Complete Anonymity Research Articles

A New Lattice-Based Blind Ring Signature for Completely Anonymous Blockchain Transaction Systems

Blockchain technology has been widely applied in numerous industries with its decentralization, verifiability, distributivity, and immutability. However, the identity privacy security of blockchain users is facing serious threats because of the openness of traditional blockchain transaction information. Moreover, numerous traditional cryptographic algorithms used by blockchain transaction networks are difficult to attack quantum computing. In this paper, we propose a new lattice-based blind ring signature scheme in allusion to completely anonymous blockchain transaction systems. There into, the blind ring signature can implement the complete anonymity of user identity privacy in blockchain transactions. Meanwhile, lattice cryptography can availably resist quantum computing attacks. Firstly, the proposed signature scheme has strong computational security based on the small integer solution (SIS) problem and a high sampling success rate by utilizing the techniques of rejection sampling from bimodal Gaussian distribution. Secondly, the proposed signature scheme can satisfy the correctness and security under the random oracle model, including anonymity, blindness, and one-more unforgeability. Thirdly, we construct a blockchain transaction system based on the proposed blind ring signature algorithm, which realizes the completely anonymous and antiquantum computing security of the blockchain users’ identity privacy. Finally, the performance evaluation results show that our proposed blind ring signature scheme has lower latency, smaller key size, and signature size than other similar schemes.

Return to sport soccer after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: ISAKOS consensus

IntroductionMany factors can affect the return to pivoting sports, after an Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction. Prehabilitation, rehabilitation, surgical and psychological aspects play an essential role in the decision to return to sports.The purpose of this study is to reach an international consensus about the best conditions for returning to sports in soccer—one of the most demanding level I pivoting sports after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction. Methods34 International experts in the management of ACL injuries, representing all the Continents were convened and participated in a process based on the Delphi method to achieve a consensus. 37 statements related to ACL reconstruction were reviewed by the experts in three rounds of surveys in complete anonymity. The statements were prepared by the working group based on previous literature or systematic reviews. Rating agreement through a Likert Scale: strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree and strongly disagree was used. To define consensus, it was established that the assertions should achieve a 75% of agreement or disagreement. ResultsOf the 37 statements, 10 achieved unanimous consensus, 18 non-unanimous consensus and 9 did not achieve consensus. In the preoperative, the correction of the range of motion deficit, the previous high level of participation in sports and a better knowledge of the injury by the patient and compliance to participate in Rehabilitation were the statements that reached unanimous consensus. During the surgery, the treatment of associated injuries, as well as the use of autografts, and the addition of a lateral extra-articular tenodesis in some particular cases (active young athletes, <25 years old, hyperlaxity, high rotatory laxity and revision cases) obtained also 100% consensus.In the postoperative period, psychological readiness and its validation with scales, adequate physical preparation, as well as not basing the RTSS purely on the time of evolution after surgery, were the factors that reached unanimous Consensus. ConclusionsThe consensus statements derived from this international ISAKOS leaders, may assist clinicians in deciding when to return to sports soccer in patients after an ACL reconstruction. Those statements that reached 100% consensus have to be strongly considered in the final decision to RTS soccer.

Secure and Anonymous Voting D-App with IoT Embedded Device Using Blockchain Technology

The paper presents the construction of a proof-of-concept for a distributed and decentralized e-voting application in an IoT embedded device with the help of blockchain technology. A SoC board was used as an IoT embedded device for testing the PoC. This solution ensures complete voter anonymity and end-to-end security for all entities participating in the electronic voting process. The paper outlines the solution’s two layers. Implementation details are presented for the e-voting application, which was deployed inside of an IoT embedded device. The solution and presented protocols provide two major properties: privacy and verifiability. To ensure privacy, the proposed solution protects the secrecy of each electronic vote. As for implementing verifiability, the solution prevents a corrupt authority from faking in any way the process of counting the votes. Both properties are achieved in the presented solution e-VoteD-App.

A Novel Identity-Based Mutual Authentication Scheme for Vehicle Ad Hoc Networks

The vehicle ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging industry that deeply integrates a new generation of network communication technology with automotive and road transportation. As the basic nodes of VANETs, vehicles can communicate and share information with other peer vehicles. However, with the rapid development of the industry, the security risks of VANETs, especially the problem of privacy leakage, have become increasingly prominent. To solve this problem, we propose a novel identity-based mutual authentication scheme (IBMA) for vehicle ad hoc networks. In this scheme, we adopt identity-based cryptography (IBC) to generate keys, which reduces the storage burden of the central authority and eliminates the need to rely on the certificate to distribute the public key. Meanwhile, the key escrow issue can be solved, which is a common problem in IBC. Then, the scheme adjusts central authority to semihonest and realizes unconditional privacy protection. In addition, our scheme achieves complete anonymity, which can prevent any other entities such as peer vehicles and central authorities from tracking vehicles. Finally, our scheme provides efficient traceability while protecting vehicle privacy. Security analysis shows that the proposed scheme satisfies a variety of security requirements such as anonymity, reliability, and nonrepudiation. Performance analysis demonstrates that our proposed scheme is efficient and requires less communication and storage cost compared with related schemes.

Perspectives of juror-eligible adults: validation of the Juror Questionnaire of Values and Viewpoints (JQVV) for capital cases

ABSTRACT Criminal defendants have a 6th Amendment right to an impartial jury, but customary methods of jury selection often fail to uncover deeply held juror attitudes. Addressing the death penalty as a polarizing issue, the Juror Questionnaire of Values and Viewpoints (JQVV) was validated and cross-validated with two separate MTurk studies of capital jury-eligible adults. With complete anonymity assured by MTurk, Study 1 assessed death-penalty attitudes for 354 juror-eligible participants and their likelihood of mispresenting their views during voir dire. Validity of the JQVV was assessed with the Pretrial Juror Attitude Questionnaire (PJAQ) and predicted differences for Support-Death and Support-Life group. Study 2, with an entirely new sample of 313 juror-eligible adults, cross-validated the JQVV and tested the effects of positive impression management (PIM). Importantly, Support-Death mostly expressed their candid views even with the PIM condition. Although Support-Life frequently denied their death-penalty views, the JQVV Prosecution-Cynicism (Pro-Cyn) scale proved moderately effective at identifying their denials. Professional implications for capital jury selection are discussed.

Cyberspace and Women- Dimensions of Cybercrime against Women in India

The twenty-first century has been an era of inventions. Inventions that have greatly improved the quality of human life. Artificial intelligence's genesis and dominance have been witnessed. We have already entered the 5G era, which began with limited internet access. An alternate reality has emerged as a result of this unstoppable rise. An ethereal reality that promotes complete anonymity. With all of the benefits it provides, it has also proven to be lethal. With the rise of the online world came stalkers, hackers, scammers, and a slew of other miscreants and lawbreakers. As a result, society has become exposed to cybercrime. The researchers will focus on cybercrime perpetrated against women in this study. Women are easy prey for cybercriminals, and they are disproportionately victimized. Cyberbullying, voyeurism, sextortion, and stalking are all common online crimes against women. Women's privacy and security are in jeopardy as a result of the rise in cybercrime. The research's main goal is to examine the current state of cyber security in India and the need to enact specific legislation to protect women. The researchers would show how the laws are not being implemented throughout this study. The most important finding of this study is that more precise regulations and legislation against cybercrime are required. With the rise of social media networks and private websites, it is more important than ever for the government to enact special legislation for each type of crime perpetrated against women. Throughout the course of this study, an analysis of how many crimes is not reported due to traditional society and patriarchal attitudes will be offered. Researchers have also looked into the government's success in combating cybercrime and have come up with some useful suggestions for combating this threat. The researchers used a doctrinal research method and cited their sources using the bluebook method.

Integrating Threshold Opening With Threshold Issuance of Anonymous Credentials Over Blockchains for a Multi-Certifier Communication Model

Authentication while maintaining anonymity when availing a service over the internet is a significant privacy challenge. Anonymous credentials (AC) address this by providing the user with a credential issued by a trusted entity that convinces the service provider ( <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SP</i> ) that the user is authenticated but reveals no other information. The existing AC schemes assume a single trusted authority (certifier) that validates all the user attributes. In practice, however, a user may require different attributes to be attested by different certifiers. This means that the user has to get multiple credentials, increasing the burden on the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">SP</i> who has to verify each one of them. Moreover, complete anonymity can be misused. We propose a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">decentralized threshold revocable anonymous credential (DTRAC)</i> scheme over blockchains that supports – a) attestation of attributes by multiple certifiers, and b) anonymity revocation through a set of distributed openers, by integrating threshold opening to the state-of-the-art threshold anonymous credential issuance scheme, Coconut [34]. DTRAC generates a single credential on attributes that are attested by multiple certifiers, freeing the SP from the hassle of verifying multiple credentials. We analyze the security of DTRAC formally in the universal composability (UC) framework. We also implement a prototype on Ethereum using smart contracts and give a detailed analysis of its performance.We compare the verification time for credentials with attributes attested by multiple certifiers in both DTRAC and Coconut and see that in terms of execution time and gas consumption, DTRAC performs significantly better than Coconut. It also scales better, with the performance gain of DTRAC over Coconut increasing linearly with the number of certifiers.

ОСНОВНЫЕ ТРЕНДЫ РЕФОРМЫ ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ В КИТАЙСКОЙ НАРОДНОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКЕ

This article highlights the processes of education reform in the People's Republic of China (PRC) associated with the transition to a new stage of civilizational development, from an industrial to an information digital society. The main purpose of this study is to analyze the new stage of education reform in China. The following methods were used in the article: an empirical research method, such as analysis of open sources, official documents, publications in the state media of the People's Republic of China, as well as expert assessments of scientists from Russia, Singapore, Australia and island China. The method of qualitative analysis – in-depth interview was also applied. It was noted that there is a continuous search for new approaches to education that would be competitive in the global market, but at the same time taking into account national specifics. One of the main documents referred to by the authors in the study is "Opinions on standardization of the development of educational institutions off-campus", published in July-August 2021 from the General Staff of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. These documents were adopted in order to optimize the education system of the People's Republic of China, which was strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The main goal of the "Opinions" is the need to improve the quality of school and higher education, as well as the standardization of extracurricular education in the centers of additional education. These measures are aimed at improving the quality of education in the country. The article provides brief reviews of articles by foreign scientists and highlights the main points of the laws with the main excerpts from a number of provisions on the role of teachers in China. The adoption of new reforms in China, as well as the situation with COVID-19 in the world, affected the activities of foreigners working in kindergartens and additional education centers, who remained inside the country during the pandemic. This law imposed a complete ban on the activities of educational institutions, thereby leaving foreigners without a basic source of income abroad. This article presents a number of in-depth interviews with young professionals with experience in teaching foreign languages in China. The interview was conducted on the condition of complete anonymity, all the names in the article have been changed. It was found that the information received from the respondents has a certain value, as it allows us to assess how the reforms in the field of education have affected not only the Chinese themselves, but also foreigners working in China. During the interview, the main conclusions were drawn, presented in the form of graphs and diagrams that allow you to visually assess the results of the study. This article covers the events that have been taking place in China since the summer of 2021 to the present day, this is its scientific novelty, since "Opinions" have introduced a number of significant changes into the Chinese education system that have not yet been fully studied, and their impact on Chinese society has not been fully revealed.

RESEARCH PROGRAM OF THE READINESS OF FUTURE CORRECTIONAL EDUCATORS FOR VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES

Theoretical generalizations of the main research results were made and a practical solution to the research problem of preparing future correctional teachers for volunteer activities with children with special educational needs was presented. It was determined that the volunteer activity of students – future correctional teachers is an integral part of their professional training. It is in the role of volunteers that students get their first active experience of interacting with children with special educational needs. The aggravation of current social problems and the lack of a perfect system of providing the necessary services to vulnerable sections of the population, including children with special educational needs, contribute to the activation of voluntary aid. The problem of involving student youth in volunteering sounds quite acute. After all, according to scientists, student age is “determining”, because it is during this period that the worldview of an individual is formed. Volunteering directly affects the formation of student values. In addition, the involvement of young people in volunteer activities allows improving their professional training. At the first stage of the research, the analysis of the educational and professional program “Special Education (Oligophrenopedagogy)” of the first (bachelor’s) level of education in the specialty 016 “Special Education” was carried out. The analysis of educational and professional programs was carried out on the subject of the presence of disciplines in them, which include the study of the peculiarities of the implementation of volunteer activities in special education. At the second stage of the experiment, a questionnaire was conducted among students studying in the specialty 016 “Special Education”. The survey was conducted anonymously. By ensuring complete anonymity, the questionnaire method makes it possible to more effectively investigate the problem and its moral and ethical aspects. The survey program proposed by us is a continuous study in terms of complete coverage, part-time in terms of the researcher’s communication method with respondents, and mass in terms of the number of respondents. When creating the questionnaire, we took into account the principles of its construction. At the beginning, there is an introductory part, which states who conducts the survey and for what purpose, includes instructions for filling it out, and information on how to return the completed questionnaire.

A secure cross-domain authentication scheme with perfect forward security and complete anonymity in fog computing

Nowadays, fog computing has become an emerging hot-topic for possessing the same advantages as cloud computing and the lower latency. Nevertheless, there are still many issues in fog computing that worth studying, the most importantly of which are key agreement and user authentication. In order to achieve secure communication among different entities, designing a secure key agreement and user authentication scheme becomes an urgent issue. Although many schemes have been investigated the key agreement and user authentication for cloud computing, these schemes cannot be directly applied to the fog computing due to efficiency and cost. To tackle this problem, we propose a secure and efficient key agreement and user authentication scheme for fog computing. Our scheme can establish secure sessions among different entities, and users can achieve cross-domain access to other fog server. Most importantly, Our scheme satisfies the perfect forward security and the complete anonymity. We prove that our scheme is secure in the random oracle model, and achieve formal security verification through the AVISPA tool. Finally, the performance analysis demonstrates that our scheme tends to be more efficient in comparison with similar schemes.

Response rate to an online questionnaire amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in undergraduate students and graduates from a Colombian university

In epidemiology and public health research, caution is necessary when addressing results reported by studies based on the administration of online questionnaires. The most critical limitation in such studies is their impossibility of guaranteeing the representativeness of the sample. However, when having a representative sample is secondary, online questionnaires are an excellent alternative for exploratory studies that seek to obtain information about emerging phenomena quickly and cost-effectively or address sensitive issues, for this approach allows reaching populations difficult to get in contact with using traditional strategies. Online research allows the complete anonymity of participants and ensures they provide a more honest response, regardless of their social desirability, any stigma, or discrimination.

Unprofessional conduct by nurses: A document analysis of disciplinary decisions.

Background:A small minority of nurses are investigated when they fail to meet the required professional standards. Unprofessional conduct does not just affect the nurse but also patients, colleagues and managers. However, it has not been clearly defined.Objective:The objective was to identify unprofessional conduct by registered nurses by examining disciplinary decisions by a national regulator.Design:A retrospective document analysis.Data and research context:Disciplinary decisions delivered to 204 registered nurses by the Finnish national regulatory authority from 2007 to 2016. The data were analysed with quantitative statistics.Ethical consideration:The study received permission from the Finnish National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health and used confidential documents that were supplied on the basis of complete anonymity and confidentiality.Findings:The mean age of the registered nurses who were disciplined was 44 years and 81% were female. Two-thirds had worked for their employer for 5 years or less, 53% had two or more employers and 18% had a criminal history. All the decisions included a primary reason for why the nurses were investigated, but there were also 479 coexisting reasons. In most cases, unprofessional conduct was connected to substance abuse (96%). In addition, stealing of medicine, a decreased ability to work and neglect of nursing guidelines were reported.Discussion:We found that the nurses were investigated for unprofessional conduct for complex combinations of primary and coexisting reasons. Our study highlighted that more attention needs to be paid to the key markers for unprofessional conduct.Conclusion:Unprofessional conduct is a complex phenomenon that is connected to nurses’ individual and working backgrounds and has an impact on their work performance. More research is needed to identify how nursing communities can detect, manage and limit the serious effects and consequences of unprofessional conduct.

Financial security of the state in the field of circulation and use of virtual currencies

Financial security of the state in the field of circulation and use of virtual currencies

A Letter to Medical Students from an Anesthesiologist

A Letter to Medical Students from an Anesthesiologist

Personal norms in the online public good game

This paper shows that personal norms have a prominent role in explaining pro-social contribution in an online public good game. This finding suggests that the role of social norms might be loosened when subjects are distanced and interaction occurs online and in complete anonymity. Moreover, we found no statistically significant difference between the elicited norms and the norms that were elicited in a group of subjects not facing the contribution task, thus ruling out a potential self-justification bias.

Understanding the Role of Social Media-Based Mental Health Support Among College Students: Survey and Semistructured Interviews.

BackgroundMental illness is a growing concern within many college campuses. Limited access to therapy resources, along with the fear of stigma, often prevents students from seeking help. Introducing supportive interventions, coping strategies, and mitigation programs might decrease the negative effects of mental illness among college students.ObjectiveMany college students find social support for a variety of needs through social media platforms. With the pervasive adoption of social media sites in college populations, in this study, we examine whether and how these platforms may help meet college students’ mental health needs.MethodsWe first conducted a survey among 101 students, followed by semistructured interviews (n=11), of a large public university in the southeast region of the United States to understand whether, to what extent, and how students appropriate social media platforms to suit their struggle with mental health concerns. The interviews were intended to provide comprehensive information on students’ attitudes and their perceived benefits and limitations of social media as platforms for mental health support.ResultsOur survey revealed that a large number of participating students (71/101, 70.3%) had recently experienced some form of stress, anxiety, or other mental health challenges related to college life. Half of them (52/101, 51.5%) also reported having appropriated some social media platforms for self-disclosure or help, indicating the pervasiveness of this practice. Through our interviews, we obtained deeper insights into these initial observations. We identified specific academic, personal, and social life stressors; motivations behind social media use for mental health needs; and specific platform affordances that helped or hindered this use.ConclusionsStudents recognized the benefits of social media in helping connect with peers on campus and promoting informal and candid disclosures. However, they argued against complete anonymity in platforms for mental health help and advocated the need for privacy and boundary regulation mechanisms in social media platforms supporting this use. Our findings bear implications for informing campus counseling efforts and in designing social media–based mental health support tools for college students.

SOFT SKILLS DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR COMPUTER ENGINEERING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS DEVISED IN THE PROCESS OF LEARNING ENGLISH

The aim of the study was to devise soft skills development strategies for Computer Engineering and Information Technologies undergraduate students in the process of learning English. The research consisted of total 347 Computer Engineering and Information Technologies undergraduate students including 45 female students (13.00%) and 302 male students (87.00%) aged from 17 to 21. The research which was non-experimental in nature was conducted at four higher education institutions in Ukraine between October 2020 and November 2020. To reach the main aim of the study the team of researchers developed a web-based questionnaire containing open-ended and closed-ended questions. The use of the web-based questionnaire seemed to be quite logical for collecting the data necessary for devising soft skills development strategies for Computer Engineering and Information Technologies undergraduate students in the process of learning English taking into account the situation connected with the Covid-19 pandemic. The respondents who volunteered to take part in the survey were sent a link to the web-based questionnaire and guaranteed the complete anonymity. The data analysis covered processing of information collected from the anonymous web-based survey, displaying the data obtained in the form of tables and figures, devising soft skills development strategies based on research results and drawing general conclusions. The findings obtained enabled the authors to present six development strategies aimed at enhancing soft skills among Computer Engineering and Information Technology undergraduate students that could be applied in the process of learning English: a) combination of competence-based, action-oriented and blended-learning approaches in the English for Specific Purposes classroom, b) integration of formal, non-formal and informal learning, c) participation in specially focused network professional communities, d) use of open educational resources for learning English, e) use of open professionally-oriented educational resources, f) introduction of learning-style based activities in the English for Specific Purposes classroom for boosting students’ soft skills.

Nation-State Hacking: Uniting Policy and Code to Limit the Threat

This article examines nation-state hacking and analyzes some possible defenses against these attacks by combining policy and code level defense. The article examines some recent incidents of nation-state hacking and evaluates the actions taken by the attacker and the effected parties. This work focuses on a variety of nation-state hacking incidents and provides a critical perspective on how policy and code level controls could be combined to defend against these attacks. Nation-state hacking continues to be an important issue on the United States security agenda. Advanced nation-state hacking threats can adversely affect the day to day operations of a nation effectively crippling it with nearly complete anonymity. In 2013, the U.S. issued E.O. 13636, Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity. On December 1, 2016, President Obama unveiled the National Cybersecurity Plan to increase awareness of the threat that lack of appropriate cybersecurity controls presents.

Cross-Platform Strong Privacy Protection Mechanism for Review Publication

As a review system, the Crowd-Sourced Local Businesses Service System (CSLBSS) allows users to publicly publish reviews for businesses that include display name, avatar, and review content. While these reviews can maintain the business reputation and provide valuable references for others, the adversary also can legitimately obtain the user’s display name and a large number of historical reviews. For this problem, we show that the adversary can launch connecting user identities attack (CUIA) and statistical inference attack (SIA) to obtain user privacy by exploiting the acquired display names and historical reviews. However, the existing methods based on anonymity and suppressing reviews cannot resist these two attacks. Also, suppressing reviews may result in some reiews with the higher usefulness not being published. To solve these problems, we propose a cross-platform strong privacy protection mechanism (CSPPM) based on the partial publication and the complete anonymity mechanism. In CSPPM, based on the consistency between the user score and the business score, we propose a partial publication mechanism to publish reviews with the higher usefulness of review and filter false or untrue reviews. It ensures that our mechanism does not suppress reviews with the higher usefulness of reviews and improves system utility. We also propose a complete anonymity mechanism to anonymize the display name and avatars of reviews that are publicly published. It ensures that the adversary cannot obtain user privacy through CUIA and SIA. Finally, we evaluate CSPPM from both theoretical and experimental aspects. The results show that it can resist CUIA and SIA and improve system utility.

Letter: Cranioplasty Reverses Dysfunction of the Solutes Distribution in the Brain Parenchyma After Decompressive Craniectomy

Letter: Cranioplasty Reverses Dysfunction of the Solutes Distribution in the Brain Parenchyma After Decompressive Craniectomy