Penetration testing professional ethics : a conceptual model and taxonomy

In an environment where commercial software is continually patched to correct security flaws, penetration testing can provide organisations with a realistic assessment of their security posture. Penetration testing uses the same principles as criminal hackers to penetrate corporate networks and thereby verify the presence of software vulnerabilities. Network administrators can use the results of a penetration test to correct flaws and improve overall security. The use of hacking techniques, however, raises several ethical questions that centre on the integrity of the tester to maintain professional distance and uphold the profession. This paper discusses the ethics of penetration testing and presents our conceptual model and revised taxonomy.

A taxonomy of penetration testing ethics

In an environment where commercial software is continually patched to correct security flaws, penetration testing can provide organisations with a realistic assessment of their security posture. Penetration testing uses the same principles as criminal hackers to penetrate corporate networks and thereby verify the presence of software vulnerabilities. Network administrators can use the results of a penetration test to correct flaws and improve overall security. The use of hacking techniques, however, raises several ethical questions that centre on the integrity of the tester to maintain professional distance and uphold the profession. This paper discusses the ethics of penetration testing and presents our conceptual model and revised taxonomy.

Natural convection inside dome shaped enclosures

In the present paper the analysis of heat transfer and free convective motion have been carried out numerically for dome shaped enclosures. The solution method is based on the finite element technique with the frontal solver and is used to examine the flow parameters and the heat transfer characteristics inside dome shaped enclosures of various offsets. In formulating the solution a general conic equation is considered to represent the dome of circular, elliptical, parabolic and hyperbolic shapes. The numerical results indicate that the circular and elliptical shapes of dome give higher heat transfer rate and offset of the dome effects convective heat transfer quite significantly. However, beyond 0.3 top dome offset, the change in overall heat transfer rate is not significant. In addition, the convective phenomenon influenced by a dome shaped cover results in establishing a secondary core region even at a moderate Rayleigh number when compared with an equivalent rectangular enclosure. A good comparison between the present numerical predictions and the previous published data is achieved.

Natural convection in domed porous enclosures : non-darcian flow

The natural-convection flow and associated heat transfer in a fluid-saturated porous medium have been investigated using the generalized porous medium approach for a dome-shaped enclosure. Many new features have been predicted with the connective heat transfer and the shape of the top dome cover. The solutions are obtained for a wide range of Darcy and Rayleigh numbers for different offsets and eccentricities of the top dome covers. The detailed parametric study reveals that there is a significant change in heat transfer rate when the offset is between 0.2 and 0.4. Different shapes of conic section, such as circular, elliptical, parabolic, and hyperbolic are used for the top dome cover, and their effects on natural convection and heat transfer rates are studied.

A non-darcian numerical modeling in domed enclosures filled with heat-generating porous media

Numerical study of the natural-convection flow and heat transfer in a dome-shaped, heat-generating, porous enclosure is considered. The general conic equation for the top dome is used to consider various conical top sections such as circular, elliptical, parabolic, and hyperbolic. The individual effect of fluid Rayleigh, Darcy, and heat-generating parameters on flow patterns and heat transfer rates are analyzed and presented. The predicted results show that the heat-generating parameter has the most significant contribution toward the growth of bicellular core flow. Moreover, there is significant change in temperature distribution in comparison to rectangular enclosures, due to the existence of the domed-shape top adiabatic cover. The results also show that, regardless of Darcy and Rayleigh values, a flat adiabatic top cover tends to yield the highest value of Nusselt number, followed by circular, elliptical, parabolic, and hyperbolic top covers, respectively.

Numerical investigation of natural convection inside complex enclosures

In this article, the analyses of heat transfer and free convective motion have been carried out numerically for various structures. The solution is based on a finite element method with the frontal solver to examine the flow parameters and heat transfer characteristics. Several dome configurations--such as flat, inclined, and dome shapes--are considered for the top of the enclosure. A general conic equation is considered to represent the dome as circular, elliptical, parabolic, or hyperbolic shape. The findings from this study indicate that the convective phenomenon is greatly influenced by the shape of the top cover dome and tends to form a secondary core even at a moderate Rayleigh number when compared with an equivalent rectangular enclosure. In addition, the circular and elliptical shapes of the dome give higher heat transfer rate. The effect of various "offset" of the dome and inclined roof on convective heat transfer is also found to be quite significant. However, beyond 0.3 of offset of the top cover for the dome and inclined roof, the change in overall heat transfer rate is minimal. The heat transfer coefficients of dome shaped and inclined roof enclosures are given and discussed.

Clonewise - detecting package-level clones using machine learning

Developers sometimes maintain an internal copy of another software or fork development of an existing project. This practice can lead to software vulnerabilities when the embedded code is not kept up to date with upstream sources. We propose an automated solution to identify clones of packages without any prior knowledge of these relationships. We then correlate clones with vulnerability information to identify outstanding security problems. This approach motivates software maintainers to avoid using cloned packages and link against system wide libraries. We propose over 30 novel features that enable us to use to use pattern classification to accurately identify package-level clones. To our knowledge, we are the first to consider clone detection as a classification problem. Our results show our system, Clonewise, compares well to manually tracked databases. Based on our work, over 30 unknown package clones and vulnerabilities have been identified and patched.