Aspect-oriented Research Articles

Utilizing AspectJ for Defense Against Evasive Malware Attacks in Android System

Introduction: Mobile devices have become an integral part of our digital lives, facilitating various tasks and storing a treasure trove of sensitive information. However, as more people utilize mobile devices, sophisticated cyber threats are emerging to elude traditional security measures. Method: The use of evasion techniques by malicious actors presents a significant challenge to mobile security, necessitating creative solutions. In this work, we investigate the potential critical role that the aspect-oriented programming paradigm AspectJ can play in strengthening mobile security against evasion attempts. Evasion techniques cover a wide range of tactics, including runtime manipulation, code obfuscation, and unauthorized data access. Results: These tactics usually aim to bypass detection and avoid security measures. In order to address the aforementioned issues, this paper uses AspectJ to give developers a flexible and dynamic way to add aspects to their coding structures so they can monitor, intercept, and respond to evasive actions. It illustrates how AspectJ can improve mobile security and counteract the long-lasting risks that evasion techniques present in a dynamic threat landscape. Conclusion: Consequently, this work proposes a novel defense mechanism incorporating AspectJ into a significant paradigm of security against evasion with 91.33% accuracy and demonstrates the successful detection of evasive attacks.

Towards improving aspect-oriented software reusability estimation

Nowadays, large numbers of organizations may opt for Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP), which is an enhancement to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). This is due to the addition of a number of concepts that have assisted in the production of more flexible and reusable components. One of the most important elements added by AOP is software reuse, which is based on reusability attributes. These attributes indicate the possibility of reusing one or more components in the development of a new system. It is one of the most essential attributes to evaluate the quality of a system’s components. Thus far, little attention has been paid to the process of measuring AOP reusability, and it has not yet been standardized. The objective of the current study is to come up with a reasonable measurement for AOP software reuse, which is simultaneously a significant topic for researchers while offering several advantages for organizations. Although numerous models have been built to estimate the reusability of software, most of them are not dedicated to Aspect-Oriented Software (AOS). In this study, a model has been designed for AOS reusability estimation and measurement based on a new equation depending on five attributes that have a range of positive and negative impacts on AOS reusability. Three of those attributes, namely coupling, cohesion, and design size, have been included in previous studies. This study proposes complexity and generality as two new attributes to be considered. Each of these attributes was measured based on the metrics also proposed in this study. A new equation to calculate AOS reusability was constructed based on the most important reusability attributes and metrics. Seven aspect projects were employed as a case study to apply the proposed equation. After the proposed equation was applied to the selected projects, we obtained new values of reusability to compare with the values that resulted from applying the previous equation. The fact that new values emerged indicates that the proposed reusability metrics and attributes had a significant effect.

Pharo: A reflective language—Analyzing the reflective API and its internal dependencies

Reflective operations are powerful APIs (Application Programming Interface) that let developers build advanced tools and architectures. Reflective operations are used for implementing tools and development environments (e.g., compilers, debuggers, inspectors) or language features (e.g., distributed systems, exceptions, proxies, aspect-oriented programming). In addition, languages are evolving, introducing better concepts, and revising practices and APIs. Since 2008 Pharo has evolved from Squeak and its reflective API has evolved accordingly, diverging consequently from the original Smalltalk reflective API. With more than 500 reflective methods identified, Pharo has one of the largest reflective feature sets ranging from structural reflection to on-demand stack reification. Those operations are often built on top of the other, creating different layers of reflective operations, from low-level to high-level ones.There is a need to understand the current reflective APIs to understand their underlying use, potential dependencies, and whether some reflective features can be scoped and optional. Such an analysis is challenged by new metaobjects organically introduced in the system, such as first-class instance variables, and their mixture with the base-level API of objects and classes.In this article, we analyze the reflective operations used in Pharo 12 and their interdependencies. We propose a classification based on their semantics and we identify a set of issues of the current implementation. Such an analysis of reflective operations in Pharo is important to support the revision of the reflective layer and its potential redesign.

Design and Implementation of an Aspect-Oriented C Programming Language

Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) is a programming paradigm that implements crosscutting concerns in a modular way. People have witnessed the prosperity of AOP languages for Java and C++, such as AspectJ and AspectC++, which has propelled AOP to become an important programming paradigm with many interesting application scenarios, e.g., runtime verification. In contrast, the AOP languages for C are still poor and lack compiler support. In this paper, we design a new general-purpose and expressive aspect-oriented C programming language, namely Aclang, and implement a compiler for it, which brings fully-fledged AOP support into the C domain. We have evaluated the effectiveness and performance of our compiler against two state-of-the-art tools, ACC and AspectC++. In terms of effectiveness, Aclang outperforms ACC and AspectC++. In terms of performance, Aclang outperforms ACC in execution time and outperforms AspectC++ in both execution time and memory consumption.

Forward-Oriented Programming: A meta-DSL for fast development of component libraries

Libraries that implement Domain-Specific Language (DSL) components keep gaining traction when it comes to developing software for specific application domains. However, creating components that can be organically weaved into use cases is an extremely complex task. In this work, we introduce a meta-DSL to assist library development, called Forward-Oriented Programming (FOP). This combines lazy evaluation and aspect-oriented programming principles to align crosscutting component configurations and alter their execution outcomes depending on usage in subsequent code. Theoretical analysis shows that FOP simplifies component development and makes their combination logic learnable by library users. We realize the paradigm with a Python package, called pyfop, and conduct a case study that compares it with purely functional and object-oriented library implementations. In the study, source code quality metrics demonstrate reduced time and effort to write library components, and increased comprehensibility. Configurations are shared without modifying distant code segments.

An ASCON AOP-SystemC Environment for Security Fault Analysis

Cryptographic devices’ complexity necessitates fast security simulation environments against fault attacks. SystemC, a promising candidate in Electronic System Levels (ESLs), can achieve higher simulation speeds while maintaining accuracy and reliability, and its modular and hierarchical design allows for efficient modeling of complex cryptographic algorithms and protocols. However, code modification is required for fault injection and detection. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) can test cryptographic models’ robustness without modifications, potentially replacing real cryptanalysis schemes and reducing the time and effort required for fault injection and detection. Through the utilization of a fault injection/detection environment, this paper presents a novel approach to simulating the security fault attacks of ASCON cryptographic systems at the ESL. The purpose of this methodology is to evaluate the resistance of ASCON SystemC models against fault attacks. The proposed methodology leverages the advantages of AOP to enhance the fault injection and detection process. By applying AOP techniques, we inject faults into the SystemC models without making any changes to the main codebase. This approach not only improves the efficiency of testing cryptographic systems but also ensures that the main functionality remains intact during the fault injection process. The methodology was validated using three scenarios and SystemC ASCON as a case study. The first simulation involved evaluating fault detection capabilities, the second focused on the impact of AOP on executable file size and simulation time, and the third focused on the ESL impact on the ASCON design process. Simulation results show that this methodology can perfectly evaluate the robustness of the ASCON design against fault injection attacks with no significant impact on simulation time and file executable size. Additionally, the simulation results prove that the ASCON development life cycle at the ESL reduces the amount of time devoted to the design procedure by 83.34%, and the ASCON security attack simulations at the ESL decrease the simulation time by 40% compared to the register transfer level (RTL).

Improving web-oriented information systems efficiency using Redis caching mechanisms

The responsiveness of a web application with minimum latency time and maximum web pages loading speed is determined by its overall performance. When dealing with a large number of users and amount of data, the performance of web applications is significantly affected by ways of data processing, storage and access. This paper identifies the significance of data caching process to speed up access to relational database. The study examines approaches to improve the performance of web applications through the joint use of MySQL relational database management system (DBMS) and Redis NoSQL DBMS. The practical part of the study presents a description of a web application built based on Java and Spring Boot framework. The paper proposes the implementation of the caching strategies that take into account the principles of aspect-oriented programming. Made experiments on performance testing of the developed web application with and without caching are presented. The presented results of the study allowed us to conclude that it is possible to improve the performance of web applications by the optimal use of caching strategies when performing database queries.

Non-Intrusive Continuous Monitoring of Smart City Platforms

Smart city platforms provide several services to facilitate the development of applications. Such platforms typically manage several applications, deal with a large volume of data, and serve many devices and users that generate a high volume of requests. The large number of requests to handle and the complex operations to perform often cause overloads on the platform, degrading the quality of service provided to users and applications. In this context, monitoring the underlying computational infrastructure in which smart city platforms and applications are deployed and the platform operations is essential. The monitoring process can allow for examining fluctuations in the behavior of the platform's components to detect performance degradation and overloads (including unforeseen ones), contribute to avoiding interruptions in the platform's services, and increase its scalability to assimilate significant amounts of requests, devices, and users. This paper presents a strategy and architecture to enable the non-intrusive monitoring of operations on smart city platforms and their underlying infrastructure. The proposal covers monitoring at multiple levels and is based on the aspect-oriented programming (AOP) paradigm so that it is possible to monitor the platform's operations without intervening in the platform's implementation or generating coupling regarding monitoring. This paper presents the implementation of the monitoring architecture and its instantiation in the context of Smart Geo Layers (SGeoL), a platform that has been used in several real-world smart city applications. This paper also reports the results of computational experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed monitoring architecture for response time to requests, CPU usage, and RAM utilization. The obtained results show an evident increase in response time with the number of simultaneous requests and a significant correlation between the response time and the CPU utilization in the deployment of the monitoring architecture.

OSM: Leveraging model checking for observing dynamic behaviors in aspect-oriented applications

In the intricate domain of software systems verification, dynamically model checking multifaceted system characteristics remains paramount, yet challenging. This research proposes the advanced observe-based statistical model-checking (OSM) framework, devised to craft executable formal models directly from foundational system code. Leveraging model checking predicates, the framework melds seamlessly with aspect-oriented programming paradigms, yielding a potent method for the analytical verification of varied behavioral attributes. Exploiting the transformative capacity of OSM framework, primary system code undergoes a systematic metamorphosis into multifaceted analysis constructs. This not only simplifies the model verification process but also orchestrates feature interactions using an innovative observing join point abstraction mechanism. Within this framework, components encompassing parsing, formal verification, computational analytics, and rigorous validation are intrinsically interwoven. Marrying the principles of model checking with aspect-oriented (AO) modularization, OSM framework stands as a paragon, proficiently scrutinizing and affirming system specifications. This ensures the unyielding performance of electronic health record systems amidst shifting preconditions. OSM framework offers runtime verification of both object-oriented and AO deployments, positioning itself as an indispensable open-source resource, poised to automate the enhancement of system performance and scalability.

ASPECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING AND EXCEPTION WRAPPING: A CASE STUDY OF A WRAPPER LIBRARY

ASPECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING AND EXCEPTION WRAPPING: A CASE STUDY OF A WRAPPER LIBRARY

HODG:high-order discontinuous Galerkin methods for solving compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations - an open-source component-based development framework

In this work, we present HODG, an open-source component-based development framework based on high order Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods for solving compressible Euler and Navier-Stokes equations. This framework is written in pure C++11, and proposes “component” as the basic function unit, which is the key to the Interface-Oriented Programming principle and Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) technology. Built on the top-level design of components, HODG is a flexible yet pragmatic development framework that works right out of the box and is easy to use for starters and developers.The current release of HODG supports structured, unstructured, hybrid, and second-order meshes available. It is capable of solving Euler and Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations in two dimensions and three dimensions. In this development framework, spatial accuracy is easy to be extended to higher orders, and DG-P0, DG-P1, DG-P2 (up to third order) are implemented in the current version. Moreover, implicit temporal discretization and explicit discretization are available. Especially for viscous fluxes, the direct Discontinuous Galerkin (DDG) formulation and Bassi and Rebay II (BR2) scheme are implemented. In the case of strong discontinuities or shock waves, artificial viscosity is applied to capture shock waves. Various benchmark numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the full capabilities of HODG. The software is freely available under an MIT license. Program summaryProgram Title: HODG v2.0.0CPC Library link to program files:https://doi.org/10.17632/835732yz8s.1Code Ocean capsule:https://codeocean.com/capsule/4788938Licensing provisions: MITProgramming language: C++11Nature of problem: Compressible Euler and Navier–Stokes equations of fluid dynamics; potential for any advection–diffusion type problem.Solution method: DG-P0, DG-P1, DG-P2 spatial discretization, combining with DDG and BR2 schemes for viscous fluxes, explicit and implicit time schemes, and supporting structured, unstructured, hybrid, and high-order meshes.unusual features: developed based on modern C++11 features; propose the “component” as basic function unit, which follows the practice of Interface-Oriented Programming principle; Special component named “action” is used, and is the key to AOP technology in this framework; Implicitly implements the Dependency Injection (DI) technology; Flexible yet pragmatic, and works right out of the box.

On the Progressive Views on the Economic Entities’ Governance in Various Regions of the Globe

XXII International Conference on the History of Management Thought and Business “Development of views on regional Economic management in the countries of the world: History and modernity” was held on July 1 and 2, 2022 at the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University. The event was announced in the informational paper of the journal “Management Sciences” [2022;12(1):96–98]. The participants at the conference were asked the following questions:— Why did ideas and concepts of regional economic management arise and develop?— How did the authors’ views of the concepts of regional governance differ and what were the factors and reasons for changing these views?— Which way and what aspect languages (political, economic, socio-cultural, etc.) were measured and estimated the concepts and results of conflict governance in managing the economies of regions in various countries of the world?— How and why did the views change on the staffing of regional economic management processes?Over 90 people attended the conference (in online and offline forms) — students, masters, graduate students, lecturers, scientists and practitioners from 6 countries. They had read 32 lectures and reports. This paper provides an analytical review of some of them.

A Software Quality Prediction Model for Aspect Oriented System using Neuro-Fuzzy Approach

Nowadays, the usage of software has increased exponentially in various fields like education systems, industries, health systems, and many others. Various software architectures are already available in the market e.g. modular oriented, component-based, object-oriented, aspect-oriented, etc. Aspect-Oriented (AO) system software has gained much attention due to its superior features to the aforementioned systems. However, AO systems face the challenges of being complex and hard testing environment, a quality assessment of these systems is necessary. In this paper, a software quality estimation model for aspect oriented system using neuro-fuzzy approach has been developed. For which, a detailed study on aspect oriented systems has been accomplished in terms of various attributes affecting the quality of these software. In this paper, a framework of software quality prediction model has been designed using the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference engine (ANFIS) approach. Data of 200 software pieces have been collected in this study where 150 software data is used to train the ANFIS model whereas 50 software data is used for testing purposes. The quality estimated by the proposed ANFIS model is compared with the actual quality of these software data and quantitative analysis is performed in terms of error measures. Finally, it was found that the proposed ANFIS model worked better in terms of MSE, MRE, MARE, MBRE, and MIBRE error measures.

A Case of Lenition-Fortition and Honorific Asymmetry in Limbu Native's Nepali Speech

This article aims to observe why deviations occur in the Limbu natives' speech while speaking the Nepali language. The objective of the study is to find out the factors which are responsible for the distorted form of Nepali speech uttered by the Limbu natives. Basically, the analysis is based on the phonological and sociolinguistic theories. The phonological aspect is concerned with the sound system of both languages. From the sociolinguistic aspect, Nepali and Limbu languages have a sharp contrast in the use of honorific expressions. In the process of analysis, the study has revealed that the Limbu language has less number of sounds than the Nepali language. In addition, eight consonants play a crucial role to cause the deviation in Nepali speech uttered by the Limbu natives. The Nepali language exhibits the five-layered honorific pronominal subjects with parallel verb conjugations. In contrast, the Limbu does possess only one form. The article can be useful to create a way for interested individuals to deepen their understanding of the reasons behind the deviations committed by the native of one language-speaking another language.

Aspect Oriented Programming: Trends and Applications

The competitive advantage of aspect oriented programming (AOP) is that it improves the maintainability and understandability of software systems by modularizing crosscutting concerns. However, some concerns, such as logging or debugging, may be overlooked and should be entangled and distributed across the code base. AOP is a software development paradigm that enables developers to capture crosscutting concerns in split-aspect modes. Additionally, it is a novel notion that has the potential to improve the quality of software programs by removing the complexity involved with the production of code tangles via the usage of separation of concerns. As a result, it provides more modularity. Throughout its early development, some believed that AOP was easier to build and maintain than other implementations since it was based on an existing one. The statements are predicated on the premise that local improvements are easier to implement. Additionally, without appropriate visualization tools for both static and dynamic structures, cross-cutting challenges may be difficult for developers and researchers to appreciate. In recent years, AspectJ has begun to enable the depiction of crosscutting concerns via the release of IDE plugins. This article explains aspect oriented programming and how it may be used to improve the readability and maintainability of software projects. Additionally, it will evaluate the challenges it presents to application developers and academics.

The Discovery of Aspect: A Heuristic Parallel Corpus Study of Ingressive, Continuative and Resumptive Viewpoint Aspect

Languages differ in how systematically and obligatorily they encode conceptual categories such as tense and aspect. By drawing on large parallel corpora, these differences can be exploited heuristically: expressive obligatoriness and the systematicity of a conceptual category in one language can function as a probe for other languages that do not (evidently) encode it. This study applies this method—called heuristic translation mining (HTM)—to viewpoint aspect in Mandarin (an aspect-oriented language) and Dutch (a non-aspect-oriented language). Specifically, it takes the Mandarin aspect markers 起来-qilai (“ingressive”) and 下去-xiaqu (“continuative”) and collects translation strategies for these markers from a corpus of five Mandarin novels and their Dutch translations. The outcomes are methodological, descriptive and theoretical in nature. Methodologically, it is shown how conceptual templates consisting of temporal boundaries and phases facilitate annotating specific types of viewpoint aspect consistently. Descriptively, the exercise indicates at which linguistic levels viewpoint aspect may be encoded in a non-aspect-oriented language. Theoretically, conducting an HTM analysis with several aspect markers at once makes it possible to quantify (non-)marking of conceptual content; it turns out that the types of viewpoint under study correspond to varying marking frequencies, which may correlate with conceptual complexity.

Visualization of aspect-oriented programs using city transportation metaphor

Visualization of aspect-oriented programs using city transportation metaphor

Visual aids in teaching ukrainian as a foreign language

The significantly accelerating pace of life and the increasing amount of information along with the emergence of new cognitive features of modern students have triggered the necessity to select the appropriate ways of presenting educational information. One of the ways to solve the problem is to involve various aids for visualizing knowledge, by providing language and communicative samples during the language training process of foreign students at Ukrainian higher education institutions. This article reveals the essence of the visualization concept, substantiates its use in teaching the Ukrainian language to foreign students, and covers the principles of visual aids selection such as goal orientation, functionality, complexity, and system quantization. The article provides the experimentally tested types of educational materials created with the help of visualization, such as infographics, word clouds, mental maps, memes, and wimmelbuchs. It is proved that the implementation of visual aids in the educational process also has a positive effect on the formation of cognitive interests, and improves the development of such qualities as initiative, independence, and tolerance in intercultural communication. The obtained results show that the selected types of visual aids foster the conscious acquisition of the Ukrainian language, the formation of aspect language skills, and the development of language skills as the basis of communicative competence of foreign students. The authors outline the role of Ukrainian teachers: to create such visual aids which not only complement the language materials but also reflect the socio-cultural context, i.e., form part of the Ukrainian-speaking environment. The use of the proposed set of visual aids for language training of foreign students provides ample opportunities for the formation of phonetic, lexical-grammatical, and communication skills, creates the effect of immersing a foreigner in the linguistic and cultural context visualizing each fragment of communicative interaction in brief form, and at the same time fulfills the function of a visual stimulus for communication.

An AOP-Based Security Verification Environment for KECCAK Hash燗lgorithm

Robustness of the electronic cryptographic devices against fault injection attacks is a great concern to ensure security. Due to significant resource constraints, these devices are limited in their capabilities. The increasing complexity of cryptographic devices necessitates the development of a fast simulation environment capable of performing security tests against fault injection attacks. SystemC is a good choice for Electronic System Level (ESL) modeling since it enables models to run at a faster rate. To enable fault injection and detection inside a SystemC cryptographic model, however, the model’s source code must be updated. Without altering the source code, Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) may be used to evaluate the robustness of cryptographic models. This might replace conventional cryptanalysis methods in the real world. At the ESL, we discuss a unique technique for simulating security fault attacks on cryptographic systems. The current study presents a fault injection/detection environment for assessing the KECCAK SystemC model’s resistance against fault injection attacks. The approach of injecting faults into KECCAK SystemC model is accomplished via the use of weaving faults in AspectC++ based on AOP programming language. We confirm our technique by applying it to two scenarios using a SystemC KECCAK hash algorithm case study: The first concerns discuss the effect of the AOP on fault detection capabilities, while the second concerns discuss the effect of the AOP on simulation time and executable file size. The simulation results demonstrate that this technique is fully capable of evaluating the fault injection resistance of a KECCAK design. They demonstrate that AOP has a negligible effect on simulation time and executable file size.

Automated and non-intrusive provenance capture with UML2PROV

Data provenance is a form of knowledge graph providing an account of what a system performs, describing the data involved, and the processes carried out over them. It is crucial to ascertaining the origin of data, validating their quality, auditing applications behaviours, and, ultimately, making them accountable. However, instrumenting applications, especially legacy ones, to track the provenance of their operations remains a significant technical hurdle, hindering the adoption of provenance technology. UML2PROV is a software-engineering methodology that facilitates the instrumentation of provenance recording in applications designed with UML diagrams. It automates the generation of (1) templates for the provenance to be recorded and (2) the code to capture values required to instantiate those templates from an application at run time, both from the application’s UML diagrams. By so doing, UML2PROV frees application developers from manual instrumentation of provenance capturing while ensuring the quality of recorded provenance. In this paper, we present in detail UML2PROV’s approach to generating application code for capturing provenance values via the means of Bindings Generation Module (BGM). In particular, we propose a set of requirements for BGM implementations and describe an event-based design of BGM that relies on the Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) paradigm to automatically weave the generated code into an application. Finally, we present three different BGM implementations following the above design and analyze their pros and cons in terms of computing/storage overheads and implications to provenance consumers.