Foundational forensic techniques for cellular and ad hoc multi-hop networks

The Internet has become an integral part of our nation’s critical socio-economic infrastructure. With its heightened use and growing complexity however, organizations are at greater risk of cyber crimes. To aid in the investigation of crimes committed on or via the Internet, a network forensics analysis tool pulls together needed digital evidence. It provides a platform for performing deep network analysis by capturing, recording and analyzing network events to find out the source of a security attack or other information security incidents. Existing network forensics work has been mostly focused on the Internet and fixed networks. But the exponential growth and use of wireless technologies, coupled with their unprecedented characteristics, necessitates the development of new network forensic analysis tools. This dissertation fostered the emergence of a new research field in cellular and ad-hoc network forensics. It was one of the first works to identify this problem and offer fundamental techniques and tools that laid the groundwork for future research. In particular, it introduced novel methods to record network incidents and report logged incidents. For recording incidents, location is considered essential to documenting network incidents. However, in network topology spaces, location cannot be measured due to absence of a ‘distance metric’. Therefore, a novel solution was proposed to label locations of nodes within network topology spaces, and then to authenticate the identity of nodes in ad hoc environments. For reporting logged incidents, a novel technique based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) was adopted. Although the direct use of DHTs for reporting logged incidents would result in an uncontrollably recursive traffic, a new mechanism was introduced that overcome this recursive process. These logging and reporting techniques aided forensics over cellular and ad-hoc networks, which in turn increased their ability to track and trace attacks to their source. These techniques were a starting point for further research and development that would result in equipping future ad hoc networks with forensic components to complement existing security mechanisms.

La utopía interior: Superación del dualismo en los ensayos de Ernesto Sábato

My research attempts to demonstrate how Sábato’s essays have pursued a progressive path that reflects the evolving process of his vision. In light of his essays, I will delineate the themes of solitude, death, desperation, robotization of man, and finally, hope as the antithesis. In my analysis I examine the model created in Sartre’s Existentialism. I also visit the model followed by Nicholas Berdyaeff, who at least offers the possibility of salvation in a world conceived by and for Nothingness. I investigate how these and other tendencies had an initial influence on the essays studied in my research. I concentrate on those essays whose discourse is conditioned by the philosophical foundations of a being that inquires and discerns, discovers and denounces, and finally struggles with the impossibility of reaching the absolute. This foresight, at times apocalyptic, at times utopian, is already present in Sábato’s early works. In my study I attempt to establish how Sábato, in oscillating between the demonic and the romantic, the infernal and utopian, constructs his vision of the world through the symbiotic intertwining of both the fictional and essayistic genres. I focus on an author compromised by a constant debate with the paradoxes and dichotomies that, according to Sábato himself, define Modernity.

Infants' selective attention to faces and prosody of speech: The roles of intersensory redundancy and exploratory time

One of the overarching questions in the field of infant perceptual and cognitive development concerns how selective attention is organized during early development to facilitate learning. The following study examined how infants' selective attention to properties of social events (i.e., prosody of speech and facial identity) changes in real time as a function of intersensory redundancy (redundant audiovisual, nonredundant unimodal visual) and exploratory time. Intersensory redundancy refers to the spatially coordinated and temporally synchronous occurrence of information across multiple senses. Real time macro- and micro-structural change in infants' scanning patterns of dynamic faces was also examined. ^ According to the Intersensory Redundancy Hypothesis, information presented redundantly and in temporal synchrony across two or more senses recruits infants' selective attention and facilitates perceptual learning of highly salient amodal properties (properties that can be perceived across several sensory modalities such as the prosody of speech) at the expense of less salient modality specific properties. Conversely, information presented to only one sense facilitates infants' learning of modality specific properties (properties that are specific to a particular sensory modality such as facial features) at the expense of amodal properties (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000, 2002). ^ Infants' selective attention and discrimination of prosody of speech and facial configuration was assessed in a modified visual paired comparison paradigm. In redundant audiovisual stimulation, it was predicted infants would show discrimination of prosody of speech in the early phases of exploration and facial configuration in the later phases of exploration. Conversely, in nonredundant unimodal visual stimulation, it was predicted infants would show discrimination of facial identity in the early phases of exploration and prosody of speech in the later phases of exploration. Results provided support for the first prediction and indicated that following redundant audiovisual exposure, infants showed discrimination of prosody of speech earlier in processing time than discrimination of facial identity. Data from the nonredundant unimodal visual condition provided partial support for the second prediction and indicated that infants showed discrimination of facial identity, but not prosody of speech. The dissertation study contributes to the understanding of the nature of infants' selective attention and processing of social events across exploratory time.^

Foundational Forensic Techniques for Cellular and Ad Hoc Multi-hop Networks

The Internet has become an integral part of our nation's critical socio-economic infrastructure. With its heightened use and growing complexity however, organizations are at greater risk of cyber crimes. To aid in the investigation of crimes committed on or via the Internet, a network forensics analysis tool pulls together needed digital evidence. It provides a platform for performing deep network analysis by capturing, recording and analyzing network events to find out the source of a security attack or other information security incidents. Existing network forensics work has been mostly focused on the Internet and fixed networks. But the exponential growth and use of wireless technologies, coupled with their unprecedented characteristics, necessitates the development of new network forensic analysis tools. This dissertation fostered the emergence of a new research field in cellular and ad-hoc network forensics. It was one of the first works to identify this problem and offer fundamental techniques and tools that laid the groundwork for future research. In particular, it introduced novel methods to record network incidents and report logged incidents. For recording incidents, location is considered essential to documenting network incidents. However, in network topology spaces, location cannot be measured due to absence of a 'distance metric'. Therefore, a novel solution was proposed to label locations of nodes within network topology spaces, and then to authenticate the identity of nodes in ad hoc environments. For reporting logged incidents, a novel technique based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) was adopted. Although the direct use of DHTs for reporting logged incidents would result in an uncontrollably recursive traffic, a new mechanism was introduced that overcome this recursive process. These logging and reporting techniques aided forensics over cellular and ad-hoc networks, which in turn increased their ability to track and trace attacks to their source. These techniques were a starting point for further research and development that would result in equipping future ad hoc networks with forensic components to complement existing security mechanisms.

La utopía interior: superación del dualismo en los ensayos de Ernesto Sábato

My research attempts to demonstrate how Sábato’s essays have pursued a progressive path that reflects the evolving process of his vision. In light of his essays, I will delineate the themes of solitude, death, desperation, robotization of man, and finally, hope as the antithesis. In my analysis I examine the model created in Sartre’s Existentialism. I also visit the model followed by Nicholas Berdyaeff, who at least offers the possibility of salvation in a world conceived by and for Nothingness. I investigate how these and other tendencies had an initial influence on the essays studied in my research. I concentrate on those essays whose discourse is conditioned by the philosophical foundations of a being that inquires and discerns, discovers and denounces, and finally struggles with the impossibility of reaching the absolute. This foresight, at times apocalyptic, at times utopian, is already present in Sábato’s early works. In my study I attempt to establish how Sábato, in oscillating between the demonic and the romantic, the infernal and utopian, constructs his vision of the world through the symbiotic intertwining of both the fictional and essayistic genres. I focus on an author compromised by a constant debate with the paradoxes and dichotomies that, according to Sábato himself, define Modernity.