The Agent Web Model: modeling web hacking for reinforcement learning

Website hacking is a frequent attack type used by malicious actors to obtain confidential information, modify the integrity of web pages or make websites unavailable. The tools used by attackers are becoming more and more automated and sophisticated, and malicious machine learning agents seem to be the next development in this line. In order to provide ethical hackers with similar tools, and to understand the impact and the limitations of artificial agents, we present in this paper a model that formalizes web hacking tasks for reinforcement learning agents. Our model, named Agent Web Model, considers web hacking as a capture-the-flag style challenge, and it defines reinforcement learning problems at seven different levels of abstraction. We discuss the complexity of these problems in terms of actions and states an agent has to deal with, and we show that such a model allows to represent most of the relevant web vulnerabilities. Aware that the driver of advances in reinforcement learning is the availability of standardized challenges, we provide an implementation for the first three abstraction layers, in the hope that the community would consider these challenges in order to develop intelligent web hacking agents.

Scientific Evidence in Homeopathy: A Dynamic Database

Homeopathy, a system of Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM, according to WHO definition), is under frequent attack by skeptics because of its supposed “lack of evidence.” To overcome the distrust of skeptics and the public, many databases have been created, which focused on collecting all the published and indexed studies; however, none of these seem to be “comprehensive” and systematic enough. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the most reliable and available homeopathic studies in order to systematize the best evidence at all levels of research (studies based on humans, animals, and plants, randomized controlled trials [RCTs], observational studies, fundamental studies, etc.). A dynamic database was created containing 1,146 reliable pieces of evidence. It is being updated every three months and is available both for the whole homeopathic community and for the patients, Institutions, stakeholders, and skeptics. In the last 50 years, evidence in homeopathy has been increasing both at a quantitative and qualitative level. Unfortunately, it is not well known by the homeopaths themselves and also by the medical and scientific community. Therefore, a comprehensive database will not only support homeopaths but also assist in the better promotion and worldwide recognition of homeopathy as a significant field of medicine.

A Study of Detecting for Dragging Anchor

Frequent attack of typhoon leads to crucial accidents caused by anchor dragging. In 2018, 21st typhoon hit west of Japan and the vessel, which was fallen into anchor dragging, collided with the bridge connecting Kansai International Airport and opposite shore. This accident had serious damage to the transportation of people and logistics. Moreover, when 15th typhoon in 2019, which gave crucial damages such as house damages and suspension of the electric power and the water supply, hit Chiba prefecture located in east of Japan, 107 vessels which were equivalent to one third of all vessels anchored in Tokyo Bay had the symptom of anchor dragging. Seafarers must take measures as precaution to anchor dragging. However, missing its opportunity causes irreparable disasters. As the attack of typhoon becomes more frequent and serious, the means, which can evaluate the risk quantitatively to anchor dragging and help them make a decision, are necessary because seafarers have possibilities to fall into unexpected situation even if they are skilled and familiar with ship’s characteristics. This study aims at detecting the signal of earlier stage of anchor dragging and visualizing the level of danger, as a mean to make a decision for taking precautions in an appropriate opportunity. With the acceleration meter, which can measure quantitatively ship’s lists and vibrations what human cannot recognize, acceleration data of ship’s motion were measured and evaluated. However, they don’t always show necessary factors for analyzing ship’s motion because they include all motions on the ship, such as wind, wave force and vibrations from its generator. Then, the system, sorting of each range of frequency from measured accelerations and extracting necessary data, was created. This enables extraction of ship’s motion at anchor. The analysis results between the outer force affecting to the ship at anchor and the data extracted by this system, specified the signal of anchor dragging. In addition, the new system was built for indicating the risk of anchor dragging, by evaluating relationship between the signal of anchor dragging and the effect by outer force. Measuring their data on actual ship showed the validity of this system. Thus, with measuring acceleration data at anchor and analyzing them, detecting ship’s motion, which indicates the signal of anchor dragging, proved to be possible.

Impoliteness in reader comments on the Al-Jazeera channel news website

Many internet users actively participate and share their views using social networks. Their behavior is sometimes unpredictable; it could be polite or impolite. This study aims to investigate impoliteness in the comment section of the Al-Jazeera Arabic news website to uncover the types of impolite acts which commenters engage in online, and expose conventionalized and non-conventionalized impoliteness triggers. It also seeks to explore the influence of computer-mediated contextual factors, such as anonymity and synchronicity on impoliteness. The study adopts Neurauter-Kessels’ framework (2011) to identify the types of face attacks and Culpeper’s bottom-up model (2011, 2016) of impoliteness triggers to classify impolite acts. The analysis shows that commenters engage in FTAs that are targeting the writers. The most frequent attack is the lack of balance, wholeness, fairness, and objectivity and the least frequent is being out of touch or having a lack of interaction with the audience. Commenters also employ both conventionalized and non-conventionalized impoliteness formulas in their face-attacks. Findings indicate that there are some distinctive features of Arabic impoliteness discourse, such as the use of colloquialisms, proverbs and idioms, religious expressions and interjections. The analysis also reveals that anonymity and asynchronicity are significant in accounting for the manifestation of impoliteness.

Tactical and technical performance analysis of the male 65 kg category at the brazilian shotokan karate championship

The aim of the present study was to identify the most used techniques by medalists and defeated athletes during the Brazilian Shotokan Karate Championship of 2017. Eleven fights involving thirteen athletes (28.5±3.7yrs.) who competed in the category “up to 65 Kg 1st KYU” were investigated. Analysis were conducted by six specialists through the observation and register technique using the tactical and technical spreadsheet Scout Karate. The Anova test was used to compare actions and techniques mostly used. The Chi-square test for independent samples was used to verify the existence of significant differences among the techniques used by the winning and defeated athletes (p<0.05). Results show that the most frequent attack during fights was the “Mawashi geri”, 26.3±1.5 times, followed by “Gyaku zuki” with 19.5±2.0 times (p<0.01). The most visualized tactical action during combats was the attack with 47.5±5.5 times (p<0.01). “Mawashi geri” was the mostly used attack (p=0.01) performed by winners (71.4%) when compared with the defeated athletes (28.6%). The results indicate that the “Mawashi geri” attack was the most assertive decision used in the category “up to 65 Kg 1st KYU”.

An Aggregate Signature Based Trust Routing for Data Gathering in Sensor Networks

An Aggregate Signature based Trust Routing (ASTR) scheme is proposed to guarantee safe data collection in WSNs. In ASTR scheme, firstly, the aggregate signature approach is used to aggregate data and keep data integrity. What is more important, a light aggregate signature based detour routing scheme is proposed to send abstract information which includes the data sending time and ID of data, nodes’ ID to the sink over different paths which can verify whether the data reaches the sink safely. In addition, the trust of a path is evaluated according to the success rate of the path. The trust of paths susceptible to frequent attack will be lowered and the path with high trust will be selected for data routing to avoid data gathering through low trust path and thereby increase the success rate of data gathering. Our comprehensive performance analysis has shown that, the ASTR scheme is able to effectively ensure an increase in success rate of data transmission by 23.23%, reduce the data amount loaded by the node by 53.59%, reduce the redundant data by 41.70%.

Diarrhea in Breastfed versus Formulafed Baby: A Hospital Based Study in 150 Children

Background: Breastfeeding reduces incidence of common childhood illnesses such as diarrhea and thus reduces infant mortality and morbidity.Objective: To find out the incidence of diarrhea in breastfed versus formula fed baby. Methodology: An observational cross sectional study was carried out in the Pediatric department of Northern private medical college hospital, Rangpur from March 2013 to June 2014. Total 150 children aged 1 to 24 months having diarrhea were enrolled in the study.Result: Mean age of children was 11.6 with SD ±5.29 months, ranges from 1 month to 23 months in which exclusively breast fed 51.3%, breast fed plus formula fed 39.3%, exclusively formula fed 9.4%; single attack of diarrhea occurred in 72.7%, 40.7%, and 28.6% children in exclusively breast fed, breast fed plus formula fed and exclusively formula fed children respectively. Frequent attack of diarrhea occurred in 27.3%, 59.3% and 71.4% children in exclusively breast fed, breast fed plus formula fed and exclusively formula fed children respectively; among 59 patients who developed first attack of diarrhea by 6 months of age, 10.2%, 69.5 % and 20.3% were from exclusively breast fed, breast fed plus formula fed and exclusively formula fed children respectively. Patients who developed first attack of diarrhea by 7-12 months of age, 69.8% were from exclusively breast fed, 27.0% from breast fed plus formula fed and 3.2% from exclusively formula fed children. But 28 children whose first diarrhea occurred by 13-24 months of age, 96.4% and 3.6% were from exclusively breast fed, and breast fed plus formula fed group respectively.Conclusion: Breast feeding reduces incidence of diarrhea, prevents frequent attack and early occurrence of diarrhea in under two children.J Bangladesh Coll Phys Surg 2016; 34(1): 21-25

Determinantes táticas do jogo praticado pelo atacante central no voleibol masculino

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1980-0037.2016v18n3p371 Among volleyball skills, spike is responsible for the highest number of scores, and the first tempo of attack is related to the higher incidence of score a point, by hindering the defensive opponent’s action. However, most of the studies show general results and do not specify the conditions and constraints of each attack zone. Thus, the aim of this study was analyzing the offensive game (complex I) performed by the middle attacker at the 2014/2015 National men’s Brazilian Championship (Superliga). The sample wascomposed by 142 games of 12 teams, totaling 5350 receptions, setting and spikes actions. The results showed that the middle spikes occurred mostly after receptions A and B, being the most frequent attack scoring point as well as the most powerful one. Moreover, the relationship between the reception effect and setting effect was observed, showing that the best receptions influenced the setting type and the attack effect. Therefore, the middle attack had effective effect in the winning score, since it decreased the chances of opponent’s defense, due to the reduced time to defensive organization. Finally, the situational constraints delimited the middle attacker actions. Based on the above, we suggest that future studies should restrict the analysis conditions and situational constraints of each specific game situation.