File Modification Research Articles

Developing a Chained Simulation Method for Quantifying Cooling Energy in Buildings Affected by the Microclimate of Avenue Trees

This paper introduces a methodology aimed at bridging the gap between building energy simulation and urban climate modeling. A coupling method was developed through the Building Control Virtual Test Bed (BCVTB) and applied to a case study in Taipei City, Taiwan, to address the microclimate factors of street trees crucial to cooling energy consumption. The use of the Urban Weather Generator for weather file modification revealed a 0.63 °C average air temperature disparity. The coupling method emphasized the importance of accurate wind speed and convective heat transfer coefficients (CHTCs) on building surfaces in determining cooling energy. The results indicated that elevated CHTC values amplify heat exchange, with higher wind velocities playing a crucial role in heat dissipation. The presence of street trees was found to significantly reduce heat flux penetration, leading to a reduction in building surface temperatures by as much as 9.5% during hot months. The cooling energy was lowered by 16.7% in the BCVTB simulations that included trees compared to those without trees. The EnergyPlus-only simulations underestimated the cooling energy needs by approximately 9.3% during summer months. This research offers valuable insights into the complex interactions between buildings and their environments. The results highlight the importance of trees and shading in mitigating the heat island effect and improving energy-efficient urban planning.

FInCH: FIJI plugin for automated and scalable whole-image analysis of protein expression and cell morphology

Study of morphogenesis and its regulation requires analytical tools that enable simultaneous assessment of processes operating at cellular level, such as synthesis of transcription factors (TF), with their effects at the tissue scale. Most current studies conduct histological, cellular and immunochemical (IHC) analyses in separate steps, introducing inevitable biases in finding and alignment of areas of interest at vastly distinct scales of organization, as well as image distortion associated with image repositioning or file modifications. These problems are particularly severe for longitudinal analyses of growing structures that change size and shape. Here we introduce a python-based application for automated and complete whole-slide measurement of expression of multiple TFs and associated cellular morphology. The plugin collects data at customizable scale from the cell-level to the entire structure, records each data point with positional information, accounts for ontogenetic transformation of structures and variation in slide positioning with scalable grid, and includes a customizable file manager that outputs collected data in association with full details of image classification (e.g., ontogenetic stage, population, IHC assay). We demonstrate the utility and accuracy of this application by automated measurement of morphology and associated expression of eight TFs for more than six million cells recorded with full positional information in beak tissues across 12 developmental stages and 25 study populations of a wild passerine bird. Our script is freely available as an open-source Fiji plugin and can be applied to IHC slides from any imaging platforms and transcriptional factors.

An Impact Analysis of Damage Level caused by Malware with Dynamic Analysis Approach

Malware, short for malicious software, is software or code specifically designed to damage, disrupt computer systems, or gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. Based on type classification, one of the well-known types of malware is ransomware. Usually, ransomware will encrypt the files on a computer system and then demand a ransom from the owner of the computer system so that the owner can regain access to the encrypted files. Sometimes in some cases, ransomware is able to delete files without input from the computer system owner. This research includes the analysis process of three ransomware samples that are known for successfully causing losses to many computer systems throughout the world, namely WannaCry, Locky, and Jigsaw, using a dynamic approach and the use of tools to track the processes carried out by the ransomware. The purpose of this research is to determine which of the three samples has the highest to lowest level of damage based on metrics based on file access capabilities and file modification capabilities for various types of files such as system files, boot-related files, program files, etc. The findings of this research indicate that WannaCry has the highest impact followed by Locky and then Jigsaw.

Effect of Taper and Pitch on Nickle-Titanium File with Variable Cross Section to Its Cyclic Fatigue (In Silico Study)

The geometric design of an endodontic file includes cross-sectional shape, taper, and pitch. NiTi endodontic files of OneCurve (MicroMega) are made of two variations of cross-sectional shape, that is, double-s shaped and triple helix. Various kinds of modifications were made to increase the resistance of the NiTi endodontic files from fracture. Cyclic fatigue is the most common factor that causes a fracture of the endodontic file. Objective: The purpose of this study was to obtain a NiTi endodontic file design that has the best cyclic resistance value based on its taper size and number of pitch. Methods: This study used OneCurve endodontic file size 25.06, then scanned with MicroCT Scan and modified the geometric design. The number of file modifications was nine. Taper size modifications were 4%, 6%, and 8%; the number of pitch modifications was reduced by three, fixed, and added by three. Cyclic fatigue measurement simulations were carried out using the finite element method three times each. The result data were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA test and then continued with LSD. Results: The results of the statistical test showed that there was an effect of the size of the taper on the cyclic fatigue values. Endodontic files with a size of a taper 4% had the lowest cyclic fatigue value. Conclusion: The conclusion of this research was that the taper size affects the value of cyclic fatigue in continuous endodontic files made of nickel-titanium with variable cross sections. The number of pitch did not show a significant effect on the cyclic value.

A research on PDF protection mechanisms

Portable Document Format, also named PDF, can integrate images, text, tables, or other elements into a single file, making it an easy-to-store and transfer document format. Due to the biggest feature of PDF being its portability, the modification of such files is very difficult and can ensure the security of the text to a certain extent. Therefore, it has been welcomed by a large number of researchers, office workers, and students. But as the demand for PDF files continues to rise, its security vulnerabilities are gradually being exposed. Consequently, a plethora of security measures for PDFs has come into view. This article primarily summarizes a portion of the overarching principles governing PDF security. Subsequently, this paper will focus on introducing the principles of steganography and cryptography in PDF security protocols while also selecting meaningful and representative research papers to summarize the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed methods.

Identification of data wiping tools based on deletion patterns in ReFS $Logfile

Data wiping tools permanently delete files by repeatedly overwriting data on a digital device, making file recovery impossible. Unlike the conventional deletion methods, which merely remove the file system pointer to the data, these tools are designed to entirely and irretrievably erase the data. This method can be exploited to obliterate evidence of a crime. Given the growing prevalence of such tools, a comprehensive analysis of permanent deletion behavior is essential, especially concerning the Resilient File System (ReFS). In this study, we propose a method for detecting user behavior concerning data wiping tools and algorithms in ReFS 3.7. Our approach relies on the fact that file modifications are logged in the redo record of the $Logfile, and that the opcode value of the redo record varies depending on the data wiping tool used. Since opcodes were only analyzed up to version 3.4, we analyzed the newly updated opcodes. Initially, we selected the 12 most commonly used data wiping tools for our research. In the pattern analysis phase, we applied the algorithms supported by each tool, generating a distinct deletion pattern for each one. This was accomplished by utilizing consecutive opcodes to formulate the patterns and monitor transitions in file and directory names. The patterns discerned in the $Logfile allowed us to determine which data wiping tool was deployed. The proposed methodology simplifies the identification of not only which data wiping tool has been used, but also the specific deletion behavior exhibited. We developed a tool incorporating the proposed method. Our subsequent verification confirmed the effectiveness of our methodology and tools in accurately detecting the use of comprehensive deletion tools. These findings contribute valuable insights to the acquisition of digital evidence of user deletion behavior in ReFS. Our proposed methodology will help digital forensic examiners in the detection and identification of data wiping tools' behavior.

Superpdf: One-Stop Solution to All Your PDF Problems

Abstract: Superpdf is a web-based application that facilitates the modification and manipulation of PDF files. SuperPDF lets users combine multiple PDFs into one, split a PDF into multiple pages, convert PDFs to other formats, and change PDF content by adding text, photos, and notes. One of the primary advantages of SuperPDF is its user-friendly interface, which makes it simple for users of all ability levels to explore and utilize the software's different capabilities. In addition to a variety of advanced features, such as the ability to password-protect PDFs and redact sensitive information, the tool provides a variety of other capabilities. In addition to its core PDF editing capabilities, SuperPDF offers a variety of additional tools and functions, including the ability to build and fill out PDF forms, extract images and text from PDFs, and add electronic signatures to documents.

BERT-Embedding-Based JSP Webshell Detection on Bytecode Level Using XGBoost

Webshell is a malicious program that might result in data theft, file modification, or other damaging behaviors once uploaded to a server. Detecting webshells is a key security concern for website administrators. In recent years, techniques such as obfuscation and encryption have been deployed on webshell technology, and classic detection approaches such as static feature matching are gradually underperforming on webshell detection. Meanwhile, there are variations between languages such as JSP and PHP, and researchers have proposed webshell detection methods primarily for languages such as PHP. At the same time, there are fewer detection techniques for JSP webshells. In this case, a detection approach for the JSP webshells is needed. This paper provides a novel webshell detection model for the JSP language. The model’s fundamental premise is that it introduces the BERT-based word vector extraction method, which has been shown in experiments to be more effective at detecting obfuscation, encryption, and other means of evading detection than the traditional Word2vec word vector extraction method. Meanwhile, we introduce the XGBoost algorithm as the model classifier. The experimental results reveal that present model has achieved 99.14% accuracy, 98.68% precision, 98.03% recall, and 98.35% f1 score, and the overall effect is better than the already existing JSP webshell detection approaches.

Multicultural considerations in augmentative and alternative communication

ABSTRACT Little is known about how well high-tech augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems accommodate language variation to meet the needs of people and families who are culturally and linguistically diverse. The purpose of this study was to investigate how high-tech AAC device manufacturers consider language variation and multilingualism in device design and language files, whether there is a difference in the modifications available on default language files on a dedicated AAC device as compared to communication applications on tablets, and the availability of these modifications. A coding schema was developed to assess features available that enabled user modification of default language files across four language domains: semantics, morphosyntax, phonology, and pragmatics. The results indicated that more changes were possible in semantics and phonology on default language files. There were not significant differences between language files offered on a dedicated AAC device or an application on a tablet. There were significant differences in the capabilities of the device to make modifications and in the ease of programming, but not in the resources provided to families. Based on these findings, it appears that device manufacturers have just begun to address the needs of families and users who are culturally and linguistically diverse.

Kernel-Based Real-Time File Access Monitoring Structure for Detecting Malware Activity

Obfuscation and cryptography technologies are applied to malware to make the detection of malware through intrusion prevention systems (IPSs), intrusion detection systems (IDSs), and antiviruses difficult. To address this problem, the security requirements for post-detection and proper response are presented, with emphasis on the real-time file access monitoring function. However, current operating systems provide only file access control techniques, such as SELinux (version 2.6, Red Hat, Raleigh, NC, USA) and AppArmor (version 2.5, Immunix, Portland, OR, USA), to protect system files and do not provide real-time file access monitoring. Thus, the service manager or data owner cannot determine real-time unauthorized modification and leakage of important files by malware. In this paper, a structure to monitor user access to important files in real time is proposed. The proposed structure has five components, with a kernel module interrelated to the application process. With this structural feature, real-time monitoring is possible for all file accesses, and malicious attackers cannot bypass this file access monitoring function. By verifying the positive and negative functions of the proposed structure, it was validated that the structure accurately provides real-time file access monitoring function, the monitoring function resource is sufficiently low, and the file access monitoring performance is high, further confirming the effectiveness of the proposed structure.

Research and Implementation of SCD Precision Decoupling in Intelligent Substation for Single Equipment Replacement

In the process of reconstruction and expansion of intelligent substation, it is difficult to accurately define the influence scope of SCD file upgrade. In the wake of each modification of SCD file, all configuration information contained in SCD needs to be re-verified, which greatly increases the workload of debugging, operation and maintenance of intelligent substation. Via decoupling SCD files, the problems of modification and re-verification of SCD files in the reconstruction and expansion stage can be tackled. In this paper, SCD precision decoupling method for smart substation with single equipment replacement is proposed, which makes SCD decoupling work more detailed, adaptable to various expansion and technical transformation of substation. The decoupling of SCD is refined from logical structure to physical link level, and the decoupling range of SCD is precisely determined, so as to minimize the modification and reverification range of SCD files and reduce the change risk caused by SCD modification.

A Lagrangian Tool for Simulating the Transport of Chemical Pollutants in the Arabian/Persian Gulf

A rapid-response Lagrangian model for the use in simulation of the transport of a chemical pollutant in the Arabian/Persian Gulf is described. The model is well suited to the provision of a fast response after an emergency due to an accident or a deliberate spill. It is easy to set up for any situation since only requires the modification of a few input files specifying the pollutant properties and release characteristics. Running times are short, even on a desktop PC, which makes it appropriate for a rapid assessment of a hypothetical accident occurring in the region. Baroclinic circulation was obtained from an HYCOM ocean model, and tides were calculated using a barotropic model. The interactions of pollutants with sediments (uptake/release processes) were described using a dynamic approach based on kinetic transfer coefficients and a stochastic numerical method. Some examples of model applications are shown, showing the influence of the geochemical behaviour of the pollutant in its distribution patterns.

A Lightweight Proxy Re-Encryption Approach with Certificate-Based and Incremental Cryptography for Fog-Enabled E-Healthcare

Cloud computing aims to provide reliable, customized, and quality of service (QoS) guaranteed dynamic computing environments for end-users. However, there are applications such as e-health and emergency response monitoring that require quick response and low latency. Delays caused by transferring data over the cloud can seriously affect the performance and reliability of real-time applications. Before outsourcing e-health care data to the cloud, the user needs to perform encryption on these sensitive data to ensure its confidentiality. Conventionally, any modification to the user data requires encrypting the entire data and calculating the hash of the data from scratch. This data modification mechanism increases communication and computation costs over the cloud. The distributed environment of fog computing is used to overcome the limitations of cloud computing. This paper proposed a certificate-based incremental proxy re-encryption scheme (CB-PReS) for e-health data sharing in fog computing. The proposed scheme improves the file modification operations, i.e., updation, deletion, and insertion. The proposed scheme is tested on the iFogSim simulator. The iFogSim simulator facilitates the development of models for fog and IoT environments, and it also measures the impact of resource management techniques regarding network congestion and latency. Experiments depict that the proposed scheme is better than the existing schemes based on expensive bilinear pairing and elliptic curve techniques. The proposed scheme shows significant improvement in key generation and file modification time.

Correcting cis-trans-transgressions in macromolecular structure models.

Many macromolecular X-ray and cryo-EM structure models deposited in the PDB contain biologically relevant small molecule ligands with unsaturated fatty acid acyl chains, whose cis-trans stereochemistry is incorrect. The molecules are either not properly defined in their stereochemical restraint files, or the proper stereochemistry is neglected during model building. Often, the same molecules appear in deposited models in both isomeric configurations, one of which is almost always incorrect, and the use of the same moiety (HET) identifier and restraint files in model refinement is wrong. We present case studies of frequently occurring molecules and a compilation of identified cases of C-C=C-C cis-trans geometry in the deposited structure models. Full listings of cis/trans torsion angles are provided for models with commonly occurring molecules to assist identification and correction of cis-trans errors and prevent inadvertent use of incorrect models. Caveats for users, advice for modellers and suggestions for remediation efforts with a simple but effective restraint file modification are provided.

Multi-Datasets Evaluation of GB-RAS Network Based Stegdetectors Robustness to Domain Adaptation Problem

Protection of state and commercial critical infrastructures is topical task today. Among known threats, special interest is taken to early detection of hidden (steganographic) channels usage by attackers for unauthorized transmission of sensitive data. These channels are created by modification of the innocuous files, such as digital images, for message hiding and further transmission of modified files. Detection of formed stego files is non-trivial task due to the wide usage by attackers of adaptive embedding methods that preserve low level of cover image distortion during embedding. Modern solutions for stego images detection are based on utilization the novel convolution neural networks for revealing weak alterations of cover’s features during message hiding. Training of such networks is performed on fixed set of standard image databases, such as BOSS, ALASKA etc. Despite high detection accuracy of pre-trained stegdetectors, theirs performance “in the wild” on natural images remains an open question. The work is devoted to performance analysis of advanced GB-Ras convolutional network based stegdetector for adaptive embedding methods detection on natural images presented in various datasets. Obtained results proved the effectiveness of neural network applying for mitigation with domain adaptation problem for modern stegdetectors. The GB-Ras model allows improving detection accuracy of stego images for standard ALASKA (up to 6% for for S-UNIWARD embedding methods) and VISION (up to 13% for S-UNIWARD and to 9% for MG embedding methods) datasets in comparison with cover rich models based stegdetectors. Nevertheless, the performance of considered GB-Ras based stegdetector for high quality images from MIRFlickr dataset is conceded to maxSRMd2 rich model based stegdetector (up to 11% for S-UNIWARD and 12% for MG embedding methods). Therefore, considered GB-Ras network may be used as a promising candidate for further design of novel stegdetectors that are robust to domain adaptation problem.

Distributed data hiding in multi-cloud storage environment

Classical or traditional steganography aims at hiding a secret in cover media such as text, image, audio, video or even in network protocols. Recent research has improved this approach called distributed steganography by fragmenting the secret message and embedding each secret piece into a distinct cover media. The major interest of this approach is to make the secret message detection extremely difficult. However, these file modifications leave fingerprints which can reveal a secret channel to an attacker. Our contribution is a new steganography paradigm transparent to any attacker and resistant to the detection and the secret extraction. Two properties contribute to achieve these goals: the files do not undergo any modification while the distribution of the secret in the multi-cloud storage environment allows us to hide the existence of the covert channel between the communicating parties. Information’s are usually hidden inside the cover media. In this work, the covert media is a pointer to information. Therefore the file carries the information without being modified and the only way to access it is to have the key. Experiments show interesting comparison results with remarkable security contributions. The work can be seen as a new open direction for further research in the field.

Astro-TS3: Time-series Subimage Search Engine for archived astronomical data

Abstract Efficiently retrieving a subset of time series data in a specific sky region from large-scale astronomical observation data is important for some time-domain studies in astronomy, especially for research on long-term variable sources. Considering that the field of view of a telescope is generally larger than the effective sky region, the retrieval method at the full image level is relatively inefficient in terms of data transmission and storage. Therefore, this paper proposes a search engine dedicated to the efficient retrieval of time-series subimages in observed image data archives (Astro-TS3, Astronomical Time-Series Subimage Search Engine). An in situ and resilient indexing scheme is proposed, and it can build indexes for archived image data without any modification of the original files and support incremental updating with newly archived data. A subimage cutting tool is implemented to extract a part of the image according to the range specified by the user and generate a new Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) file for the extracted subimage. With Astro-TS3, users only need to submit requests including the ranges of the time and sky region to retrieve the required data and then download the time-series subimages after the preview. The evaluation of Astro-TS3 is performed using actual archived data from three Antarctic Survey Telescopes (AST3). The experimental data show that the time for the index establishment and incremental update increases approximately linearly relative to the number of data files. For retrieval, the response time of the data retrieval is approximately linearly related to the number and size of the subimages.

Boyer-Moore String Matching Algorithm and SHA512 Implementation for Jpeg/exif File Fingerprint Compilation in DSA

Data integrity, authenticity and non-repudiation are security parameters that provided by Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA). Hash value is important element inside DSA to identify information data integrity using hash function to generate message digest. Jpeg/exif is image file format that produce by digital camera as in smartphone. Hardware technology development made image file have higher resolution than before. This condition made image file fingerprinting need more time to compile jpeg/exif fingerprint. This research purpose is to develop fingerprinting process for jpeg/exif file using Boyer-Moore string matching algorithm and SHA512. Research conducted in four stages. First stage is jpeg/exif file structure identification, second stage is segment content acquisition and hashing, third stage is image file modification experiments and last stage is jpeg/exif file fingerprint compilation. Obtained result shown that jpeg/exif file fingerprint comprises of three hash value from SOI segment, APP1 segment and SOF0 segment. The jpeg/exif file fingerprint can use to detect six types image modification there are image resizing, text addition, metadata modification, image resizing, image cropping and file file type conversion.

Towards a secure incremental proxy re‐encryption for e‐healthcare data sharing in mobile cloud computing

SummaryCloud computing provides universal access to a pool of shared resources to numerous stakeholders/shareholders of the e‐healthcare industry. The speedy adoption of cloud computing has inevitably raised security concerns for the outsourced data. Since mobile devices are resource constrained, the security solutions must discharge the computing comprehensive operations on the cloud for implementation. Conventionally, any modification to uploaded record would compel the mobile client to encrypt and compute the hash value from scratch. Through this paper, we intend to propose a pairing‐free incremental proxy re‐encryption scheme, without certificates, which would run proportionate to the number of modifications in time, instead of the document length for improvement in the file modification tasks. The proposed scheme shows a significant improvement in the file modification system regarding the energy consumption and the turnaround timer taken. The proposed scheme has been verified through a formal method using Z3 solver.

EPAS: A Sampling Based Similarity Identification Algorithm for the Cloud

The explosive growth of data brings new challenges to the data storage and management in cloud environment. These data usually have to be processed in a timely fashion in the cloud. Thus, any increased latency may cause a massive loss to the enterprises. Similarity detection plays a very important role in data management. Many typical algorithms such as Shingle, Simhash, Traits and Traditional Sampling Algorithm (TSA) are extensively used. The Shingle, Simhash and Traits algorithms read entire source file to calculate the corresponding similarity characteristic value, thus requiring lots of CPU cycles and memory space and incurring tremendous disk accesses. In addition, the overhead increases with the growth of data set volume and results in a long delay. Instead of reading entire file, TSA samples some data blocks to calculate the fingerprints as similarity characteristics value. The overhead of TSA is fixed and negligible. However, a slight modification of source files will trigger the bit positions of file content shifting. Therefore, a failure of similarity identification is inevitable due to the slight modifications. This paper proposes an Enhanced Position-Aware Sampling algorithm (EPAS) to identify file similarity for the cloud by modulo file length. EPAS concurrently samples data blocks from the head and the tail of the modulated file to avoid the position shift incurred by the modifications. Meanwhile, an improved metric is proposed to measure the similarity between different files and make the possible detection probability close to the actual probability. Furthermore, this paper describes a query algorithm to reduce the time overhead of similarity detection. Our experimental results demonstrate that the EPAS significantly outperforms the existing well known algorithms in terms of time overhead, CPU and memory occupation. Moreover, EPAS makes a more preferable tradeoff between precision and recall than that of other similarity detection algorithms. Therefore, it is an effective approach of similarity identification for the cloud.