Malicious Damage Research Articles

Three-layer and robust planning models to evaluate the strategies of defense layer, attack layer, and operation layer for optimal protection in natural gas pipeline network

Using game theory techniques, a three-layer planning model (THLPM) for the defense, attack, and operational layers has been established to address malicious damage to pipelines. A robust planning model was developed for situations with uncertain attack resources. In this model, the defense layer protects critical infrastructure within the network to minimize losses. The attack layer targets unprotected facilities based on the defensive strategy. The operational layer formulates the optimal pipeline transmission strategy based on the decisions of the defense and attack layers. By utilizing the duality theorem, the THLPM is transformed into a two-layer planning problem, which is then linearized and solved using a decomposition algorithm. Taking a specific ring-shaped pipeline network as an example, the study analyzes the significant role of backup pipelines in enhancing system resilience and evaluates the offensive and defensive strategies of THLPM. The effectiveness of THLPM in protecting the network was assessed, showing that when defense and attack resources are invested at levels 3 and 10, respectively, operational costs of the network are reduced by 54.2 % compared to a scenario without any defenses. The methods proposed in this paper are applicable to other pipeline systems.

Damned Lies

A popular saying distinguishes lies from damned lies: this paper asks about the difference. It does so as a way of considering the variety of lies told by former President Trump and the variety of ways in which his lying was wrong. Specifically it focuses on the manipulative aspect of lies, the grave and malicious damage that a lie may do to particular person, and the ways in which lying degrades and undermines conventions associated with human communication in various specific areas of discourse. Some of these ideas are found in Kant's moral philosophy, and Kant's views on lying are examined sympathetically and in detail. Many of President Trump's lies were banal and self-serving. But they underline our sense of a common world and the importance of truth as a touchstone in politics as in everyday life. Trump's lies about the 2020 election are given special attention in light of the point that his duty was not so much to convey accurate information--we have other sources for that--but to perform the formal task of *affirming* the results in order to allow the political system to continue operating.

DIAGNOSTICS OF OIL LEAKS CAUSED BY MALICIOUS DAMAGE TO THE LINEAR PART OF OIL PIPELINES: INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR THE OIL INDUSTRY

DIAGNOSTICS OF OIL LEAKS CAUSED BY MALICIOUS DAMAGE TO THE LINEAR PART OF OIL PIPELINES: INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR THE OIL INDUSTRY

Research on characterizing the high dynamic performance of distributed FANETs

Distributed Flying Ad-Hoc Networks (FANETs) have been widely used in collaborative reconnaissance, situation construction and other scenarios. Due to malicious damage, complex electromagnetic interference, and rapid movement of UAV nodes during flight, distributed FANET have high dynamic characteristics. However, most researches on the characterization of network dynamics cannot fully consider the influence of various factors, such as protocol self-interference. In this paper, by comprehensively considering the effects of node damage, channel fading, protocol self-interference and other factors, based on HCPP model, Weibull distribution model and other theories, we establish link outage probability of network model to characterize link randomness and high dynamicity. On this basis, link entropy rate and topology entropy rate model are established to characterize the high dynamic performance of distributed FANETs.

Multiple-image encryption algorithm based on Sarrus rule and 3D Fibonacci matrix

Using images to transmit information becomes more common in the new era, but the image information can easily be stolen and tampered with the malicious damage during transmission. In this paper, firstly, inspired by the famous Sarrus rule the theory of linear algebra theory, the Sarrus model is established to scramble images; secondly, the pixel positions of plain images are scrambled with the established Sarrus model to obtain the stereo scrambled matrix; thirdly, two-dimensional Fibonacci matrix is extended to three-dimensional (3D) space; finally, the image matrix is divided into cubes which are diffused by the 3D Fibonacci matrix. Experimental analyses indicate that the new algorithm has the characteristics of large key space, high key sensitivity, high efficiency and can resist to the plaintext attacks, statistical attacks, etc.

PIMS: An Efficient Process Integrity Monitoring System Based on Blockchain and Trusted Computing in Cloud-Native Context

With the advantages of lightweight and high resource utilization, cloud-native technology with containers as the core is gradually becoming the mainstream technical architecture for information infrastructure. However, malware attacks such as Doki and Symbiote threaten the container runtime’s security. Malware initiates various types of runtime anomalies based on process form (e.g., modifying the process of a container, and opening the external ports). Fortunately, dynamic monitoring mechanisms have proven to be a feasible solution for verifying the trusted state of containers at runtime. Nevertheless, the current routine dynamic monitoring mechanisms for baseline data protection are still based on strong security assumptions. As a result, the existing dynamic monitoring mechanism is still not practical enough. To ensure the trustworthiness of the baseline value data and, simultaneously, to achieve the integrity verification of the monitored process, we combine blockchain and trusted computing to propose a process integrity monitoring system named IPMS. Firstly, the hardware TPM 2.0 module is applied to construct a trusted security foundation for the integrity of the process code segment due to its tamper-proof feature. Then, design a new format for storing measurement logs, easily distinguishing files with the same name in different containers from log information. Meanwhile, the baseline value data is stored on the blockchain to avoid malicious damage. Finally, trusted computing technology is used to perform fine-grained integrity measurement and remote attestation of processes in a container, detect abnormal containers in time and control them. We have implemented a prototype system and performed extensive simulation experiments to test and analyze the functionality and performance of the PIMS. Experimental results show that PIMS can accurately and efficiently detect tampered processes with only 3.57% performance loss to the container.

The safety and security of urban households in South Africa: a geospatial exploration of the crimescape in the neighborhoods of Durban, South Africa

ABSTRACT This paper explores the spatio-temporal patterns of household crimes in Durban, South Africa,using precinct-level population and decadal crime data for burglary and robberyat residential areas and Malicious Damage to Property (MDP) in the Municipality.Crime rates and Moran I statisticwere computed for the precincts, while maps depicted spatio-temporal variations in the crimescape. While the rates of MDP (−7.5%)and robbery (−4.2%) reduced, burglary (5.0%) escalated across manyneighbourhoods. Both robbery and MDP showed significant spatial dependence. Themomentum for crime appears to have shifted to the sparsely populated suburbs, withimplications for future policies and crime-fighting strategies.

“Why fix it if ain’t broke”: Nature and extent of crime in the railway environment in South Africa

This article explores the nature and extent of crime in the railway environment in South Africa. Crimes against Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Transnet Freight Rail, Gautrain, and commuters are prevalent and the victims are being exposed to serious damage emanating from criminal activities. The challenges and implications for individuals and businesses, rich or poor consumers are recurrent themes in this study. A qualitative research approach was adopted to follow a non-probability purposive sample comprising 25 participants from the South African Police Service Rapid Rail Police Units. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews from research participants deployed in the Division: Visible Policing. The findings highlighted that the most prevalent crimes are cable theft, robberies and malicious property damage. The targeted trains are the Metro trains that operate locally, as they transport many commuters because it is the affordable mode of public transport in South Africa. The perpetrators also target this mode of transport because the train stations have an open system where perpetrators can easily access the entrance, therefore some do not even buy tickets and board the trains illegally. It is understood that Gautrain has a closed system and the security is advanced and watertight because of extra security measures such as the closed-circuit television cameras. Based on the findings, effective implementation of policies to improve safety is essential. Critical dialogues between all relevant.

A Collaborative Filtering Method for Operation Maintenance Behavior in Power Monitoring Systems

As an important part of power infrastructure, a power monitoring system provides real-time data acquisition, state detection, and remote control of power equipment for the power grid and can deal with sudden anomalies in time. The operation and maintenance of the power monitoring system are very important to ensure the stable operation of power grid. The current mainstream remote operation and maintenance mode has internal threats such as misoperation of operation and maintenance personnel or malicious damage caused by attackers stealing operation and maintenance authority. Meanwhile, the existing operation and maintenance audit has the problems of high human resource cost and limited supervision of operation and maintenance personnel. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a collaborative filtering method for operation and maintenance behavior of power monitoring system called CFomb. Exploiting a keyword matching algorithm, CFomb determines the power resources accessed by operation and maintenance users from multiple operation instructions and extracts operation and maintenance behaviors. Referring to the collaborative filtering idea, the feature matrix decomposition scheme is introduced to train the access probability model based on the historical normal behavior of multiple operation and maintenance users, which provides a basis for real-time prediction of the access behavior probability of target operation and maintenance users. The OTSU binarization technique is used to determine the probability threshold of abnormal operation and maintenance behaviors, identify abnormal behaviors through threshold comparison, and send real-time alarms to operation and maintenance audit. The simulation experiment results show that the method in this paper can effectively identify the abnormal behavior of operation and maintenance users, reduce the overhead of manual audit, and help improve the power monitoring system’s ability to respond to internal threats of operation and maintenance.

UNLAWFUL ARREST AND UNLAWFUL DETENTION: SEPARATE GROUNDS OF ACTION AND PUNITIVE DAMAGES Mvu v Minister of Safety and Security 2009 6 SA 82 (GSJ)

In Mvu v Minister of Safety and Security the plaintiff, an inspector in the South African Police Service was arrested without a warrant for malicious damage to property (his 15-year old daughters’ cellphones). It transpired that the plaintiff, while on police business in Gauteng, visited his daughters. He became enraged when he discovered that they had received cellphones by way of a “love relationship”, whereupon he took the cellphones and threw them to the ground, seriously damaging them. The daughters went to apolice station and laid a charge against the plaintiff for malicious damage to property. The police officer seized with the matter telephoned the plaintiff who immediately travelled to meet him. Upon arrival he arrested the plaintiff and imprisoned him overnight with six other men and set him free the following afternoon on warning. When the matter eventually came to court, the plaintiff was discharged at the end of the state’s case.

Class Retrieval of Detected Adversarial Attacks

Adversarial attack is a genuine threat compromising the safety of many intelligent systems curbing the standardization of using neural networks in security-critical applications. Since the emergence of adversarial attacks, the research community has worked relentlessly to avert the malicious damage of these attacks. Here, we present a new, additional and required element to ameliorate adversarial attacks: the recovery of the original class after a detected attack. Recovering the original class of an adversarial sample without taking any precautions is an uncharted concept which we would like to introduce with our novel class retrieval algorithm. As case studies, we demonstrate the validity of our approach on MNIST, CIFAR10 and ImageNet datasets where recovery rates were 72%, 65% and 65%, respectively.

Football Spectator Violence During Matches at the Zimbabwe Football Association Division One Level in Gweru District

Background: A number of football matches in Gweru district have been characterised by undesirable acts of spectator violence resulting in injury and malicious damage to property. Football spectator violence is a very negative phenomenon in football because it chases away sponsors who do not want their organisations and brands to be associated with hooliganism. Violence also discourages spectators from attending football matches as they fear for their safety. This status quo precipitated the need to identify football stakeholders’ perceptions on the causes of spectator violence during football matches at Division One level in Gweru District. Aims: The primary aim and focus of this study was to investigate spectator violence among football spectators in Gweru district in Zimbabwe. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to identify the main causes of football spectator violence and recommend strategies to mitigate or even eliminate this scourge. Study Setting: The study was conducted in Gweru district in the midlands province of Zimbabwe. Materials and Methods: The study adopted the quantitative research approach utilising the descriptive survey design. Closed questionnaires were used to collect data from, twenty division one footballers from four Gweru division one football clubs, twenty spectators, six football referees and four coaches. This resulted in a total sample of fifty (50) respondents. Simple random sampling (Gold Fish Bowl procedure) was used to select the twenty players and six referees. Purposive sampling was used to select the four coaches and twenty football spectators. Statistics: Data was analysed statistically using simple frequency tables. Results and Conclusion: The study revealed that spectator violence during football matches at division one level in Gweru is mainly a result of hooliganism, controversial refereeing, lack of fair play by footballers in the field of play, outcome of matches, rivalry between clubs and euphoria. Factors such as use of juju, prestige seeking by spectators and reporting of violence by the media were found to be minor contributors towards football spectator violence during football matches in Gweru district. Recommendations: The study recommends that the Zimbabwe republic police who provide security during these violent matches should tighten security at football matches by searching all fans thoroughly for dangerous weapons and alcohol at stadia entry points. ZIFA and PSL should educate all football clubs on the negative effects of violence and punish offending teams severely. The clubs should educate their fans to shun violence. Sponsors should include funds in their sponsorship packages for purposes of educating fans on violence. Soccer players should lead by example and avoid provoking other team’s fans

Problems, Prospects and Policy Recommendations of Crop Insurance Schemes

This paper discusses the findings of the study in the area of crop insurance. Firstly it studied the problems faced under PMFBY, secondly examines prospects of given scheme. The study was conducted in six districts of Haryana namely, Kaithal, Bhiwani, Karnal, Hisar, Panipat and Fatehabad. The study showed the results of a survey of 240 farmers being carried in June 2018 to September, 2018. Constraints generally faced by the borrower farmers like delay in claim settlement (21.66%), inaccurate yield estimation (20.83%), inadequate implementation (20.00%), lack of awareness about the scheme and exclusion of a malicious damage, theft and grazed and destroyed by domestic animals etc. as 3.33 per cent as major constraints. Majority of non-borrower farmers faced constraints like claim paid for loss assessment (20.83%) as highest per cent, lack of faith in insurance system (19.17%) and inadequate implementation (16.67%).

Crop insurance in India: Status of PMFBY against different crop insurance schemes

Crop insurance has been implemented in the country since 1972, yet it has been beset with several problems such as delayed payment of claims, high premium, lack of transparency and delay in conducting crop cutting experiments etc. From these schemes none of them has been able to make a significant impact on farming system; as just 23.50 per cent of farmers were insured in kharif 2016. The existing relief and compensation criteria for farmers against crop loss was adhoc, messy and politicized and was ineffective to bring well-timed and satisfactory relief to affected farmers. This research article examines the cumulative performance of different crop insurance schemes implemented time to time. The claim premium ratio in First Individual Approach Scheme was 8.34, indicating that for every one rupee of premium collected; the scheme paid Rs 8.34 in claims. It shows high out go in the scheme. The benefits of CCIS were highly twisted towards few states and many more failures found in these schemes. Under PMFBY from kharif 2016 to kharif 2017, there has been a significant increase in the number of gross premiums (21 %), claims paid (64 %) and farmers benefitted (29%), respectively. The difference between gross premium and claim paid in the Kharif season has abridged and indicated a divergence in the data on the payout of claims and the profits made by private insurance companies. The new scheme revealed that overall area insured and farmers covered were decreased over the years from Kharif 2016 to Kharif 2018. On the other hand, there has been a significant increase in the number of gross premiums as 45 per cent. The PMFBY has therefore failed to achieve the targets, i.e. increasing the area and the number of farmers insured. The exclusion under the scheme are-risks and losses arising out of war and nuclear risks, malicious damage, theft, grazed and destroyed by domestic and wild animals.

Efficient and reliable forensics using intelligent edge computing

Due to the increasing awareness and use of cloud and edge computing, society and industries are beginning to understand the benefits they can provide. Cloud and Edge are the future of information management, and they have transformed the Internet into an innovative and interactive computing platform. The ultimate goal of edge/cloud computing is to reduce the use of computing resources in the network, as well as support information sharing and intercommunication efforts within the network. Secure edge computing methodologies are applied in both open and heterogeneous network systems to protect them from many potential security threats. However, these approaches only provide passive protection for normal edge computing operations, and fail to address the security measures of several applications, particularly forensics in industrial settings. Forensics applications running on edge computing must be capable of support taking legal action against invaders for malicious damage or information theft. This paper proposes an efficient and reliable forensics framework (ERFF) to address industrial intelligent edge computing critical for the industry 4.0 implementation plan. The proposed ERFF consists of a detective module and validation model, with the detective module responsible for detecting the interaction between the client terminal and the edge resource, which means the investigator is capable of gathering the evidence securely. The security-validation model integrated with ERFF is far safer than sharing common key-based cryptographic approaches. The proposed conceptual framework is tested with Live Digital Forensic Framework for a Cloud (LDF2C), and results are compared with other existing industrial frameworks that fulfill fundamental ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation requirements, including Legal Reliable Forensic Framework (LRFF), Source Identification Network Forensics Framework (SINFF) and Logging Framework for Cloud Computing Forensic (LFCCF)). These frameworks were designed to support the digital forensic requirements of industry and academia, and experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework from reliability and efficiency perspectives as well as realistic scenarios

A simulation study of tenability for passengers in a railway tunnel with arson fire

Many arson fires occurred recently in railway systems in different countries. Arson fire occurring inside railway tunnel with a crowded train could give rise to serious consequences. The severity of tunnel fire increases with the length of tunnel, the fire size and the presence of obstructions inside the tunnel. Thus investigation of different aspects of tunnel fire is important in tunnel design, fire safety, and rescue. While real-scale experimental study of tunnel fire is in general too demanding in terms of resources and feasibility, simulation has an important role to play in such studies. The present study employs the Fire Dynamic Simulator (FDS version 6.4.0) to perform simulation of arson fire in front of a train in an underground tunnel. The arson fire occurs in an underground tunnel of length 500 m, which resembles some subway tunnels in Hong Kong. The scenario consists of a metro train stopping inside the tunnel when an arson fire is set in front of the train. In addition, the worst scenario in which the mechanical ventilation system inside the tunnel is not functioning, either due to malicious damage or power failure, is assumed. Fire sizes of 6 MW to 16 MW for durations of 600 s, which are based on the amount of fuel that is likely to be brought to the spot by arsonists, are adopted for simulation. In the simulation, temperature inside the train car and smoke layer height, temperature, visibility and concentration of carbon monoxide at important locations outside the train are investigated. Most importantly, analysis of tenability in such a tunnel fire scenario is performed. The simulation results show that inside the train and near to the train front temperature could be a threatening factor while outside the train visibility and carbon monoxide concentration are threatening factors. Thus no general rule can be formulated in regards to whether passengers should stay inside the train or escape into the tunnel under the scenario studied. Provided that the train compartment is not too crowded and that the passengers are not in great panic, it would be safer to move inside the train to locations further away from the train front than to escape from the train and move in the tunnel where the geometrical environment is not favorable. In addition, the effect of longitudinal ventilation is investigated by comparing the results of simulation for an unventilated tunnel and a tunnel under a ventilation velocity of 2 m/s. The results of the present study could be of importance in drafting plans of rescue and evacuation in tunnel fires.

CYBERCRIME: THEORETICAL DETERMINANTS, CRIMINAL POLICIES, PREVENTION & CONTROL MECHANISMS

Purpose: The research aimed to explore the theoretical determinants of cybercrime in Qatar and assess how it can be prevented and minimised.
 Methodology: This was done using the mixed method research design through the survey strategy and semi-structured interviews with experts in the field of cybercrime in Qatar. Having adopted a mixed-method research methodology, the study had a target population of 200 participants for questionnaire survey, while expert interview had a target population of 11 experts. All these participants were purposively sampled in pursuit of engaging respondents who had knowledge, experience and expertise in cybercrime, such as IT experts and professionals working on cyber security solutions, Lawyers, police officers working in cybercrime department in Qatar, and lawyers who had dealt with cybercrime. The results of the survey were quantified using the Likert scale and analysed quantitatively by the factor analysis, and frequency tables. The results of the interviews were analysed qualitatively.
 Findings: The results of the survey revealed that the most typical types of cybercrime in Qatar include website hacking, email cyberattacks, and online banking cyberattacks. The predominant motive for cybercrime in the country is monetary gains. However, the findings from the logistic regression analysis reveal that different types of cybercrime are associated with different determinants, and online banking crimes are predominantly driven by monetary gains. Moreover, the findings from IT experts interviewed revealed various measures can be adopted as control measures of cybercrime activities and hazards, such as development of stronger networks by commercial companies to protect their cyber assets and use of up-to-date protective software that detect and ensures complete data security.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: Further, the findings, in relation to the effective methods and mechanisms for preventing cybercrime, suggest that it can be reduced through the spread of awareness among people and companies and through the adoption of preventive control mechanisms. Further, the study recommends that governments should formulate and implement legislations aimed at enhancing stringent measures of combating and dealing with cybercrime in convergence with international standards and practices. Besides, companies should adopt technological cybersecurity solutions to enhance effective protection of intellectual property, intrusion, and malicious damage of data as well as other cyber-related crimes.

Demand prediction for a public bike sharing program based on spatio-temporal graph convolutional networks

The operation of public bike sharing (PBS) programs has attracted attention again due to numerous problems encountered by free-floating bike sharing programs. These problems include malicious damage, theft, chaotic parking, large-scale deficit and bankruptcy. The short-time demand prediction is a key issue for the successful operation of PBS programs. In this study, we use a novel spatio-temporal graph convolutional network (STGCN) to predict the picking up/returning demand by exploring potential information from multi-view data. We apply graph convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to represent the spatial dependency based on the geographic information system data denoting the location of docks. Moreover, we use gated CNNs to denote the temporal dependency according to the time-series data representing the demand for picking up/returning public bikes. The STGCN and three recurrent neural network (RNN)-based competitors are trained and validated using the multi-view data from the Wenling PBS program for one month. The RNN-based competitors consist of the SimpleRNN, long short term memory and gated recurrent unit. Results show that the STGCN achieves higher prediction accuracy compared with its competitors. Although the STGCN consumes a longer training time compared with the SimpleRNN, it requires a minimal number of epochs to achieve convergence precision. The complete CNN structure in the STGCN can effectively address the spatial and temporal dependencies for PBS demand prediction.

Imperative to Build Network Security System and Speed Up the Future Network Construction

Abstract Network security is a comprehensive discipline involving computer science, network technology, communication technology, cryptography, information security technology, applied mathematics, number theory, information theory and other disciplines. Network security is to protect the hardware, software and data in the network system from accidental or malicious damage, change, and disclosure. The system runs continuously and reliably and normally, and network services are not interrupted. Although network security in the future market prospect is very good, but the Internet structural defects are known, because in the past nearly 20 years of rapid development of Internet technology, the pioneers of the IT industry seems to be technology focuses on the network flexibility and ignore the security of the network, so, in the site after the loss of a large number of network attacks, network security technology becomes emergent vacuum in the information technology, for the maintenance of computer network system security maintenance, inspection and repair network vulnerabilities, virus protection, organized by the national high strength against network has serious threat to all countries in the world, In such an environment, the core technology, key infrastructure is the only rely on independent innovation, create a new network system, with the new architecture, a new design, new technology, new resources, new standard and new application to open up a new network space, the building has an independent sovereign and independent control system of network security, it is imperative to accelerate the future network development.

Compensation for Malicious Damage to Property in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

This Working Paper examines aspects of the law relating to compensation for malicious damage to property in Ireland. Its main focus is the legislative framework of the nineteenth century, particularly the Grand Juries (Ireland) Act 1836 and the Malicious Injury Act 1861, as well as the procedural and substantive reforms introduced by the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. Compensation for malicious injuries in nineteenth-century Ireland was unique in the United Kingdom, with increasing divergence between England and Ireland in evidence from quite early in the century.