Goal modelling for security problem matching and pattern enforcement

Yu, Y., Kaiya, H., Yoshioka, N., Hu, Z., Washizaki, H., Xiong, Y. and Hosseinian-Far, A. (2018) Goal modelling for security problem matching and pattern enforcement. International Journal of Secure Software Engineering (IJSSE). 8(4) 1947-3036. (In Press)

This article describes how earlier detection of security problems and the implementation of solutions would be a cost-effective approach for developing secure software systems. Developing, gathering and sharing similar repeatable programming knowledge and solutions has led to the introduction of Patterns in the 90's. The same concept has been adopted to realise reoccurring security knowledge and hence security patterns. Detecting a security problem using the patterns in requirements models may lead to its early prevention. In this article, the authors have provided an overview of security patterns in the past two decades, followed by a summary of i*/Tropos goal modelling framework. Section 2 outlines model-driven development, meta-models and model transformation, within the context of requirements engineering. They have summarised security access control types, and formally described role-based access control (RBAC) in particular as a pattern that may occur in the stakeholder requirements models. Then the authors used the i* modelling language and some elements from its constructs - model-driven queries and transformations - to describe the pattern enforcement. This is applied to a number of requirements models within the literature, and the pattern-based transformation tool they designed has automated the detection and resolution of this security pattern in several goal-oriented stakeholder requirements. Finally, the article also reflects on a variety of existing applications and future work.

Go to  http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/10207/  for more details.

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

prevention/mitigation against memory corruption attack

Another research collaboration between an academic and an MSc Computing student.

Mahmood, J. K. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) An overview of prevention/mitigation against memory corruption attack. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC.


One of the most prevalent, ancient and devastating vulnerabilities which is increasing rapidly is Memory corruption. It is a vulnerability where a memory location contents of a computer system are altered because of programming errors allowing execution of arbitrary codes. It particularly happens in low-level programming languages such as C, C++ because of their lack of memory safety. Many defense techniques against this kind of attacks have been presented and implemented to prevent it. However, an advanced version of the attack can bypass some of these techniques and harm the system. In this work, we present an overview of the Memory corruption attacks and the existing mitigation techniques for both compilers and operating systems. We hope that this survey will provide sufficient details that can be useful for researchers and system designer.

To find out more go to http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/10368/

To find out more about the MSc Computing Courses go to:
MSc Computing 
MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)





All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Design space exploration of cache memory

Sam, D. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) An overview of design space exploration of cache memory. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC Stockholm, Sweden, 21-23 September 2018

The advancement of computer architecture systems have led to the massive need for memory. The need to sustain such leaps has required the examination of solutions for the design space exploration of memory. From design space exploration and its relevance to the fundamental makeup of cache memory, there are some possible solutions to the problem of needing more and faster memory sooner than later. Design Space Exploration techniques Simulation, Analytical, Configurable and Evolutionary all provide different advantages and definitely enhance the cache memory design. However, each has its drawbacks that should be taken into account depending on the intent of its application. This paper presents an overview of the different techniques and evaluates their effectiveness with regard to their advantages and disadvantages. A suggested best solution could be a hybrid that allowed the different techniques to compensate for the other’s deficiencies

To learn more go to http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/10309/

To find out more about the MSc Computing Courses go to:
MSc Computing 
MSc Computing (Software Engineering)
MSc Computing (Internet Technology and Security)
MSc Computing (Computer Networks Engineering)

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Computing for Social Good 4 : #BlockchainEducationalPassport challenge winner announced

To find out more about a project that two members of the computing team, Dr Ali Al-Sherbaz, and Dr Scott Turner, are proud to be involved in, the details below taken from https://www.northampton.ac.uk/news/blockchaineducationalpassport-challenge-winner-announced/ the news story about the Blockchain Educational Passport project lead by Dr Cristina Devecchi.

Dr. Cristina Devecchi, Senior Lecturer in Education, and co-director of the Centre for Education and Research at the University of Northampton, has recently returned from a trip to the United Nations. Cristina travelled to New York on behalf of the University to announce the winner of the #BlockchainEducationalPassport Global Challenge.

The #BlockchainEducationalPassport Challenge is a collaborative project between the United Nations’ Unite Ideas platform, the University of Northampton and Ana-Aqra Association in Beirut, Lebanon. The Challenge called on the public and industry to create an open-source Blockchain-based tool to address the humanitarian crisis facing displaced Syrian refugee children and young adults, who have lost proof of their educational credentials, and other formal and informal learning experiences.

The Path Foundation was awarded the Challenge’s top prize for the submission of their solution at a ceremony held at the United Nations headquarters in New York. The Blockchain solution was chosen because it provides a way to capture, validate and verify both education and work experience, to bridge the gap between those people looking for work and the job market.

Dr Cristina Devecchi, Senior Lecturer and co-director of the Centre for Education and Research at the University of Northampton said: “65 Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict and violence. Of these people, 61% are below the age of 26. In Lebanon, 1 million people, 1/6 of the population, consists of Syrian refugees. Of these half are under the age of 18 and 250,000 are not in school. Yet, they have a right to access education and have their education attainment preserved to help their futures, something that sadly is not a reality. The #BlockchainEducationalPassport will support these children and people to capture and preserve the skills they already have, and the skills they will gain in the future.

“The #BlockchainEducationPassport aims to create a platform which can be used by individuals, aid organisations, academia and also employers in the region to establish certified and secure way for people to track their identity and learning credentials from the past and also for the future, and ensure that their achievements are portable as they rebuild their lives after escaping conflict. The Path Foundation solution was very interesting and gives the Challenge team lots to think about for potential development of a working prototype.”

Ross Jones, Path CEO said: “Path is passionate about making a real difference in this world. To provide opportunities to those who are often forgotten. Giving everyone a chance to create their own Path in life, no matter what came before. The chance to be visible, when it’s so easy for people to be hidden.

“I accepted the award for Blockchain Educational Passport from the United Nations Headquarters in New York via video (I would have loved to be there!) and I couldn’t be more proud of the work we are doing. I couldn’t be more proud of the team I work with and I am humbled to be given the chance to make a difference to so many people in the world.”

Rima Doany Musallam, Executive Director at Ana Aqra Association said: “Ana Aqra has worked diligently to provide access to education to thousands of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon since 2012. We are keen on seeing these children go on to continue their path for an education at the appropriate level earned, wherever they may end up.  We are so excited that the Path Foundation through the #BlockchainEducationalPassport Challenge will honour these children’s hard work and provide a means to track their learning progress.

Vice Chancellor, Professor Nick Petford, and ten other University staff, drawn from the Faculties of Education and Humanities; Arts, Science and Technology; and Business and Law, will now focus their efforts, along with the UN Unite team on a second Challenge to develop the Path Foundation solution, with the aim of a working prototype. In addition to the solution put forward by the Path Foundation, a number of others submitted ideas. Thank you to those people who took the time to submit solutions.

#BlockchainEducationPassport was one of just eight crowdsourcing projects selected for the UN’s Unite Ideas platform. Unite Ideas aims to bring together the UN, academia, and the public to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – which all UN member states are working towards – through data-driven challenges. 


Related Link

Computing for Social Good 1: Blockchain and Education

http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.com/2018/02/computing-for-social-good-1-blockchain.html




All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

BCS Northampton: IOT Update

19th June 2018 - IOT Update including Smart Metering, Smart Cities etc.

The presentation will be held in 

Room NW041 of The Newton Building at The University of Northampton, Avenue Campus, St Georges Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JB

Doors will open at 19:00 hrs, The Presentation will commence at 19.30hrs.

Presenter: Barney Duffy

Subjects Covered:

• IOT Update
• M2M Update
• NB-IOT
• Other Radio Technologies
• Smart Cities
• Smart Metering
• Further Technologies and Services
• Questions and Answers

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

increasing Instruction Level Parallelism

A study of techniques to increase Instruction Level Parallelism 
Margarita Espinosa Jimenez, L. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) 
 International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. 

Abstract
Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) is the number of instructions that can be executed in simultaneously a program in a clock cycle. The microprocessors exploit ILP by means of several techniques that have been implemented in the last decades and according to the advances that have been obtained in hardware, this survey presents the different techniques that have been used successfully in the execution of multiple instructions of a single program in a single clock cycle.


For more details go to: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/10312/



All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

power-aware Network-on-Chip design techniques

A survey of power-aware Network-on-Chip design techniques. 
Ofori-Attah, E. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) 
The Thirteenth International Multi-Conference on Computing in Global Information Technology. 2308-4529. 

Abstract
The Network-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm has been heralded as the solution to the communication limitation that System-on-Chip (SoC) poses. As we usher into the billion-transistor era, NoC which was once deemed as the solution is defecting due to its power demanding components. Several techniques have been proposed over the years to improve the performance of the NoCs, trading off power efficiency. However, low power design solution is one of the essential requirements of future NoC- based SoC applications. Power dissipation can be reduced by efficient routers, architecture saving techniques and communication links. This paper presents recent contributions and efficient saving techniques at the router, NoC architecture and Communication link level.

More details at: http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/10371/ 

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Miniproject: Producing a graphical summary of a paper 1

Experimenting with turning papers in an infographic. In this example turned the following paper into a more graphical summary.

Experience of using spreadsheets as a bridge in the understanding of AI techniques. 

Turner, S. J. (2017) 

Paper presented to: 13th China Europe Symposium on Software Engineering Education (CEISEE), Athens, Greece, 24-25 May 2017. 

All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon