Proxy Server Research Articles

Network Performance of Proxy-Enabled Server Using Three Configurations

Background: This study aimed to test the mean network performance of the proxy server from the Out-Of-The-Box (OOTB), caching, filtering, and bandwidth allocation configurations when categorized according to the time of access and type of websites. More so, determine significant differences in the network performance of the proxy server with the OOTB and compared it with caching, blocking, and bandwidth allocation configuration when categorized according to the time of access and type of websites. Methods: Experimental design was employed to determine the difference in the network performance of proxy servers using three configurations namely, caching, filtering, and bandwidth allocation as compared to the network performance of proxyserver with the OOTB configuration. These three configurations were made as independent variables that determined the network performance of a proxyenabled server. The researchers used the Squid Proxy version 3.4. The data were obtained by setting up a computer system running Ubuntu Linux version 19.10. Four sets of experiments were conducted to test the performance of the OOTB, caching, filtering and bandwidth allocation configurations simultaneously. The time of access was defined as A.M. session and P.M. session while the type of websites was defined as static webpages and dynamic webpages. The mean and t-Test were the statistical tools used in the study where t-Test was set at 0.05 alpha level. Findings: It was found out that the caching configuration, in both time of access and type of websites, was the most efficient among the three configurations. The proxy-enabled server with blocking configuration was found to have the least performance efficiency for both times of access and types of websites among the three configurations. Novelty : With the results of this study, it is highly recommended to network administrators to employ caching configuration on proxy servers to improve the performance efficiency of computer networks. Keywords: ProxyServer; OutOfTheBox; Caching; Filtering; Bandwidth Allocation

Digital Financial Services on Financial Performance of Commercial Banks in Nigeria

Since the introduction of information communication technology and the widespread use of the internet, the banking business has undergone considerable changes. Information and communication technology (ICT) is at the heart of Nigeria's current worldwide shift curve in the electronic banking system. In light of this, this study looked into the influence of digital financial services (DFS) on the financial performance of Nigeria's publicly traded commercial banks. The study aims to see if there is a link between the dependent variable, which is financial performance as assessed by banks' earnings-per-share (EPS), and the main independent variables, which are the volume of ATM and POS transactions as a proxy for digital financial services (DFS). Secondary data was employed in the study. The data was collected from the annual report of target banks and the Central Bank of Nigeria from 2012 to 2020. The study used both descriptive and inferential statistics in analysing the data. In general, the study revealed that digital financial services (DFS) have substantial and significant marginal effects on earnings per share in Nigeria’s banking sector. Thus, there exists a positive relationship between digital financial services (DFS) and bank financial performance. In conclusion, electronic banking has made banking transactions to be more accessible by bringing services closer to its customers hence improving banking industry performance. Thus, the study recommends that bank management should enhance digital banking to improve financial performance in commercial banks.

A Practical Framework for Secure Document Retrieval in Encrypted Cloud File Systems

With the development of cloud computing, more and more data owners are motivated to outsource their documents to the cloud and share them with the authorized data users securely and flexibly. To protect data privacy, the documents are generally encrypted before being outsourced to the cloud and hence their searchability decreases. Though many privacy-preserving document search schemes have been proposed, they cannot reach a proper balance among functionality, flexibility, security and efficiency. In this paper, a new encrypted document retrieval system is designed and a proxy server is integrated into the system to alleviate data owner's workload and improve the whole system's security level. In this process, we consider a more practical and stronger threat model in which the cloud server can collude with a small number of data users. To support multiple document search patterns, we construct two AVL trees for the filenames and authors, and a Hierarchical Retrieval Features tree (HRF tree) for the document vectors. A depth-first search algorithm is designed for the HRF tree and the Enhanced Asymmetric Scalar-Product-Preserving Encryption (Enhanced ASPE) algorithm is utilized to encrypt the HRF tree. All the three index trees are linked with each other to efficiently support the search requests with multiple parameters. Theoretical analysis and simulation results illustrate the security and efficiency of the proposed framework.

Urban watershed ecosystem health assessment and ecological management zoning based on landscape pattern and SWMM simulation: A case study of Yangmei River Basin

Urban watersheds encounter a series of problems in the urbanization process, including water quality degradation, landscape space fragmentation, and ecological degradation. Ecosystem health assessment and ecological management zoning are prerequisites for ecological restoration and watershed sustainability. In terms of ecological integrity and ecosystem services, a watershed ecosystem health assessment framework was constructed in this study. In addition, ecological health indicators were obtained on a grid scale by introducing landscape pattern models, hydrological models, and ecosystem service proxy models. The ecosystem health assessment results of the Yangmei River Basin in 1999, 2013, and 2019 were determined via indicator weighted calculation. The ecological health levels and spatial patterns of different periods were simultaneously compared to analyze the reasons for the dynamic changes in the watershed ecological health. The results showed that due to the impact of human activities, the watershed ecosystem health changed drastically in the western mountains and the southeastern living area from 1999 to 2013. During 2013–2019, the urbanization process triggered changes in the landscape structure, while watershed ecosystem services value increased, and the deterioration of the watershed ecosystem health slowed down. Overall, the watershed ecosystem health has deteriorated in the past 20 years, and the regional differentiation was enlarged. Based on the dynamic changes in the watershed ecological health, five ecological management zones were obtained to help decision-makers formulate reasonable urban watershed ecological restoration plans, ensuring long-term sustainable ecosystem services.

Efficient Data Access Control Scheme Using Splitting Technique In Clouds

Data access control is one of the main problem in data transferring over the network. Cloud storage is a model of data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible. There are various existing methods are used in cloud storage and they are providing security. Proxy encryption method, Cryptographic methods, third party auditor methods are the some of the existing methods. In these methods uploaded files are not stored in virtualized format. Hence the other users can also view the data. Some hackers may hack the data through back end. This may leak privacy and confidentiality of the files. In this project proposes Splitting Technique will split the uploaded files intosub parts and they are stored in the cloud. Proxy server will create a onetime virtual data storage. Cloud will send a copy of the original data to this virtual storage. One time only data viewer can view the data. Data viewer can not able to edit, update or delete the original data. So, the original data are safe. The files are in randomly occurring in the cloud storage, that arealso in encrypted format. Hence the data hackers cannot able to hack the files. The proposed system shows that it provides more confidentiality and privacy than the existing methods.

Towards Secure Searchable Electronic Health Records Using Consortium Blockchain

There are significant data privacy implications associated with Electronic Health Records (EHRs) sharing among various untrusted healthcare entities. Recently, a blockchain-based EHRs sharing system has provided many benefits. Decentralization, anonymity, unforgeability, and verifiability are all unique properties of blockchain technology. In this paper, we propose a secure, blockchain-based EHR sharing system. After receiving the data owner’s authorization, the data requester can use the data provider’s keyword search to discover relevant EHRs on the EHR consortium blockchain and obtain the re-encryption ciphertext from the proxy server. To attain privacy, access control and data security, the proposed technique uses asymmetric searchable encryption and conditional proxy re-encryption. Likewise, proof of permission serves in consortium blockchains as the consensus method to ensure the system’s availability. The proposed protocol can achieve the specified security goals, according to the security analysis. In addition, we simulate basic cryptography and put the developed protocol into practice on the Ethereum platform. The analysis results suggest that the developed protocol is computationally efficient.

Efficient Data Access Control Scheme Using Splitting Technique In Clouds

Data access control is one of the main problem in data transferring over the network. Cloud storage is a model of data storage in which the digital data is stored in logical pools. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible. There are various existing methods are used in cloud storage and they are providing security. Proxy encryption method, Cryptographic methods, third party auditor methods are the some of the existing methods. In these methods uploaded files are not stored in virtualized format. Hence the other users can also view the data. Some hackers may hack the data through back end. This may leak privacy and confidentiality of the files. In this project proposes Splitting Technique will split the uploaded files intosub parts and they are stored in the cloud. Proxy server will create a onetime virtual data storage. Cloud will send a copy of the original data to this virtual storage. One time only data viewer can view the data. Data viewer can not able to edit, update or delete the original data. So, the original data are safe. The files are in randomly occurring in the cloud storage, that arealso in encrypted format. Hence the data hackers cannot able to hack the files. The proposed system shows that it provides more confidentiality and privacy than the existing methods.

Bandwidth Allocation Mechanism based on Users' Web Usage Patterns for Campus Networks

Managing the bandwidth in campus networks becomes a challenge in recent years. The limited bandwidth resource and continuous growth of users make the IT managers think on the strategies concerning bandwidth allocation. This paper introduces a mechanism for allocating bandwidth based on the users’ web usage patterns. The main purpose is to set a higher bandwidth to the users who are inclined to browsing educational websites compared to those who are not. In attaining this proposed technique, some stages need to be done. These are the preprocessing of the weblogs, class labeling of the dataset, computation of the feature subspaces, training for the development of the ANN for LDA/GSVD algorithm, visualization, and bandwidth allocation. The proposed method was applied to real weblogs from university’s proxy servers. The results indicate that the proposed method is useful in classifying those users who used the internet in an educational way and those who are not. Thus, the developed ANN for LDA/GSVD algorithm outperformed the existing algorithm up to 50% which indicates that this approach is efficient. Further, based on the results, few users browsed educational contents. Through this mechanism, users will be encouraged to use the internet for educational purposes. Moreover, IT managers can make better plans to optimize the distribution of bandwidth.

Perancangan Keamanan Akses Internet Berbasis Text Filtering Pada Universitas Atma Jaya Makassar

University of Atma Jaya Makassar has good internet access that can be used by everyone in the environment. From the observations, it is known that networks that can be accessed openly have not yet been handled to filter content on a website. Starting from this, the researcher intends to design a proxy server that can handle filtering text content and also optimizes internet access security on UAJM. The results of this study showed that sites categorized as pornography and radicalism are taken at random and then evaluated giving result of 74.9% for pornographic websites and 20.1% for radicalism websites.

Encrypted Speech Retrieval Scheme Based on Multiuser Searchable Encryption in Cloud Storage

In order to solve the problem of multiuser security sharing and privacy protection of the speech data in cloud storage and realize efficient encrypted speech retrieval, an encrypted speech retrieval scheme based on multiuser searchable encryption was proposed. Firstly, the ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) and searchable encryption (SE) are combined to support a multiuser searchable speech encryption scheme, which achieves the encryption and fine-grained access control of the speech data. Secondly, the Mel frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) feature of the original speech that is used as the input of the long- and short-term memory network (LSTM) is extracted to perform the deep semantic feature extraction as the speech keywords. Finally, the speech keywords are encrypted to generate a secure index, bound together with the encrypted speech, and then stored in the cloud. During the user retrieving, the keywords of query speech are extracted by utilizing the trained LSTM to generate the search trapdoor of the user and then uploaded to the cloud server, and the Euclidean distance is used for matching the security index with the search trapdoor. In addition, a proxy server is introduced to execute the partial ciphertext decryption operations to reduce computation overhead and storage space. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the proposed scheme has higher security and retrieval accuracy and can realize the secure storage of the massive speech data and multiuser data sharing.

A distributed privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme for smart grid with fine-grained access control

Smart grid integrates smart meters and modern communication technologies with the traditional electricity grid. It not only improves efficiency in power resource management, but also enhances reliability of the grid. However, the power consumption data may reveal users’ privacy, e.g. their living habits, and its authenticity is also important for accurate billing. Although a number of privacy preserving data aggregation schemes for smart grid have been proposed in the literature, most of them still suffer some limitations. For example, a single party is normally required to decrypt the aggregated data and this party could be a single point of failure in the system. Moreover, once the aggregated data is decrypted, no access control is imposed and it is available to the public. In order to address the above problems, we introduce a distributed privacy-preserving data aggregation scheme for smart grid with fine-grained access control. In the proposed scheme, homomorphic encryption is employed to ensure user privacy, digital signature is used to ensure data authenticity, distributed proxy re-encryption is used to achieve fine-grained access control of the aggregated data, and zero-knowledge proof is used to ensure that the proxy servers perform their tasks properly. Security analyses prove that the proposed scheme achieves the desirable security properties. In particular, it does not suffer single point of failure and the aggregated data can only be accessed by the designated recipient. Efficiency analyses also demonstrate that it is practical for real-world applications.

A Proxy Re-Encryption Approach to Secure Data Sharing in the Internet of Things Based on Blockchain

The evolution of the Internet of Things has seen data sharing as one of its most useful applications in cloud computing. As eye-catching as this technology has been, data security remains one of the obstacles it faces since the wrongful use of data leads to several damages. In this article, we propose a proxy re-encryption approach to secure data sharing in cloud environments. Data owners can outsource their encrypted data to the cloud using identity-based encryption, while proxy re-encryption construction will grant legitimate users access to the data. With the Internet of Things devices being resource-constrained, an edge device acts as a proxy server to handle intensive computations. Also, we make use of the features of information-centric networking to deliver cached content in the proxy effectively, thus improving the quality of service and making good use of the network bandwidth. Further, our system model is based on blockchain, a disruptive technology that enables decentralization in data sharing. It mitigates the bottlenecks in centralized systems and achieves fine-grained access control to data. The security analysis and evaluation of our scheme show the promise of our approach in ensuring data confidentiality, integrity, and security.

Broadcast Encryption Scheme for V2I Communication in VANETs

Information dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is inseparable from the interaction between vehicles and infrastructure. The trust authority (TA) often plays a pivotal role in VANETs and requires interaction with multiple vehicles. However, when the TA sends the same message to multiple vehicles, there are many redundancies, as it needs to negotiate with each vehicle and send them different ciphertexts. This greatly reduces the work efficiency of the TA. To the best of our knowledge, there is no research on the problem of redundancy that occurs when the same message is sent to multiple vehicles in VANETs. The proposed scheme adopts identity-based broadcast encryption (IBBE) technology, which is a secure data-sharing scheme suitable for the vehicle-to-infrastructure communication mode, in VANETs for the first time. Thus, with only one encryption, the TA can generate a fixed-length ciphertext for a group of vehicles. When there are new vehicles that subsequently request a service, the TA can assign encryption tasks to the proxy server. In terms of security, our scheme meets the particular requirements of VANETs. The encryption overhead of the sender and the length of the ciphertext were comparatively analyzed. The results demonstrated that the performance of the scheme improved significantly. Thus, our scheme can prevent redundancies and effectively improve the work efficiency of TA.

The Functional Structure of Tropical Plant Communities and Soil Properties Enhance Ecosystem Functioning and Multifunctionality in Different Ecosystems in Ghana

Plant functional traits are useful in tracking changes in the environment, and play an important role in determining ecosystem functioning. The relationship between plant functional traits and ecosystem functioning remains unclear, although there is growing evidence on this relationship. In this study, we tested whether the functional structure of vegetation has significant effects on the provision of ecosystem services. We analysed plant trait composition (specific leaf area, leaf carbon and nitrogen ratio, isotopic carbon fraction, stem dry matter content, seed mass and plant height), soil parameters (nutrients, pH, bulk density) and proxies of ecosystem services (carbon stock, decomposition rate, invertebrate activity) in twenty-four plots in three tropical ecosystems (active restored and natural forests and an agroforestry system) in Ghana. For each plot, we measured above-ground biomass, decomposition rates of leaves and invertebrate activity as proxies for the provision of ecosystem services to evaluate (i) whether there were differences in functional composition and soil properties and their magnitude between ecosystem types. We further aimed to (ii) determine whether the functional structure and/or soil parameters drove ecosystem functions and multifunctionality in the three ecosystem types. For functional composition, both the leaf economic spectrum and seed mass dimension clearly separated the ecosystem types. The natural forest was more dominated by acquisitive plants than the other two ecosystem types, while the non-natural forests (agroforest and restored forest) showed higher variation in the functional space. The natural forest had higher values of soil properties than the restored forest and the agroforestry system, with the differences between the restored and agroforestry systems driven by bulk density. Levels of ecosystem service proxies and multifunctionality were positively related to the functional richness of forest plots and were mainly explained by the differences in site conditions. Our study demonstrated the effects of functional forest structure on ecosystem services in different forest ecosystems located in the semi-deciduous forest zone of Ghana.

Analysis of Network Interaction of Modern Exploits

During targeted attack campaigns a malicious actor may use proxy servers to hide the attack path and origin. This approach may be used during the reconnaissance and exploitation phases. It can make the investigation process for Blue Team harder as security events can be assigned to different incidents by security software or some important data may be missing. In this paper the statistics of public exploits for 2018-2020 is considered. For the most frequent types of vulnerabilities based on CWE classification during this period, an analysis of the features of network interaction is performed. Additional factors that may have an impact on the total number of requests during exploitation, like authorization, CSRF protection and extra information gathering are investigated. Based on the number of requests and the possibility of detection by security mechanisms, the possibility of restoring the connectivity of the requests of the attacker using proxy servers for requests is determined. This classification may be used to develop Alert Correlation System methods and mechanisms, identify attacker groups and perform attack attribution.

Methods of counteraction of bypassing two-factor authentication using reverse proxy

The existing solutions for counteracting and preventing the interception of data and tokens of two-factor authentication are considered. Features that may indicate the presence of a silent reverse proxy server are chosen. It is proposed to analyze the information about additional time anomalies, which are usually created by the proxy server. The advantage of this approach is that the time characteristics information is generated on the client-side, and the malicious proxy server cannot modify it. Machine learning methods were used to detect implicit signs of the presence of a proxy server. A new method of detecting a silent reverse proxy server that satisfies the following conditions is proposed: 1) the human factor is minimized, 2) use by an individual user is possible, 3) the method has an acceptable impact on performance and can be used in real-time.

SEnD: A Social Network Friendship Enhanced Decentralized System to Circumvent Censorships

While the Internet is open by design, it is still the case that users can be subject to censorship by governments or enterprises in accessing services and data. In this paper we propose SEnD, a fully-distributed censorship circumvention system built upon an overlay, where users have peer-to-peer virtual private IP tunnels to proxies within their social network. With SEnD, users in an uncensored area can act as proxy servers for their social friends in a censored area, allowing them to bypass the censorship. SEnD is able to outperform the current censorship techniques, such as IP address blocking and active probing attacks. We assessed the effectiveness of SEnD through extensive simulations based on a synthetic dataset, as well as experiments based on a prototype implementation. We built our synthetic dataset based on parameters obtained from questionnaires administered both inside and outside China (we consider China as a case study of censorship area). The results show that SEnD is feasible, efficient and scalable. For example, when the proportion of concurrent active users is less than 60%, 99.9% of these users are able to find proxy servers.

Digital Evidence Management System for Cybercrime Investigation using Proxy Re-Encryption and Blockchain

One of the most beneficial uses of the Internet of Things in cloud is data sharing. As tempting since this technology is, data security is still one of the issues it faces, as inappropriate data usage may lead to a range of issues. We offer a proxy re-encryption strategy to securely exchange data in cloud contexts in this paper. Data owners can utilize identity-based encryption to send encrypted data to the cloud, and legitimate users can access the data via proxy re-encryption. Because IoT devices have limited resources, an edge device functions as a proxy server to do complex calculations. We also make effective use of information-centric networking capabilities to supply cached data in the proxy, resulting in better service quality and more network capacity. Our system also uses block chain, a revolutionary technology that allows for decentralized data sharing. It improves centralized system efficiency and enables fine-grained data access control. The security analysis and assessment of our system show that it has the potential to offer privacy protection, authenticity, and dependability.

A PRODUCTIVE IBPRE MODEL FOR SECURE DATA SHARING IN BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY BASED IOT

Intelligent tailored services are necessary to fulfill the expectations of users. In order to provide a highly dependable service, additional information about the user's surroundings is required. In order to capture a vast quantity of data, the Internet of Things (IoT), which links multiple gadgets over the Internet, has been created. Although cloud computing is frequently utilized to effectively manage data, it has the potential to delay the transmission of data as well. In this work, we suggest a proxy re-encryption strategy to secure data sharing in cloud contexts. Data owners may outsource their encrypted data to the cloud using identity-based encryption, while proxy re-encryption construction will enable genuine user’s access to the data. An edge device serves as a proxy server for computationally expensive tasks since IoT devices have limited resources. Using information-centric networking capabilities, we may effectively serve cached material in the proxy, hence enhancing service quality and efficiently using network traffic. We've also built our system on block chain, a revolutionary new technology that makes it possible to centralize the sharing of data. It reduces the load on centralized systems and allows for more precise management of data access. The security study and assessment of our scheme reveal the potential of our technique in protecting data confidentiality, integrity, and security

Implementasi Sistem Parental Control Pada Jaringan Client-Server Menggunakan Sistem Operasi Debian

The increasing number of internet users along with the development of technology is increasing, the current webiste service users have been used by anyone and in all fields. Various sites about education, entertainment, mystical even violent scenes and pornography are things that are impossible not to find on the internet. More and more sites that are not educating at this time make parents have to be more careful and wise in supervising their children who are still under 17 years old in using internet facilities. In this study, a parental control system will be designed and built that utilizes a proxy server on a network which can later be implemented on an internet network at home. The type of research in this research is research and development to carry out system development. With this system, it is hoped that parents can be calmer at work or outside the home and their children can monitor all their activities on the internet from those that are less suitable for the child to visit.