Web Proxy Research Articles

A Proposed Model for Web Proxy Caching Techniques to Improve Computer Networks Performance

one of the most important techniques for improving the performance of web based applications is web proxy caching Technique. It is used for several purposes such as reduce network traffic, server load, and user perceived retrieval delays by replicating popular content on proxy caches that are strategically placed within the network. The use of web proxy caching is important and useful in the government organizations that provides services to citizens and has many branches all over the country where it is beneficial to improve the efficiency of the computer networks performance, especially remote areas which suffer from the problem of poor network communication. Using of proxy caches provides all users in the government computer networks by reducing the amount of redundant traffic that circulates through the network. It also provides them by getting quicker access to documents that are cached. In addition, there are a lot of benefits we can obtain from the using of proxy caches but we will address them later. In this research, we will use web proxy caching to provide all of the above benefits that we are mentioned above and to overcome on the problem of poor network communication in ENR (Egyptian National Railways). We are going to use a scheme to achieve the integration of forward web proxy caching and reverse proxy caching.

Forensic analysis of online marketing for electronic nicotine delivery systems

BackgroundElectronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) are growing in awareness and use in the USA. They are currently unregulated as the Food and Drug Administration has yet to assert jurisdiction under...

Performance Modeling and Optimization of Deadline-Driven Pig Programs

Many applications associated with live business intelligence are written as complex data analysis programs defined by directed acyclic graphs of MapReduce jobs, for example, using Pig, Hive, or Scope frameworks. An increasing number of these applications have additional requirements for completion time guarantees. In this article, we consider the popular Pig framework that provides a high-level SQL-like abstraction on top of MapReduce engine for processing large data sets. There is a lack of performance models and analysis tools for automated performance management of such MapReduce jobs. We offer a performance modeling environment for Pig programs that automatically profiles jobs from the past runs and aims to solve the following inter-related problems: (i) estimating the completion time of a Pig program as a function of allocated resources; (ii) estimating the amount of resources (a number of map and reduce slots) required for completing a Pig program with a given (soft) deadline. First, we design a basic performance model that accurately predicts completion time and required resource allocation for a Pig program that is defined as a sequence of MapReduce jobs: predicted completion times are within 10% of the measured ones. Second, we optimize a Pig program execution by enforcing the optimal schedule of its concurrent jobs. For DAGs with concurrent jobs, this optimization helps reducing the program completion time: 10%--27% in our experiments. Moreover, it eliminates possible nondeterminism of concurrent jobs’ execution in the Pig program, and therefore, enables a more accurate performance model for Pig programs. Third, based on these optimizations, we propose a refined performance model for Pig programs with concurrent jobs. The proposed approach leads to significant resource savings (20%--60% in our experiments) compared with the original, unoptimized solution. We validate our solution using a 66-node Hadoop cluster and a diverse set of workloads: PigMix benchmark, TPC-H queries, and customized queries mining a collection of HP Labs’ web proxy logs.

Resisting Web Proxy-Based HTTP Attacks by Temporal and Spatial Locality Behavior

A novel server-side defense scheme is proposed to resist the Web proxy-based distributed denial of service attack. The approach utilizes the temporal and spatial locality to extract the behavior features of the proxy-to-server traffic, which makes the scheme independent of the traffic intensity and frequently varying Web contents. A nonlinear mapping function is introduced to protect weak signals from the interference of infrequent large values. Then, a new hidden semi-Markov model parameterized by Gaussian-mixture and Gamma distributions is proposed to describe the time-varying traffic behavior of Web proxies. The new method reduces the number of parameters to be estimated, and can characterize the dynamic evolution of the proxy-to-server traffic rather than the static statistics. Two diagnosis approaches at different scales are introduced to meet the requirement of both fine-grained and coarse-grained detection. Soft control is a novel attack response method proposed in this work. It converts a suspicious traffic into a relatively normal one by behavior reshaping rather than rudely discarding. This measure can protect the quality of services of legitimate users. The experiments confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Machine Learning Based Architecture for Rule Establishment of Web Proxy Server

In present scenario Internet has become an integral part of every ones life, as many services like mail, news, chat are available and huge amounts of information on almost any subject is available. However, in most cases the bandwidth to connect to the Internet is limited. It needs to be used efficiently and more importantly productively. Generally, bandwidth is distributed among groups of users based on some policy constraints. However, it turns out that the users do not always use the entire allocated bandwidth at all times. Also, some times they need more bandwidth than the bandwidth allocated to them. Ideally, productive usage should be preferred over unproductive usage when bandwidth is scarce. But when it is abundant then any kind of use can be permitted provided it is in consonance with policy. The bandwidth usage patterns of users vary with time of the day, time of the year and requirements. So there is a need for dynamic allocation of bandwidth that satisfies the requirements of the users, manages variable usage and is consistent with administrative usage policy. Internet usage is varied and in the context of an institution or organization an administrator would like to maximize productive usage. There is, therefore, a need to implement control access policies, which prevents unproductive use but at the same time does not, to the extent possible, impose censorship. Squid proxy server is a full-featured web proxy, which increases the efficiency of the Internet link by providing caching and proxy services. Squid provides many mechanisms to set access control policies. However, deciding which policies to implement requires experimentation and usage statistics that must be processed to obtain useful data. The proposed architecture elaborated in this paper is based on machine learning to determine policies depending on the content of current URLs being visited. The main component in this architecture is the Squid traffic Analyzer, which classifies the traffic and generates URL lists. These URL lists are used in formulating access policies. The concept of delay priority will also be introduced which gives more options to system administrators in setting policies for bandwidth management. As Squid allows HTTP tunneling, it forms a loophole for strict policy management. In this paper the proxy tunneling in Squid has also been considered and some possible solutions to this problem will also be suggested.

Modeling Web Session for Detecting Pseudo HTTP Traffic

More and more Internet services and applications are transferred by the HTTP protocol due to its openness. This brings new challenges to the security management of network boundary. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to detect the pseudo Web behavior which abuses the general HTTP protocol to pass through the network boundary. A new parameter is defined to extract the features of Web-session based on the inter-arrival time of HTTP requests. A nonlinear mapping function is introduced to protect the weak signals from the interference of the infrequent large values. An hidden Markov model with state duration is applied to describe the normal access behavior of Web sessions. The proposed model is dynamic, and does not rely on presupposed threshold and client- or server-side data which are widely used in traditional session detection approaches. An objective function is derived for predicting the near future behavior of a user's Web-session. The deviation between the prediction result and the real observation is used for detecting the pseudo Web behavior. Experiments based on real HTTP traces from large-scale Web proxies are implemented to valid the proposal.

Inferring relevant blocks on hyperlinked web page based on block-to-block similarity

Internet users devote considerable time and effort to collecting information from the web. To do so efficiently, after following a hyperlink, a user must be able to rapidly determine whether the desired information is contained on the destination web page. In this paper, therefore, we propose a method called hyperlink referring block estimation HERB, which infers the existence and location of relevant contents on destination web pages. HERB utilises user context in web browsing, in particular, the selected hyperlink and the text around it. Through experiments simulating ordinary web browsing, we quantitatively investigate the effectiveness of HERB. Our experiments show that HERB can infer blocks relevant to a hyperlink with approximately 65% precision and 70% recall. Furthermore, we design two HERB implementations, namely, a web proxy and a web browser, and we present an overview of a web proxy prototype and an example use case.

TCP Ack storm DoS attacks

We present Ack-storm DoS attacks, a new family of DoS attacks exploiting a subtle design flaw in the core TCP specifications. The attacks can be launched by a very weak MitM attacker, which can only eavesdrop occasionally and spoof packets (a Weakling in the Middle (WitM)). The attacks can reach theoretically unlimited amplification; we measured amplification of over 400,000 against popular web sites before aborting our trial attack.Ack storm DoS attacks are practical. In fact, they are easy to deploy in large scale, especially considering the widespread availability of open wireless networks, allowing an attacker easy WitM abilities to thousands of connections. Storm attacks can be launched against the access network, e.g. blocking address to proxy web server, against web sites, or against the Internet backbone. Storm attacks work against TLS/SSL connections just as well as against unprotected TCP connections, but fails against IPSec or link-layer encrypted connections.We show that Ack-storm DoS attacks can be easily prevented, by a simple fix to TCP, in either client or server, or using a packet-filtering firewall.

FRPWPS: A Filter Driver and Reverse Proxy Based Web Protection System

Website attack has seriously affected the owner’s profit and the security of the Internet. In this paper, a Filter Driver and Reverse Proxy based Web Protection System (FRPWPS) with a version control-based safe recovery mechanism is proposed. FRPWPS consists of five sub systems including web file monitor, content publish, web reverse proxy, backup and recovery, and monitor center. The file filter driver is used to protect web program files from illegally tampered. The protected websites are run behind a web proxy with intrusion detection function. The backup and recovery subsystem is realized by a FTP protocol. Experiments analyze the functions and costs of FRPWPS, and results show that it can work well and achieve good performance for web protection.

Intelligent Web proxy caching approaches based on machine learning techniques

In this paper, machine learning techniques are used to enhance the performances of conventional Web proxy caching policies such as Least-Recently-Used (LRU), Greedy-Dual-Size (GDS) and Greedy-Dual-Size-Frequency (GDSF). A support vector machine (SVM) and a decision tree (C4.5) are intelligently incorporated with conventional Web proxy caching techniques to form intelligent caching approaches known as SVM–LRU, SVM–GDSF and C4.5–GDS. The proposed intelligent approaches are evaluated by trace-driven simulation and compared with the most relevant Web proxy caching polices. Experimental results have revealed that the proposed SVM–LRU, SVM–GDSF and C4.5–GDS significantly improve the performances of LRU, GDSF and GDS respectively.

Intelligent Defense against Malicious JavaScript Code

JavaScript is a popular scripting language for creating dynamic and interactive web pages. Unfortunately, JavaScript also provides the ground for web-based attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in web browsers and unnoticeably infect users with malicious software. Regular security tools, such as anti-virus scanners, increasingly fail to fend off this threat, as they are unable to cope with the rapidly evolving diversity and obfuscation of these JavaScript attacks. In this article, we present Cujo, a learning-based system for detection and prevention of JavaScript attacks. Embedded in a web proxy, Cujo transparently inspects web pages and blocks the delivery of malicious JavaScript code. A lightweight static and dynamic analysis is performed, which enables learning and detecting malicious patterns in the structure and behavior of JavaScript code. To operate the system in practice we introduce an architecture for automatically collecting and sanitizing data for retraining Cujo. We demonstrate the efficacy of this architecture in an empirical evaluation, where Cujo identifies 93% of real attacks with few false alarms—even if the attacks are present in benign web pages during training of the system.

Intelligent Naïve Bayes-based approaches for Web proxy caching

Web proxy caching is one of the most successful solutions for improving the performance of Web-based systems. In Web proxy caching, the popular Web objects that are likely to be revisited in the near future are stored on the proxy server, which plays the key roles between users and Web sites in reducing the response time of user requests and saving the network bandwidth. However, the difficulty in determining the ideal Web objects that will be re-visited in the future is still a problem faced by existing conventional Web proxy caching techniques. In this paper, a Naïve Bayes (NB) classifier is used to enhance the performance of conventional Web proxy caching approaches such as Least-Recently-Used (LRU) and Greedy-Dual-Size (GDS). NB is intelligently incorporated with conventional Web proxy caching techniques to form intelligent and effective caching approaches known as NB-GDS, NB-LRU and NB-DA. Experimental results have revealed that the proposed NB-GDS, NB-LRU and NB-DA significantly improve the performances of the existing Web proxy caching approaches across several proxy datasets.

Dynamic Real Time Distributed Sensor Network Based Database Management System Using XML, JAVA and PHP Technologies

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is well known for distributed real time systems for various applications. In order to handle the increasing functionality and complexity of high resolution spatio-temporal sensory database, there is a strong need for a system/tool to analyse real time data associated with distributed sensor network systems. There are a few package/systems available to maintain the near real time database system/management, which are expensive and requires expertise. Hence, there is a need for a cost effective and easy to use dynamic real-time data repository system to provide real time data (raw as well as usable units) in a structured format. In the present study, a distributed sensor network system, with Agrisens (AS) and FieldServer (FS) as well as FS-based Flux Tower and FieldTwitter, is used, which consists of network of sensors and field images to observe/collect the real time weather, crop and environmental parameters for precision agriculture. The real time FieldServer-based spatio-temporal high resolution dynamic sensory data was converted into Dynamic Real-Time Database Management System (DRTDBMS) in a structured format for both raw and converted (with usable units) data. A web interface has been developed to access the DRTDBMS and exclusive domain has been created with the help of open/free Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools in Extendable Markup Language (XML) using (Hypertext preprocessor) PHP algorithms and with eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language (XHTML) self-scripting. The proposed DRTDBMS prototype, called GeoSense DRTDBMS, which is a part of the ongoing IndoJapan initiative ‘ICT and Sensor Network based Decision Support Systems in Agriculture and Environment Assessment’, will be integrated with GeoSense cloud server to provide database (dynamic real-time weather/soil/crop and environmental parameters) and modeling services (crop water requirement and simulated rice yield modeling). GeoSense-cloud server has been developed with Opera-Unite for file sharing, web server (with cost effective web server tools Windows Apache MySQL PHP-WAMP and X -any operating systems Apache MySQL PHP and Perl –XAMPP), file upload, and web proxy functionalities. Currently, the GeoSense DRTDBMS is useful to the rural farming community for ubiquitous decision making in precision agriculture aspects. In future, this DRTDBMS system could be used in climate/environmental systems to understand the micro-climatic variations in real-time mode.

Identifying the Number of Visitors to improve Website Usability from Educational Institution Web Log Data

Web usage mining deals with understanding the Visitor‟s behaviour with a Website. It helps in understanding the concerns such as present and future probability of every website user, relationship between behaviour and website usability. It has different branches such as web content mining, web structure and web usage mining. The focus of this paper is on web mining usage patterns of an educational institution web log data. There are three types of web related log data namely web access log, error log and proxy log data. In this paper web access log data has been used as dataset because the web access log data is the typical source of navigational behaviour of the website visitor. The study of web server log analysis is helpful in applying the web mining techniques.

Task optimization based on CPU pipeline technique in a multicore system

Currently, the multicore system is prevalent in desktops, laptops or servers. The web proxy can save network traffic overhead and shorten communication cost. Especially with the fast development of wireless Internet accessing, the web proxy will take a more important role in the future. To obtain the fast response and high hit rate from the proxy, we study the processing of web proxy and deeply exploit parallel features which exist in kinds of proxy work flow. We propose the CP technique to build parallel tasks in a proxy system. The result shows that our scheme can efficiently improve the data throughput and fully utilize the computing resources provided by the multicore system.

Preface

Preface<br />The last eight months (May to December of 2011) have been very hectic for the UIC Research and Development Center since there were three research forums that we organized to facilitate the dissemination of 18 studies that appear in this issue (Volume 17 Number 2 October 2011) of our faculty research journal. The bulk of work that Ms. Emma V. Sagarino and I had to finish is hard to describe but we are thankful that despite of such challenge, we still finally get hold of this issue. Of course, the Research Committee and the Panel of Reviewers as well as all the writers are very significant to this effort. Without them, the release of this issue would have not been made possible. A million thanks to all of you!<br /><br />This particular issue is divided into six sections, namely Health, Engineering & Engineering Education, Curriculum & Instruction, Social Sciences, Science & Math Education, and Information Technology<br />Education.<br /><br />Three studies on Health led by Marlon B. Sepe, S. Ma. Remegia M. Cirujales and Emma V. Sagarino report about an innovative technology that can ensure a safe drinking water and alleviate poverty to the people in rural communities, the working conditions of Filipino nurses abroad, and the status of women’s health in selected banana plantations, respectively.<br /><br />The UIC Engineering Faculty has managed to complete three studies delving into the safety practices in engineering field and current instructional strategies directly affecting the engineering curricula. The researchers for Engineering and Engineering Education are Bryant S. Arante, Renan P. Limjuco collaborating with Fr. Francisco G. Glover and Isagani M. Mendez, and Neil C. Capricho with Michael M. Obenque and Fe Monique F. Musni. <br /><br />In the section Curriculum and Instruction, two studies concerning the intensification of instruction, curriculum, and research in UIC were authored by Alvin O. Cayogyog who worked with Reynaldo O. Cuizon, and Emma V. Sagarino with Deogracia B. Corpuz. The first study tackled constructs such as Capability, Culture, and Passion for research and their relationships to each other, while the second investigation analyzed the 5-year performance of the UIC BS in Accountancy graduates in CPA board examinations.<br /><br />Meanwhile, three research articles appear in Social Sciences section. One of them was done by Mona L. Laya and Jason N. Marquez, who described in their work the brand of leadership that is epitomized by Rodrigo<br />R. Duterte. Then, Bienvinido E. Infante and Maribeth Q. Galindo, leading the Social Science Faculty, documented the multi-faceted experiences of foreign students in UIC, and the team of Alvin O. Cayogyog and Ariel E. San Jose investigated the lived philosophies of LGU Officials in reference to their human core faculties.<br /><br />The section for Science and Math Education accommodates the scholarly works of Adorico M. Aya-ay, Orcheliza L. Paramo, and Renan P. Limjuco who shared the findings of their own investigations about the distribution and relative abundance of medium-sized arboreal mammals at Mt. Mahuson, Mount Apo, development and validation of teacher’s laboratory competence evaluation instrument, and creative learning enrichment for mathematics appreciation, respectively, to elevate the quality of science and mathematics education in the university.<br /><br />Three ICT researchers were highlighted in the section Information Technology Education. Shenna Rhea A. Maranguit, et. al., conducted a study entitled Developing a Server-Side Scripting Language Converter for Translating ColdFusion to PHP, while Eric John G. Emberda, et. al., completed their work Developing a Web Proxy Server Application to Minimize Cross-Site Scripting Attacks. Exander T. Barrios, et.al., contributed two different studies. They are entitled A Consolidated Web Browser Interface Using Multiple Browser Libraries for Testing Web Designs and Implementing Symmetric Cryptography on SMS Messaging for Generic Phone Using J2ME Platform. These four studies deal with software development which aims to offer new features to the existing applications available in the Internet. The designs were conceptualized involving several stages and upon consultation with software developers in the region as well as with the intended users of the proposed technologies.<br /><br />

2011 Circumvention Tool Evaluation

Given the rising awareness of the potential of the Internet as a political space and increasing government control over the space, it is easy to understand the widespread interest in finding technical solutions to Internet filtering. While filtering circumvention technologies emerged in 1996 with Bennet Hazelton’s Peacefire, designed to evade filtering within US high schools and universities, in recent years, there’s been a great deal of interest in the technical community and the general public in the topic of Internet circumvention. The embrace of an “Internet freedom” agenda by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a pair of widely publicized speeches has increased awareness of the challenges of Internet filtering and encouraged new actors to explore or enter the field.The prospect of expanded fiscal support for tool development and deployment has led to debate in the popular press about the strengths and weaknesses of various circumvention tools and strategies. These debates make clear the need for scholarly research on the efficacy of various tools.This study uses a novel methodology for conducting in-country testing without requiring a researcher to be physically present in censored nations. While this method does not fully replicate the performance of circumvention tools from a cyber cafe in a filtered nation, it can be regularly replicated, allowing us to conduct tests over a long period of time and, potentially, create an ongoing, regularly updated portrait of circumvention tool usability in locations across the globe. In this report, we focus on questions of utility - the ability for a tool to be installed and used in a particular location, and the accuracy and speed of the tool. Additionally, we address concerns about security, usability and openness when appropriate.This evaluation also differs from our earlier work (2007 Circumvention Landscape Report; 2010 Circumvention Tool Usage) in that we cover significantly more tools and examine two classes of tools (ad-supported proxy servers and VPN services) which we did not review previously. We expanded the set of tools considered to recognize the increased number of options that users in censored nations may choose from, and to acknowledge results of our previous research which suggest that simple web proxies and VPNs have a very significant user base in comparison with dedicated censorship circumvention tools.

Developing a Web Proxy Server Application to Minimize Cross-Site Scripting Attacks

<p>Stealing information from a user’s computer through the Internet is a growing concern. One type of Internet attacks or Cybercrime is Cross-Site Scripting or XSS. It allows an attacker to retrieve information from an Internet user by inserting a script to a vulnerable website where it automatically mines private data from the victim, then sends those data to another website. This study was conducted to examine the different vulnerable aspects of a website. A list of XSS-vulnerable websites was gathered, as well as a list of different XSS scripts. These websites were tested with the XSS scripts to determine the entry point to which the scripts can penetrate. A web proxy application was created which implements different mechanisms to prevent these XSS scripts from successfully mining private data. The web proxy application was able to minimize XSS attacks by comparing the scripts inside the website with the database of XSS scripts. The researchers however, recommend that the process of preventing XSS scripts be improved by adding artificially intelligent algorithms that will read patterns for XSS scripts and distinguish them from safe scripts.</p>

A quantitative study of Web cache replacement strategies using simulation

The Web has become the most important source of information and communication for the world. Proxy servers are used to cache objects with the goals of decreasing network traffic, reducing user perceived lag and loads on origin servers. In this paper, we focus on the cache replacement problem with respect to proxy servers. Despite the fact that some Web 2.0 applications have dynamic objects, most of the Web traffic has static content with file types such as cascading style sheets, javascript files, images, etc. The cache replacement strategies implemented in Squid, a widely used proxy cache software, are no longer considered ‘good enough’ today. Squid’s default strategy is Least Recently Used. While this is a simple approach, it does not necessarily achieve the targeted goals. We simulate 27 proxy cache replacement strategies and analyze them against several important performance measures. Hit rate and byte hit rate are the most commonly used performance metrics in the literature. Hit rate is an indication of user perceived lag, while byte hit rate is an indication of the amount of network traffic. We also introduce a new performance metric, the object removal rate, which is an indication of CPU usage and disk access at the proxy server. This metric is particularly important for busy cache servers or servers with lower processing power. Our study provides valuable insights for both industry and academia. They are especially important for Web proxy cache system administrators; particularly in wireless ad-hoc networks as the caches on mobile devices are relatively small.

An analysis of web proxy logs with query distribution pattern approach for search engines

This study presents an analysis of users' queries directed at different search engines to investigate trends and suggest better search engine capabilities. The query distribution among search engines that includes spawning of queries, number of terms per query and query lengths is discussed to highlight the principal factors affecting a user's choice of search engines and evaluate the reasons of varying the length of queries. The results could be used to develop long to short term business plans for search engine service providers to determine whether or not to opt for more focused topic specific search offerings to gain better market share.