Shortest path algorithms have played a key role in the past century, paving the way for modern day GPS systems to find optimal routes along static systems in fractions of a second. One application of these algorithms includes optimizing the total distance of power lines (specifically in star topological configurations). Due to the relevancy of discovering well-connected electrical systems in certain areas, finding a minimum path that is able to account for geological features would have far-reaching consequences in lowering the cost of electric power transmission. We initialize our research by proving the convex hull as an effective bounding mechanism for star topological minimum path algorithms. Building off this bounding, we propose novel algorithms to manage certain cases that lack existing methods (weighted regions and obstacles) by discretizing Euclidean space into squares and combining pre-existing algorithms that calculate local minimums that we believe have a possibility of being the absolute minimum. We further designate ways to evaluate iterations necessary to reach some level of accuracy. Both of these novel algorithms fulfill certain niches that past literature does not cover.

This is an Innovate Practice Full Paper. The Cloud has become a principal paradigm of computing in the last ten years, and Computer Science curricula must be updated to reflect that reality. This paper examines simple ways to accomplish curriculum cloudification using Amazon Web Services (AWS), for Computer Science and other disciplines such as Business, Communication and Mathematics.

This paper re-examines the content of a standard advanced course in Cybersecurity from the perspective of Cloud Computing. More precisely, we review the core concepts of Cybersecurity, as presented in a senior undergraduate or graduate class, in light of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

Every organization needs to communicate with its audience, and social media is an attractive and inexpensive way to maintain dialogic communication. About 1/3 of the Internet web pages are powered by WordPress, and about a million companies have moved their IT infrastructure to the AWS cloud. Together, AWS and WordPress offer an attractive, effective and inexpensive way for companies, both large and small, to maintain their presence on the web.

In the public imagination Cybersecurity is very much about malware, even though malware constitutes only part of all the threats faced by Cybersecurity experts. However, malware is still one of the best methods to gain persistent access and control of a target system. Malware is often combined with a well socially-engineered phishing attack that deceives a user to gain a foothold on a system. Once the attakcer gains a beachhead in the victim’s network, it may be used to download additional payloads and exploit vulnerabilities, to gain more control and access within a network. Using malware as their foothold, attackers are able to to conduct reconnaissance, gather intelligence (e.g., exfiltration of intellectual property) or simply inflict damage or extortion (e.g., ransomware). All of this has to be done in a way that allows an attacker to retain access for as long as possible; the ability to do so is called persistence, and this paper examines the different techniques used by malware to accomplish persistence in an ever evolving landscape.

Attribution, the ability to match events on the Internet to actors who caused them, is a difficult problem in Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics. The Internet was not designed to track behavior of users [1]; instead, it is a common open platform that is propitious to anonymity. Different actors take advantage of this anonymity, and if they break the law, it is up to law enforcement to track them, i.e., to attribute actions to actors in way that would stand up in court. In this paper we present a tool, called Voyager, based on the idea of a tracking pixel, which can help investigators with attribution.

We propose parametrized families of algorithms for approximating inconsistent matrices with consistent ones. We present experimental results, and optimize distance versus performance.

Compelling evidence against a heedless group theory generalization of pairwise comparisons elements is provided by means of counter-examples and mathematical reasoning. The lack of acceptable semantics for selected groups (with negative and complex numbers) and implications are analyzed. This study also provides examples and mathematical reasoning indicating why inconsistency indicators for pairwise comparisons require normalization. Methodological inconsistencies in using group theory for pairwise comparisons should be made public to the scientific community for further discussion and research.

As our world of digital devices continues to expand, the amount of digital evidence encountered by law enforcement during case investigation is ever increasing. Faced with a preponderance of high capacity digital media devices, forensic investigators must be able to review them quickly, and establish which devices merit further attention. Utilizing a small single-board computer called Raspberry Pi, this mobile digital forensics triage device provides fast, targeted feedback for immediate evidence assessment. A digital forensic device is presented in this paper. It is named SEAKER (Storage Evaluator and Knowledge Extraction Reader)[1] and it enables forensic investigators to perform triage on many digital devices very quickly. Developed for on -scene, time-sensitive investigations, its utility extends to preventing over-collection and large backlogs at digital forensics labs worldwide. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of KES International.

This article explores the relationship between inconsistency in the pairwise comparisons method and conditions of order preservation. A pairwise comparisons matrix with elements from an alo-group (an Abelian, linearly ordered group) is investigated. This approach allows for a generalization of previous results. Sufficient conditions for order preservation based on the properties of elements of pairwise comparisons matrix are derived. Elucidating numerical examples are presented. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The threat of social engineering is one that affects not only the financial and reputational well-being of corporate entities but also the basic rights of individuals to privacy. Methods common to health campaigns used to disseminate information warning against social engineering have the potential for success. By providing potential scenarios and exact descriptions of threats, the recipients of the messages might become more aware of the dangers posed through the Internet. Case studies of effective health campaigns will be examined, as well as specific threats that could be avoided by more awareness on the part of the individual. Psychological effects of different techniques and the way that general knowledge can help to prevent social engineering attacks will also be examined.

Faced with a preponderance of high capacity digital media devices, forensic investigators must be able to review them quickly, and establish which devices merit further attention. This early stage of an investigation is called triage and it is a chief part of evidence assessment; see [1, Chap. 2]. In this paper we present a digital forensic device, which we named SEAKER (Storage Evaluator and Knowledge Extraction Reader), which enables forensic investigators to perform triage on many digital devices very quickly. Instead of imaging the drives, which takes hours, SEAKER does a search for files with names that conform to pre-established patterns. The search is done by mounting the devices in read-only mode (to preserve evidence) and listing the contents of the device. Unlike imaging, this approach takes minutes rather than hours. Also, SEAKER's hardware consists principally of a Raspberry Pi (RP) and so it is very inexpensive—this is crucial in this era of budgetary constraints; see [2]. Once SEAKER has identified media devices of interest, those can be confiscated for further investigation in a lab. But devices that do not have hits can be left at the scene. This has two principal benefits: forensic examiners can concentrate on those devices that are promising in terms of evidence for the given investigation, and devices without hits are not confiscated from legitimate users.

Indeterminate strings have received considerable attention in the recent past; see for example [1] and [3]. This attention is due to their applicability in bioinformatics, and to the natural correspondence with undirected graphs. One aspect of this correspondence is the fact that the minimum alphabet size of indeterminates representing any given undirected graph equals the size of the minimal clique cover of this graph. This paper first considers a related problem proposed in [3]: characterize Θn(m), which is the size of the largest possible minimal clique cover (i.e., an exact upper bound), and hence alphabet size of the corresponding indeterminate, of any graph on n vertices and m edges. We provide improvements to the known upper bound for Θn(m) in section 3.3. [3] also presents an algorithm which finds clique covers in polynomial time. We build on this result with a heuristic for vertex sorting which significantly improves their algorithm's results, particularly in dense graphs.

A new formal framework for Stringology is proposed, which consists of a three-sorted logical theory S designed to capture the combinatorial reasoning about finite strings. We propose a language L S for expressing assertions about strings, and study in detail two sets of formulas Σ 0 B, a set of formulas decidable in polytime, and Σ 1 B, a set of formulas with the property that those provable in S yield polytime algorithms.

In this study, we provide mathematical and practice-driven justification for using [0,1] normalization of inconsistency indicators in pairwise comparisons. The need for normalization, as well as problems with the lack of normalization, is presented. A new type of paradox of infinity is described.

As discussed at length in Christodoulakis et al. (2015) [3], there is a natural one-many correspondence between simple undirected graphs G with vertex set V={1,2,…,n} and indeterminate strings x=x[1..n] — that is, sequences of subsets of some alphabet Σ. In this paper, given G, we consider the “reverse engineering” problem of computing a corresponding x on an alphabet Σmin of minimum cardinality. This turns out to be equivalent to the NP-hard problem of computing the intersection number of G, thus in turn equivalent to the clique cover problem. We describe a heuristic algorithm that computes an approximation to Σmin and a corresponding x. We give various properties of our algorithm, including some experimental evidence that on average it requires O(n2log⁡n) time. We compare it with other heuristics, and state some conjectures and open problems.

Indeterminate strings have received considerable attention in the recent past; see for example Christodoulakis et al 2015 and Helling et al 2017. This attention is due to their applicability in bioinformatics, and to the natural correspondence with undirected graphs. One aspect of this correspondence is the fact that the minimal alphabet size of indeterminates representing any given undirected graph corresponds to the size of the minimal clique cover of this graph. This paper solves a related problem proposed in Helling et al 2017: compute $Θ_n(m)$, which is the size of the largest possible minimal clique cover (i.e., an exact upper bound), and hence alphabet size of the corresponding indeterminate, of any graph on $n$ vertices and $m$ edges.

This study has been inspired by numerous requests for clarification from researchers who often confuse Saaty's Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the pairwise comparisons (PC) method, taking AHP as the only representation of PC. This study should be regarded as an interpretation and clarification of past investigations of PC. In addition, this article is a reflection on general PC research at a higher level of abstraction: the philosophy of science. It delves into the foundations and implications of pairwise comparisons. Some results of this study are based on a recently published work by Koczkodaj and Szwarc. Finally, open problems have also been reported for future research.

Thue [14] showed that there exist arbitrarily long square-free strings over an alphabet of three symbols (not true for two symbols). An open problem was posed in [ 7], which is a generalization of Thue's original result: given an alphabet list L = L-1,..., L-n, where vertical bar L-i vertical bar = 3, is it always possible to find a square-free string, w = w(1)w(2)...w(n), where w(i) is an element of L-i? In this paper we show that squares can be forced on square-free strings over alphabet lists iff a suffix of the square-free string conforms to a pattern which we term as an offending suffix. We also prove properties of offending suffixes. However, the problem remains tantalizingly open.