Joaquim Celestino Júnior

Review: An intrusion detection and prevention system in cloud computing: A systematic review

The distributed and open structure of cloud computing and services becomes an attractive target for potential cyber-attacks by intruders. The traditional Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS) are largely inefficient to be deployed in cloud computing environments due to their openness and specific essence. This paper surveys, explores and informs researchers about the latest developed IDPSs and alarm management techniques by providing a comprehensive taxonomy and investigating possible solutions to detect and prevent intrusions in cloud computing systems. Considering the desired characteristics of IDPS and cloud computing systems, a list of germane requirements is identified and four concepts of autonomic computing self-management, ontology, risk management, and fuzzy theory are leveraged to satisfy these requirements.

Assessing Measurements of QoS for Global Cloud Computing Services

Many global distributed cloud computing applications and services running over the Internet, between globally dispersed clients and servers, will require certain levels of Quality of Service (QoS) in order to deliver and give a sufficiently smooth user experience. This would be essential for real-time streaming multimedia applications like online gaming and watching movies on a pay as you use basis hosted in a cloud computing environment. However, guaranteeing or even predicting QoS in global and diverse networks supporting complex hosting of application services is a very challenging issue that needs a stepwise refinement approach to be solved as the technology of cloud computing matures. In this paper, we investigate if latency in terms of simple Ping measurements can be used as an indicator for other QoS parameters such as jitter and throughput. The experiments were carried out on a global scale, between servers placed in universities in Denmark, Poland, Brazil and Malaysia. The results show some correlation between latency and throughput, and between latency and jitter, even though the results are not completely consistent. As a side result, we were able to monitor the changes in QoS parameters during a number of 24-hour periods. This is also a first step towards defining QoS parameters to be included in Service Level Agreements for cloud computing in the foreseeable future.

A nifty collaborative intrusion detection and prevention architecture for Smart Grid ecosystems

Precise review of Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems for Smart Grid (SG)Presents the salient requirements for Collaborative Smart-IDPS (CSIDPS) for SGDefines a fully distributed management framework and architecture for SGs with CSIDPSSpecifies CSIDPS design with autonomic and soft computing properties for SGExperimental results of CSIDPS exhibit decrease in false positive and negative alarms Smart Grid (SG) systems are critical, intelligent infrastructure utility services connected through open networks that are potentially susceptible to cyber-attacks with very acute security risks of shutdown, loss of life, and loss of revenue. Traditional intrusion detection systems based on signature and anomaly techniques are no longer sufficient to protect SGs due to their new connectivity and management challenges, the ever-rapidly-evolving masquerades, and cyber criminality levied against them. SGs require cyber-security systems to render them resilient and protected through advanced Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS) techniques and mechanisms. This paper proposes a smart collaborative advanced IDPS to provide the best possible protection of SGs with a fully distributed management structure that supports the network and host based detections and the prevention of attacks. By facilitating a reliable, scalable, and flexible design, the specific requirements of IDPS for SGs can be more easily met via a fuzzy risk analyzer, an independent and ontology knowledge-based inference engine module. These can work collaboratively by managing functions across multiple IDPS domains. A set of extensive and intensive simulated experiments shows that with its smart advanced components incorporating soft computing machine-learning techniques and a rich ontology knowledge base with fuzzy logic analysis, it detects and prevents intrusions more efficiently. The multi-faceted results of the simulation also show that the proposed Collaborative Smart IDPS (CSIDPS) system increases the intrusion detection accuracy and decreases the false positive alarms when compared to traditional IDPSs. This is epitomized by the skillful use of the confusion matrix technique for organizing classifiers, visualizing their performance, and assessing their overall behavior. In the final analysis, the CSIDPS architecture is designed toward contributing to de facto norms for SG ecosystems.

Empirical evaluation of the link and content-based focused Treasure-Crawler

Indexing the Web is becoming a laborious task for search engines as the Web exponentially grows in size and distribution. Presently, the most effective known approach to overcome this problem is the use of focused crawlers. A focused crawler employs a significant and unique algorithm in order to detect the pages on the Web that relate to its topic of interest. For this purpose we proposed a custom method that uses specific HTML elements of a page to predict the topical focus of all the pages that have an unvisited link within the current page. These recognized on-topic pages have to be sorted later based on their relevance to the main topic of the crawler for further actual downloads. In the Treasure-Crawler, we use a hierarchical structure called T-Graph which is an exemplary guide to assign appropriate priority score to each unvisited link. These URLs will later be downloaded based on this priority. This paper embodies the implementation, test results and performance evaluation of the Treasure-Crawler system. The Treasure-Crawler is evaluated in terms of specific information retrieval criteria such as recall and precision, both with values close to 50%. Gaining such outcome asserts the significance of the proposed approach. We present the experimental results of a focused Web crawler that combines link-based and content-based approaches to predict the topical focus of an unvisited page.We present a custom method using Dewey decimal classification system to best classify the subject of an unvisited page into standard human knowledge categories.To prioritize an unvisited URL, we use a dynamic, flexible and updating hierarchical data structure called T-Graph, which helps find the shortest path to get to on-topic pages on the Web.For the background review, the experimental results from several crawlers are presented.We compare our results against other significant focused Web crawlers.

Taxonomy and proposed architecture of intrusion detection and prevention systems for cloud computing

The distributed and open structure of cloud computing and services becomes an attractive target for potential cyber-attacks by intruders. The traditional Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS) are deemed largely inefficient to be deployed in cloud computing environments due to their openness, dynamicity and virtualization in offered services. This paper surveys and explores the possible solutions to detect and prevent intrusions in cloud computing systems by providing a comprehensive taxonomy of existing IDPS. It discusses the key features of IDPS that are challenging and crucial for choosing the right security measures for designing an IDPS. The paper further reviews the current state of the art of developed IDPSs for cloud computing which uses advanced techniques in overcoming the challenges imposed by cloud computing requirements for more resilient, effective and efficient IDPSs, abbreviated as CIPDS.

ProbT: A temporal probabilistic protocol to mitigate the broadcast storm problem in VANETs

VANETs are self-organized networks in which their constituent nodes are vehicles. They can be classified as a subcategory of MANETs. Due to their special characteristics, they demand protocols designed specifically for their scenario of action. Different types of applications can be created for VANETs such as security protocols, traffic management, systems maintenance, comfort for drivers and passengers, and others. In general, applications developed for VANETs make use of broadcast information. However, there are many issues to be considered. One of the central problems is the broadcast storm. In this paper we propose a temporal probabilistic protocol, named ProbT, to mitigate the broadcast storm problem. The ProbT performance was measured and compared to the protocols Blind Flooding, Weighted p-Persistence, AutoCast and Irresponsible Forwarding. Based on the results, the ProbT shows a good performance when compared to the mentioned protocols.

Using latency as a QoS indicator for global cloud computing services

Many globally distributed cloud computing (CC) applications and services running over the Internet, between globally dispersed clients and servers, will require certain levels of QoS in order to deliver and give a sufficiently smooth user experience. This would be essential for real‐time streaming multimedia applications such as online gaming and watching movies on a pay as you use basis hosted in a CC environment. However, guaranteeing or even predicting QoS in global and diverse networks that are supporting complex hosting of application services is a very challenging issue that needs a stepwise refinement approach to be solved as the technology of CC matures. In this paper, we investigate if latency in terms of simple ping measurements can be used as an indicator for other QoS parameters such as jitter and throughput. The experiments were carried out on a global scale, between servers placed in universities in Denmark, Poland, Brazil, and Malaysia. The results show the correlation between latency and throughput, and between latency and jitter, even though the results are not completely consistent. As a side result, we were able to monitor the changes in QoS parameters during a number of 24‐hour periods. This is also a first step toward defining QoS parameters to be included in service level agreements for CC at the global scale in the foreseeable future. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, 2013.© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Using a symmetric game based in volunteer's dilemma to improve VANETs multihop broadcast communication

Many applications in VANETs use broadcast communications to disseminate information or keep proper functionality in a network. When the broadcast is multi-hop, it tends to cause unnecessary resource consumption due to the excessive redundant packets on the network, this is known as the broadcast storm problem. Recently, the broadcast storm problem has gained attention due to the impact on VANETs. Many studies emphasize the importance of the forwarding area as a factor for choosing forwarder vehicles. But as important as the use of the area is knowing how many candidates there are to forward a broadcast message. This paper proposes a technique to mitigate that problem through a game theory mechanism: “the volunteers dilemma”. With this mechanism, the probability of a vehicle forwarding a message is computed, taking into account the cost and the benefit of message propagation. The mechanisms behavior was evaluated by simulations using NS-2. Results showed that when comparing it to a protocol that uses only the area which will be covered as factor for calculating the forwarding probability, packet loss ratio was reduced, as well as latency.

MBEEC: A bio-inspired routing protocol with multihop between cluster-heads for energy saving in WSN

This paper presents a Multihop Routing Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks (MBEEC) based on the Dijkstra Algorithm. An important challenge in wireless sensor networks is to balance the energy consumption. The Bio-Inspired Algorithm for Energy Efficient Routing for Continuous Data Dissemination Networks Wireless Sensor (BEE-C) can provide important savings on energy consumption but does not provide routing calculations that ensures a long lived topology. Lifetime is an extremely important factor in a Wireless Sensor Network, because of the difficulty of maintenance, limited battery, memory and processing that sensors have. MBEEC inherits the properties of BEE-C but uses Dijkstra Algorithm for calculating the routes. To ensure the longer lifetime of the network, MBEEC addresses a multihop algorithm in terms of consumption in a matter more energy efficient than BEE-C using Dijkstra to calculate routes, thus balancing the entire network.

A New Flow Network Approach for Improving Clustering Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) consist in a set ofsensor nodes that collect data in the environment and send it to a Base Station that processes the final data. Some challenges may be found, such as minimizing energy consumption and maximize the network lifetime. Many protocols achieve energy savings through network clustering. This paper presents a new modeling graph using flow network to improve the routing protocols using the clustering technique, improving the routing of data between clusters-head, as well as by setting a time for a round in the clustering process. With this agnostic technique, our proposal may increase the network lifetime, balance the power consumption among the nodes and better distribute the data transmissions. Through simulations in network simulator Omnet++, Castalia, the proposal is validated and its efficiency is verified by comparing it to other protocols which work with clustering techniques.