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Publications

2023

The GANfather: Controllable generation of malicious activity to improve defence systems

Authors
Pereira, RR; Bono, J; Ascensao, JT; Aparício, D; Ribeiro, P; Bizarro, P;

Publication
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 4TH ACM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AI IN FINANCE, ICAIF 2023

Abstract
Machine learning methods to aid defence systems in detecting malicious activity typically rely on labelled data. In some domains, such labelled data is unavailable or incomplete. In practice this can lead to low detection rates and high false positive rates, which characterise for example anti-money laundering systems. In fact, it is estimated that 1.7-4 trillion euros are laundered annually and go undetected. We propose The GANfather, a method to generate samples with properties of malicious activity, without label requirements. We propose to reward the generation of malicious samples by introducing an extra objective to the typical Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) loss. Ultimately, our goal is to enhance the detection of illicit activity using the discriminator network as a novel and robust defence system. Optionally, we may encourage the generator to bypass pre-existing detection systems. This setup then reveals defensive weaknesses for the discriminator to correct. We evaluate our method in two real-world use cases, money laundering and recommendation systems. In the former, our method moves cumulative amounts close to 350 thousand dollars through a network of accounts without being detected by an existing system. In the latter, we recommend the target item to a broad user base with as few as 30 synthetic attackers. In both cases, we train a new defence system to capture the synthetic attacks.

2023

A Game with a Purpose for Building Crowdsourced Semantic Relations Datasets for Named Entities

Authors
dos Santos, AF; Leal, JP;

Publication
Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems

Abstract
Semantic measures evaluate and compare the strength of relations between entities. To assess their accuracy, semantic measures are compared against human-generated gold standards. Existing semantic gold standards are mainly focused on concepts. Nevertheless, semantic measures are frequently applied both to concepts and instances. Games with a purpose are used to offload to humans computational or data collection needs, improving results by using entertainment as motivation for higher engagement. We present Grettir, a system which allows the creation of crowdsourced semantic relations datasets for named entities through a game with a purpose where participants are asked to compare pairs of entities. We describe the system architecture, the algorithms and implementation decisions, the first implemented instance – dedicated to the comparison of music artists – and the results obtained. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

2023

Jay: A software framework for prototyping and evaluating offloading applications in hybrid edge clouds

Authors
Silva, J; Marques, ERB; Lopes, LMB; Silva, FMA;

Publication
SOFTWARE-PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE

Abstract
We present Jay, a software framework for offloading applications in hybrid edge clouds. Jay provides an API, services, and tools that enable mobile application developers to implement, instrument, and evaluate offloading applications using configurable cloud topologies, offloading strategies, and job types. We start by presenting Jay's job model and the concrete architecture of the framework. We then present the programming API with several examples of customization. Then, we turn to the description of the internal implementation of Jay instances and their components. Finally, we describe the Jay Workbench, a tool that allows the setup, execution, and reproduction of experiments with networks of hosts with different resource capabilities organized with specific topologies. The complete source code for the framework and workbench is provided in a GitHub repository.

2023

End-to-End Detection of a Landing Platform for Offshore UAVs Based on a Multimodal Early Fusion Approach

Authors
Neves, FS; Claro, RM; Pinto, AM;

Publication
SENSORS

Abstract
A perception module is a vital component of a modern robotic system. Vision, radar, thermal, and LiDAR are the most common choices of sensors for environmental awareness. Relying on singular sources of information is prone to be affected by specific environmental conditions (e.g., visual cameras are affected by glary or dark environments). Thus, relying on different sensors is an essential step to introduce robustness against various environmental conditions. Hence, a perception system with sensor fusion capabilities produces the desired redundant and reliable awareness critical for real-world systems. This paper proposes a novel early fusion module that is reliable against individual cases of sensor failure when detecting an offshore maritime platform for UAV landing. The model explores the early fusion of a still unexplored combination of visual, infrared, and LiDAR modalities. The contribution is described by suggesting a simple methodology that intends to facilitate the training and inference of a lightweight state-of-the-art object detector. The early fusion based detector achieves solid detection recalls up to 99% for all cases of sensor failure and extreme weather conditions such as glary, dark, and foggy scenarios in fair real-time inference duration below 6 ms.

2023

On the Performance of Secure Sharing of Classified Threat Intelligence between Multiple Entities

Authors
Fernandes, R; Bugla, S; Pinto, P; Pinto, A;

Publication
SENSORS

Abstract
The sharing of cyberthreat information within a community or group of entities is possible due to solutions such as the Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP). However, the MISP was considered limited if its information was deemed as classified or shared only for a given period of time. A solution using searchable encryption techniques that better control the sharing of information was previously proposed by the same authors. This paper describes a prototype implementation for two key functionalities of the previous solution, considering multiple entities sharing information with each other: the symmetric key generation of a sharing group and the functionality to update a shared index. Moreover, these functionalities are evaluated regarding their performance, and enhancements are proposed to improve the performance of the implementation regarding its execution time. As the main result, the duration of the update process was shortened from around 2922 s to around 302 s, when considering a shared index with 100,000 elements. From the security analysis performed, the implementation can be considered secure, thus confirming the secrecy of the exchanged nonces. The limitations of the current implementation are depicted, and future work is pointed out.

2023

Mortality prediction using medical time series on TBI patients

Authors
Fonseca, J; Liu, XY; Oliveira, HP; Pereira, T;

Publication
COMPUTER METHODS AND PROGRAMS IN BIOMEDICINE

Abstract
Background and objective: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of injury-related mortality in the world, with severe cases reaching mortality rates of 30-40%. It is highly heterogeneous both in causes and consequences making more complex the medical interpretation and prognosis. Gathering clinical, demographic, and laboratory data to perform a prognosis requires time and skill in several clinical specialties. Artificial intelligence (AI) methods can take advantage of existing data by performing helpful predictions and guiding physicians toward a better prognosis and, consequently, better healthcare. The objective of this work was to develop learning models and evaluate their capability of predicting the mortality of TBI. The predictive model would allow the early assessment of the more serious cases and scarce medical resources can be pointed toward the patients who need them most. Methods: Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and Transformer architectures were tested and compared in performance, coupled with data imbalance, missing data, and feature selection strategies. From the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) dataset, a cohort of TBI patients was selected and an analysis of the first 48 hours of multiple time series sequential variables was done to predict hospital mortality. Results: The best performance was obtained with the Transformer architecture, achieving an AUC of 0.907 with the larger group of features and trained with class proportion class weights and binary cross entropy loss. Conclusions: Using the time series sequential data, LSTM and Transformers proved to be both viable options for predicting TBI hospital mortality in 48 hours after admission. Overall, using sequential deep learning models with time series data to predict TBI mortality is viable and can be used as a helpful indicator of the well-being of patients.

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