interesting for use in pervasive systems of small devices with limited communication and computational capabilities. In particular, we assume that items are tagged with smart tags (such as passive RFIDs), storing aggregate information about the visiting patterns of users that interacted with them in the past. Users access and modify information stored in smart tags transparently, by smart reader devices that are already available on commercial mobile phones. Smart readers use private information about previous behavior of the user and aggregate information retrieved from smart tags to recommend new items that are more likely to meet user expectations. Note that we do not assume any transmission capabilities between smart tags: Information exchange among them is mediated by users’ collective and unpredictable navigation patterns. Our algorithms do not require any explicit interaction among users and can be easily and efficiently implemented. We analyze their theoretical behavior and assess their performance in practice, by simulation on both synthetic and real, publicly available data sets. We also compare the performance of our fully decentralized solutions with that of state-of-the-art centralized strategies.     

基于J2ME和Agent的移动应用平台的设计

本文介绍了移动计算的特点,根据目前无线网络和移动设备应用程序设计的局限性,提出了基于J2ME+Agent的多线程的移动应用平台的设计方案,并引入了中间件思想。本文最后把该方案应用一个面向移动用户的云南省大型仪器协作共用网,从而证实了该平台在移动系统环境中具有较高的适应性和良好的使用性。     

Mapping relationships between mobile phone call activity and regional function using self-organizing map

Mobile phone data help us to understand human activities. Researchers have investigated the characteristics and relationships of human activities and regional function using information from physical and virtual spaces. However, how to establish location mapping between spaces to explore the relationships between mobile phone call activity and regional function remains unclear. In this paper, we employ a self-organizing map (SOM) to map locations with 24-dimensional activity attributes and identify relationships between users' mobile phone call activities and regional functions. We apply mobile phone call data from Harbin, a city in northeast China, to build the location mapping relationships between user clusters of mobile phone call activity and points of interest (POI) composition in geographical space. The results indicate that for mobile phone call activities, mobile phone users are mapped to five locations that represent particular mobile phone call patterns. Regarding regional functions, we identified nine unique types of functional areas that are related to production, business, entertainment and education according to the patterns of users and POI proportions. We then explored the correlations between users and POIs for each type of area. The results of this research provide new insights into the relationships between human activity and regional functions.     

面向智能终端的校园教育互联系统的研究与实现

校园教育互联系统,是一个基于物联网和移动互联网应用,运用射频识别技术、无线通讯技术、网络通讯技术、云存储技术开发的,学生、家庭、学校、教师之间无缝联接沟通的全新运营模式的校园教育管理沟通系统平台,实现了真正意义上的校园信息智能化、家校沟通便捷化。该系统充分利用手机短信、定位、摄像头服务、RFID识别等功能,获取学生在校相关信息,并将其存储至云平台中,家长也可以登录终端应用系统,随时随地操纵相关硬件设备查询学生的在校信息,从而达到增强学校和家长之间联系,实现学校和家长更好沟通的目的。