Economic Impact of Identity Theft in India: Lessons from Western Countries

In this computerized, globalised and internet world our computer collects various types of information’s about every human being and stores them in files secreted deep on its hard drive. Files like cache, browser history and other temporary Internet files can be used to store sensitive information like logins and passwords, names addresses, and even credit card numbers. Now, a hacker can get at this information by wrong means and share with someone else or can install some nasty software on your computer that will extract your sensitive and secret information. Identity Theft posses a very serious problem to everyone today. If you have a driver’s license, a bank account, a computer, ration card number, PAN card number, ATM card or simply a social security number you are more than at risk, you are a target. Whether you are new to the idea of ID Theft, or you have some unanswered questions, we’ve compiled a quick refresher list below that should bring you up to speed. Identity theft is a term used to refer to fraud that involves pretending to be someone else in order to steal money or get other benefits. Identity theft is a serious crime, which is increasing at tremendous rate all over the world after the Internet evolution. There is widespread agreement that identity theft causes financial damage to consumers, lending institutions, retail establishments, and the economy as a whole. Surprisingly, there is little good public information available about the scope of the crime and the actual damages it inflicts. Accounts of identity theft in recent mass media and in film or literature have centered on the exploits of 'hackers' - variously lauded or reviled - who are depicted as cleverly subverting corporate firewalls or other data protection defenses to gain unauthorized access to credit card details, personnel records and other information. Reality is more complicated, with electronic identity fraud taking a range of forms. The impact of those forms is not necessarily quantifiable as a financial loss; it can involve intangible damage to reputation, time spent dealing with disinformation and exclusion from particular services because a stolen name has been used improperly. Overall we can consider electronic networks as an enabler for identity theft, with the thief for example gaining information online for action offline and the basis for theft or other injury online. As Fisher pointed out "These new forms of hightech identity and securities fraud pose serious risks to investors and brokerage firms across the globe," I am a victim of identity theft. Being a victim of identity theft I felt the need for creating an awareness among the computer and internet users particularly youngsters in India. Nearly 70 per cent of Indian‘s population are living in villages. Government of India already started providing computer and internet facilities even to the remote villages through various rural development and rural upliftment programmes. Highly educated people, established companies, world famous financial institutions are becoming victim of identity theft. The question here is how vulnerable the illiterate and innocent rural people are if they suddenly exposed to a new device through which some one can extract and exploit their personal data without their knowledge? In this research work an attempt has been made to bring out the real problems associated with Identity theft in developed countries from an economist point of view.

Fehlersuche im Modell - Modellbasiertes Testen und Debuggen

Kern der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Erforschung von Methoden, Techniken und Werkzeugen zur Fehlersuche in modellbasierten Softwareentwicklungsprozessen. Hierzu wird zuerst ein von mir mitentwickelter, neuartiger und modellbasierter Softwareentwicklungsprozess, der sogenannte Fujaba Process, vorgestellt. Dieser Prozess wird von Usecase Szenarien getrieben, die durch spezielle Kollaborationsdiagramme formalisiert werden. Auch die weiteren Artefakte des Prozess bishin zur fertigen Applikation werden durch UML Diagrammarten modelliert. Es ist keine Programmierung im Quelltext nötig. Werkzeugunterstützung für den vorgestellte Prozess wird von dem Fujaba CASE Tool bereitgestellt. Große Teile der Werkzeugunterstützung für den Fujaba Process, darunter die Toolunterstützung für das Testen und Debuggen, wurden im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entwickelt. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wird der Fujaba Process im Detail erklärt und unsere Erfahrungen mit dem Einsatz des Prozesses in Industrieprojekten sowie in der Lehre dargestellt. Der zweite Teil beschreibt die im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entwickelte Testgenerierung, die zu einem wichtigen Teil des Fujaba Process geworden ist. Hierbei werden aus den formalisierten Usecase Szenarien ausführbare Testfälle generiert. Es wird das zugrunde liegende Konzept, die konkrete technische Umsetzung und die Erfahrungen aus der Praxis mit der entwickelten Testgenerierung dargestellt. Der letzte Teil beschäftigt sich mit dem Debuggen im Fujaba Process. Es werden verschiedene im Rahmen dieser Arbeit entwickelte Konzepte und Techniken vorgestellt, die die Fehlersuche während der Applikationsentwicklung vereinfachen. Hierbei wurde darauf geachtet, dass das Debuggen, wie alle anderen Schritte im Fujaba Process, ausschließlich auf Modellebene passiert. Unter anderem werden Techniken zur schrittweisen Ausführung von Modellen, ein Objekt Browser und ein Debugger, der die rückwärtige Ausführung von Programmen erlaubt (back-in-time debugging), vorgestellt. Alle beschriebenen Konzepte wurden in dieser Arbeit als Plugins für die Eclipse Version von Fujaba, Fujaba4Eclipse, implementiert und erprobt. Bei der Implementierung der Plugins wurde auf eine enge Integration mit Fujaba zum einen und mit Eclipse auf der anderen Seite geachtet. Zusammenfassend wird also ein Entwicklungsprozess vorgestellt, die Möglichkeit in diesem mit automatischen Tests Fehler zu identifizieren und diese Fehler dann mittels spezieller Debuggingtechniken im Programm zu lokalisieren und schließlich zu beheben. Dabei läuft der komplette Prozess auf Modellebene ab. Für die Test- und Debuggingtechniken wurden in dieser Arbeit Plugins für Fujaba4Eclipse entwickelt, die den Entwickler bestmöglich bei der zugehörigen Tätigkeit unterstützen.

Instant Storyboarding

This thesis aims at empowering software customers with a tool to build software tests them selves, based on a gradual refinement of natural language scenarios into executable visual test models. The process is divided in five steps: 1. First, a natural language parser is used to extract a graph of grammatical relations from the textual scenario descriptions. 2. The resulting graph is transformed into an informal story pattern by interpreting structurization rules based on Fujaba Story Diagrams. 3. While the informal story pattern can already be used by humans the diagram still lacks technical details, especially type information. To add them, a recommender based framework uses web sites and other resources to generate formalization rules. 4. As a preparation for the code generation the classes derived for formal story patterns are aligned across all story steps, substituting a class diagram. 5. Finally, a headless version of Fujaba is used to generate an executable JUnit test. The graph transformations used in the browser application are specified in a textual domain specific language and visualized as story pattern. Last but not least, only the heavyweight parsing (step 1) and code generation (step 5) are executed on the server side. All graph transformation steps (2, 3 and 4) are executed in the browser by an interpreter written in JavaScript/GWT. This result paves the way for online collaboration between global teams of software customers, IT business analysts and software developers.

JQuery, JSON & AJAX

The traditional web model requires each user interaction to trigger an HTTP client-server interaction that creates a new browser page. AJAX and other techniques allow the Web developer to interact with the server without the expense of recreating a new DOM.

Adobe Connect Quick User Guide to setting up your PC

This one-side-of-A4 guide discusses setting up your audio correctly and installing the Connect browser add-in.

Introduction to JavaScript Programming

These are the resources for an introductory lecture in JavaScript programming, intended to support use of node.js and divorced from browser programming.

Cuando el río suena nuestro dinero se lleva: Un reportaje sobre los planes para la recuperación del río Bogotá

Este reportaje transmedia es una propuesta novedosa en Internet que cuenta con diferentes contenidos periodísticos para medios digitales presentados en distintos formatos como: texto, vídeo, imagen, audio, infografía y animación. Dónde el navegador puede acceder a él a través de equipos móviles tales como: Smartphone, IPod, IPad, Tablet, portátiles, entre otros. En este reportaje se muestra los diferentes planes para la recuperación del río Bogotá en los últimos 12 años. La mala gestión y costos de las obras. También evidencia las distintas posiciones de las entidades encargadas para la ejecución de las obras y las historias de vida que muestran diferentes problemáticas del río.

ResponseWare student guide 2016

This document describes how students can access polls using their own device (laptop, tablet or phone) using either a web browser or an iOS or Android app.

Running Climate Models On The NERC Cluster Grid Using G-Rex

Compute grids are used widely in many areas of environmental science, but there has been limited uptake of grid computing by the climate modelling community, partly because the characteristics of many climate models make them difficult to use with popular grid middleware systems. In particular, climate models usually produce large volumes of output data, and running them usually involves complicated workflows implemented as shell scripts. For example, NEMO (Smith et al. 2008) is a state-of-the-art ocean model that is used currently for operational ocean forecasting in France, and will soon be used in the UK for both ocean forecasting and climate modelling. On a typical modern cluster, a particular one year global ocean simulation at 1-degree resolution takes about three hours when running on 40 processors, and produces roughly 20 GB of output as 50000 separate files. 50-year simulations are common, during which the model is resubmitted as a new job after each year. Running NEMO relies on a set of complicated shell scripts and command utilities for data pre-processing and post-processing prior to job resubmission. Grid Remote Execution (G-Rex) is a pure Java grid middleware system that allows scientific applications to be deployed as Web services on remote computer systems, and then launched and controlled as if they are running on the user's own computer. Although G-Rex is general purpose middleware it has two key features that make it particularly suitable for remote execution of climate models: (1) Output from the model is transferred back to the user while the run is in progress to prevent it from accumulating on the remote system and to allow the user to monitor the model; (2) The client component is a command-line program that can easily be incorporated into existing model work-flow scripts. G-Rex has a REST (Fielding, 2000) architectural style, which allows client programs to be very simple and lightweight and allows users to interact with model runs using only a basic HTTP client (such as a Web browser or the curl utility) if they wish. This design also allows for new client interfaces to be developed in other programming languages with relatively little effort. The G-Rex server is a standard Web application that runs inside a servlet container such as Apache Tomcat and is therefore easy to install and maintain by system administrators. G-Rex is employed as the middleware for the NERC1 Cluster Grid, a small grid of HPC2 clusters belonging to collaborating NERC research institutes. Currently the NEMO (Smith et al. 2008) and POLCOMS (Holt et al, 2008) ocean models are installed, and there are plans to install the Hadley Centre’s HadCM3 model for use in the decadal climate prediction project GCEP (Haines et al., 2008). The science projects involving NEMO on the Grid have a particular focus on data assimilation (Smith et al. 2008), a technique that involves constraining model simulations with observations. The POLCOMS model will play an important part in the GCOMS project (Holt et al, 2008), which aims to simulate the world’s coastal oceans. A typical use of G-Rex by a scientist to run a climate model on the NERC Cluster Grid proceeds as follows :(1) The scientist prepares input files on his or her local machine. (2) Using information provided by the Grid’s Ganglia3 monitoring system, the scientist selects an appropriate compute resource. (3) The scientist runs the relevant workflow script on his or her local machine. This is unmodified except that calls to run the model (e.g. with “mpirun”) are simply replaced with calls to "GRexRun" (4) The G-Rex middleware automatically handles the uploading of input files to the remote resource, and the downloading of output files back to the user, including their deletion from the remote system, during the run. (5) The scientist monitors the output files, using familiar analysis and visualization tools on his or her own local machine. G-Rex is well suited to climate modelling because it addresses many of the middleware usability issues that have led to limited uptake of grid computing by climate scientists. It is a lightweight, low-impact and easy-to-install solution that is currently designed for use in relatively small grids such as the NERC Cluster Grid. A current topic of research is the use of G-Rex as an easy-to-use front-end to larger-scale Grid resources such as the UK National Grid service.

Improving CS-4 user data rate in GPRS enabled devices by using a BLER co-processor

The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) was developed to allow packet data to be transported efficiently over an existing circuit switched radio network. The main applications for GPRS are in transporting IP datagram’s from the user’s mobile Internet browser to and from the Internet, or in telemetry equipment. A simple Error Detection and Correction (EDC) scheme to improve the GPRS Block Error Rate (BLER) performance is presented, particularly for coding scheme 4 (CS-4), however gains in other coding schemes are seen. For every GPRS radio block that is corrected by the EDC scheme, the block does not need to be retransmitted releasing bandwidth in the channel, improving throughput and the user’s application data rate. As GPRS requires intensive processing in the baseband, a viable hardware solution for a GPRS BLER co-processor is discussed that has been currently implemented in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and presented in this paper.

Ocean data dissemination: new challenges for data integration

In the decade since OceanObs `99, great advances have been made in the field of ocean data dissemination. The use of Internet technologies has transformed the landscape: users can now find, evaluate and access data rapidly and securely using only a web browser. This paper describes the current state of the art in dissemination methods for ocean data, focussing particularly on ocean observations from in situ and remote sensing platforms. We discuss current efforts being made to improve the consistency of delivered data and to increase the potential for automated integration of diverse datasets. An important recent development is the adoption of open standards from the Geographic Information Systems community; we discuss the current impact of these new technologies and their future potential. We conclude that new approaches will indeed be necessary to exchange data more effectively and forge links between communities, but these approaches must be evaluated critically through practical tests, and existing ocean data exchange technologies must be used to their best advantage. Investment in key technology components, cross-community pilot projects and the enhancement of end-user software tools will be required in order to assess and demonstrate the value of any new technology.

En applikationsinfrastruktur för massutskick av e-post

In today's society it is becoming more and more important with direct marketing. Some of the direct marketing is done through e-mail, in which companies see an easy way to advertise himself. I did this thesis work at WebDoc Systems. They have a product that creates web documents directly in your browser, also called CMS. The CMS has a module for sending mass e-mail, but this module does not function properly and WebDoc Systems customers are dissatisfied with that part of the product. The problem with the module was that sometimes it didn't send the e-mail, and that it was not possible to obtain some form of follow-up information on the e-mail. The goal of this work was to develop a Web service that could easily send e-mail to many receivers, just as easily be able to view statistics on how mailing has gone. The first step was to do a literature review to get a good picture of available programming platforms, but also to be able create a good application infrastructure. The next step was to implement this design and improve it over time by using an iterative development methodology. The result was an application infrastructure that consists of three main parts and a plugin interface. The parts that were implemented were a Web service application, a Web application and a Windows service application. The three elements cooperate with each other and share a database, and plugins.

Forensiska Undersökningar av Molntjänster

Användning av molntjänster har gjort forensiska undersökningar mer komplicerade. Däremot finns det goda förutsättningar om molnleverantörerna skapar tjänster för att få ut all information. Det skulle göra det enklare och mer tillförlitligt. Informationen som ska tas ut från molntjänsterna är svår att få ut på ett korrekt sätt. Undersökningen görs inte på en skrivskyddad kopia, utan i en miljö som riskerar att förändras. Det är då möjligt att ändringar görs under tiden datan hämtas ut, vilket inte alltid syns. Det går heller inte att jämföra skillnaderna genom att ta hashsummor på filerna som görs vid forensiska undersökningar av datorer. Därför är det viktigt att dokumentera hur informationen har tagits ut, helst genom att filma datorskärmen under tiden informationen tas ut. Informationen finns sparad på flera platser då molntjänsterna Office 365 och Google Apps används, både i molnet och på den eller de datorer som har använts för att ansluta till molntjänsten. Webbläsare sparar mycket information om vad som har gjorts. Därför är det viktigt att det går att ta reda på vilka datorer som har använts för att ansluta sig till molntjänsten, vilket idag inte möjligt. Om det är möjligt att undersöka de datorer som använts kan bevis som inte finns kvar i molnet hittas. Det bästa ur forensisk synvinkel skulle vara om leverantörerna av molntjänster erbjöd en tjänst som hämtar ut all data som rör en användare, inklusive alla relevanta loggar. Då skulle det ske på ett mycket säkrare sätt, då det inte skulle gå att ändra informationen under tiden den hämtas ut. 

Twitter: microblog e rede social

Trata-se de uma pesquisa exploratória sobre o Twitter, um tipo rede social na Internet em formato de microblog. A questão central foi compreender a popularização do serviço, sobretudo no Brasil, e como este pode ser utilizado como ferramenta de comunicação pessoal ou, mesmo, corporativa. Este estudo preliminar foi desenvolvido por meio de pesquisa documental sobre redes sociais na Internet e pesquisa exploratória, com base em artigos publicados sobre o Twitter. A principal constatação é que a utilização das redes sociais como o Twitter para difusão de informações, sejam pessoais, sejam corporativas, utilizando-se de perfis reais e institucionais em sua divulgação, gera maior credibilidade das ações desenvolvidas, bem como estas são mais rápidas e podem ser acessadas via browser ou aplicativos que rodam em outros gadgets, como celulares ou smartphones.

Uma interface visual para modelos de bancos de dados orientados a objetos com suporte para versões

Este trabalho apresenta o projeto de uma interface visual para modelos de bancos de dados orientados a objetos, com suporte para versões. Um requisito importante, não atendido pelas interfaces visuais específicas e genéricas para sistemas orientados a objetos, é a capacidade de definir e manipular versões de um objeto nos vários níveis da hierarquia de classes (herança por extensão, adotada pelo modelo de versões [GOL 95]). As interfaces, que manipulam versões, suportam essa característica no nível mais especializado da hierarquia (herança por refinamento, adotada pelos principais SGBDOOs). Procurando prover a possibilidade do versionamento de objetos nos vários níveis da hierarquia de classes, surgiu a motivação para projetar e desenvolver uma interface visual com funcionalidades de interfaces existentes (específicas e genéricas) e que obedeça às características principais dos Modelos de Dados Orientados a Objetos e do Modelo de Versões [GOL 95], seguindo as características recomendadas para interfaces visuais para MDOOs, propostas em [SIL 96]. Foi implementado um protótipo com algumas das características projetadas para o browser de objeto e seu suporte para versões.