Description: This article discusses architecture support for 3D obfuscation. Abstract: Software obfuscation is defined as a transformation of a program P into T(P) such that the whitebox and blackbox behaviors of T(P) are computationally indistinguishable. However, robust obfuscation is impossible to achieve with the existing software only solutions. This results from the power of the adversary model in DRM which is significantly more than in the traditional security scenarios. The adversary has complete control of the computing node - supervisory privileges along with the full physical as well as architectural object observational capabilities. In essence, this makes the operating system (or any other layer around the architecture) untrustworthy. Thus the trust has to be provided by the underlying architecture. In this paper, the authors develop an architecture to support 3-D obfuscation through the use of well known cryptographic methods. The three dimensional obfuscation hides the address sequencing, the contents associated with an address, and the temporal reuse of address sequences such as in loops (or the second order address sequencing). The software is kept as an obfuscated file system image statically. Moreover, its execution traces are also dynamically obfuscated along all the three dimensions of address sequencing, contents and second order ...

Description: This article discusses dynamic intimate contact social networks and epidemic interventions. Abstract: Sexually transmitted diseases and infections are, by definition, transferred among intimate social settings. Although the circumstances under which these social settings are established and maintained may vary, the common prerequisite remains an intimate level of social atmosphere. For this reason, the development of sexually transmitted disease mathematical and computational models must utilize dynamic and evolving social network simulation. This paper presents DynSNIC (Dynamic Social Network of Intimate Contacts), a computational simulator created to embody the intimate dynamic and evolving social networks related to the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and infections. DynSNIC's utilization by health professionals will facilitate evaluation of targeted intervention strategies and public health policies.

Description: This paper discusses a transformational paradigm for engineering and engineering technology education. The knowledge explosion in science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) over the past decades is unquestionably overwhelming. It is important that those involved in STEM quickly adapt. Life-long learning has taken a do-or-die slant, as technological breakthroughs turn obsolete within only a few years of their inception. Medical and law degree curricula became more "professional" and require a "pre-degree" status to be considered for admission. However, the traditional engineering degree plan is essentially the same as that of the mid 20th Century. Legislation in some states places additional pressure on baccalaureate degrees by questioning the need for anything above 120 credit hours. The result is (i) fewer engineering-specific courses; (ii) courses that heavily emphasize theory; and (iii) a subsequent reduction in hands-on, laboratory oriented, experimental learning. Engineering Technology curricula are designed to have experiential learning as the educational backbone. This forces a reduction in mathematical and scientific depth that is compensated by a richness of laboratory courses in almost one-to-one proportion to lecture courses, and which emphasize the application of engineering. The main challenges to establish and maintain experiential learning include (i) availability of slots in the curricula ...

Description: This presentation accompanies a paper discussing research on a novel scheme to reduce static leakage energy in SRAM arrays. The increasing sub-threshold leakage current levels with newer technology nodes have been identified by ITRS (2001) as one of the major fundamental problems faced by the semiconductor industry. Concurrently, the expected performance improvement and functionality integration expectations drive the continued reduction in feature size. This results in ever-increasing power per unit area and the accompanying problem of heat removal and cooling as stated in J.M.C. Stork (1995). Portable battery-powered applications, fuelled by pervasive and embedded computing, have seen tremendous growth and have reached a point where battery energy and power density can't be increased further according to T. Bell (1991). This raises the computational throughput per watt target for the future technology nodes. SRAM arrays which are used widely as a system component, such as caches and register files, in both high-performance and portable systems, are getting to be dominant power consumers because of their large capacity and area. Hence any reduction in cache energy can result in considerable overall power reduction. The authors propose a novel circuit technique using depletion mode devices, to reduce the static energy of SRAM array ...

Description: This doctoral dissertation discusses secure execution environments through reconfigurable lightweight cryptographic components. Software protection is one of the most important problems in the area of computing as it affects a multitude of players like software vendors, digital content providers, users, and government agencies. There are multiple dimensions to this broad problem of software protection. The most important ones are: 1) protecting software from reverse engineering. 2) protecting software from tamper (or modification). 3) preventing software piracy. 4) verification of integrity of the software. In this thesis the authors focus on these areas of software protection. The basic requirement to achieve these goals is to provide a secure execution environment, which ensures that the programs behave in the same way as it was designed, and the execution platforms respect certain types of wishes specified by the program. The authors take the approach of providing secure execution environment through architecture support. The authors exploit the power of reconfigurable components in achieving this. The first problem the authors consider is to provide architecture support for obfuscation. This also achieves the goals of tamper resistance, copy protection, and IP protection indirectly. The authors' approach is based on the intuition that the software is a ...