Phishing Website Detection Based on Deep Convolutional Neural Network and Random Forest Ensemble Learning

Phishing has become one of the biggest and most effective cyber threats, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and millions of data breaches every year. Currently, anti-phishing techniques require experts to extract phishing sites features and use third-party services to detect phishing sites. These techniques have some limitations, one of which is that extracting phishing features requires expertise and is time-consuming. Second, the use of third-party services delays the detection of phishing sites. Hence, this paper proposes an integrated phishing website detection method based on convolutional neural networks (CNN) and random forest (RF). The method can predict the legitimacy of URLs without accessing the web content or using third-party services. The proposed technique uses character embedding techniques to convert URLs into fixed-size matrices, extract features at different levels using CNN models, classify multi-level features using multiple RF classifiers, and, finally, output prediction results using a winner-take-all approach. On our dataset, a 99.35% accuracy rate was achieved using the proposed model. An accuracy rate of 99.26% was achieved on the benchmark data, much higher than that of the existing extreme model.

Social Information and Gender Differences in Competitive Preferences

This is an exploratory study that examines the effect of social information on gender differences in selection into a winner-take-all tournament, using a simple addition task. Participants perform this task in multiple rounds and then select into a competitive or non-competitive pay scheme. Prior to choosing payment schemes, participants are shown selected results about average performance and choices in a similar experiment. I find that the inclusion of social information eliminates any extant gender gap in competitive choices in every treatment. The reduction in the gender gap is not due to greater efficiency of choices by men or women, even though inefficient choices by low-performing individuals are mostly eliminated. Rather, the inclusion of feedback causes men and women to select into a competitive pay scheme in a similar manner, thereby removing the gender gap. Despite these results, the complexity of the social information intervention used leaves some results unexplained. JEL Codes: C9, J2, J16.

Precise visuomotor transformations underlying collective behavior in larval zebrafish

Complex schooling behaviors result from local interactions among individuals. Yet, how sensory signals from neighbors are analyzed in the visuomotor stream of animals is poorly understood. Here, we studied aggregation behavior in larval zebrafish and found that over development larvae transition from overdispersed groups to tight shoals. Using a virtual reality assay, we characterized the algorithms fish use to transform visual inputs from neighbors into movement decisions. We found that young larvae turn away from virtual neighbors by integrating and averaging retina-wide visual occupancy within each eye, and by using a winner-take-all strategy for binocular integration. As fish mature, their responses expand to include attraction to virtual neighbors, which is based on similar algorithms of visual integration. Using model simulations, we show that the observed algorithms accurately predict group structure over development. These findings allow us to make testable predictions regarding the neuronal circuits underlying collective behavior in zebrafish.

Beware the Black-Box: On the Robustness of Recent Defenses to Adversarial Examples

Many defenses have recently been proposed at venues like NIPS, ICML, ICLR and CVPR. These defenses are mainly focused on mitigating white-box attacks. They do not properly examine black-box attacks. In this paper, we expand upon the analyses of these defenses to include adaptive black-box adversaries. Our evaluation is done on nine defenses including Barrage of Random Transforms, ComDefend, Ensemble Diversity, Feature Distillation, The Odds are Odd, Error Correcting Codes, Distribution Classifier Defense, K-Winner Take All and Buffer Zones. Our investigation is done using two black-box adversarial models and six widely studied adversarial attacks for CIFAR-10 and Fashion-MNIST datasets. Our analyses show most recent defenses (7 out of 9) provide only marginal improvements in security (<25%), as compared to undefended networks. For every defense, we also show the relationship between the amount of data the adversary has at their disposal, and the effectiveness of adaptive black-box attacks. Overall, our results paint a clear picture: defenses need both thorough white-box and black-box analyses to be considered secure. We provide this large scale study and analyses to motivate the field to move towards the development of more robust black-box defenses.

Proportional Representation System Whether Significance for Bangladesh: An Analysis

The purpose of this article is to ensure free, fair and credible election by adopting electoral reformation, switch from `Winner Take All” (WTA) to Proportional Representation (PR) system. In Bangladesh the election process and election result both have been questioned. Nevertheless, election is one of the key components in ensuring democracy. Particularly the free, fair and credible election is one of the basic and crucial prerequisites and elements of democratic government and governance. Bangladesh, we found an under developed political culture, lack of democratic political organizations, institutions and practices in true sense. All these indicators have been almost failed to institutionalize democracy in Bangladesh. In this backdrop, this paper attempts to explain that, a switch from the current Winner Takes All (WTA) system to Proportional Representation (PR) system can reshape the election system by keeping consistency, because of the fact that the democracy means the rule of the majority but the minority can't be uprooted as well as Proportional Representation (PR) method can help stabilize democracy in Bangladesh.

Proportional Representation System Whether Significance for Bangladesh: An Analysis

The purpose of this article is to ensure free, fair and credible election by adopting electoral reformation, switch from `Winner Take All” (WTA) to Proportional Representation (PR) system. In Bangladesh the election process and election result both have been questioned. Nevertheless, election is one of the key components in ensuring democracy. Particularly the free, fair and credible election is one of the basic and crucial prerequisites and elements of democratic government and governance. Bangladesh, we found an under developed political culture, lack of democratic political organizations, institutions and practices in true sense. All these indicators have been almost failed to institutionalize democracy in Bangladesh. In this backdrop, this paper attempts to explain that, a switch from the current Winner Takes All (WTA) system to Proportional Representation (PR) system can reshape the election system by keeping consistency, because of the fact that the democracy means the rule of the majority but the minority can't be uprooted as well as Proportional Representation (PR) method can help stabilize democracy in Bangladesh.

Two-Sided Platform Ecosystems’ Structure, Architecture and Mechanism: an Integrated View--Under the Background of Industry 4.0

Platform model is one of the most prominent phenomena in modern business with the development of the Internet and the continuous expansion of the scale of industry 4.0 related industries. Two-sided platforms show features whereby two groups of agents interact with each other, in order to promote resource exchange and value creation. This review presents an integrated framework for understanding key factors of platform ecosystems, analyzing its member structure and technology architecture, exploring the dynamic mechanism and competition mechanism. Platform ecosystems refer to the core platform and its cooperative network of stakeholders, mainly consist of providers, sponsors, complementors and end users. The dynamic mechanism and competition mechanism are mainly in the realization of network effects and “winner-take-all”. These bring some management challenges, the preventive strategies are embodied in platform pricing, positioning, binding, in realization of ecosystem expansion and multi-win situation, to face the “egg-and chicken” syndrome and “get both sides of the market onboard”. Using this foundation, this research finally proposes five directions for future research in these settings, including the influence of platform technology architecture on complement or innovation, profit model of platform companies, environmental factors in platform competition, new challenge of platform envelopment and dynamic research methods, hoping to offer substantial new insights in the context of platforms and ecosystems.