No abstract

In the fields of Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures, attack and anomaly detection are rising concerns. With the increased use of IoT infrastructure in every domain, threats and attacks in these infrastructures are also growing proportionally. In this paper the performances of several machine learning algorithms in identifying cyber-attacks (namely SYN-DOS attacks) to IoT systems are compared both in terms of application performances, and in training/application times. We use supervised machine learning algorithms included in the MLlib library of Apache Spark, a fast and general engine for big data processing. We show the implementation details and the performance of those algorithms on public datasets using a training set of up to 2 million instances. We adopt a Cloud environment, emphasizing the importance of the scalability and of the elasticity of use. Results show that all the Spark algorithms used result in a very good identification accuracy (>99%). Overall, one of them, Random Forest, achieves an accuracy of 1. We also report a very short training time (23.22 sec for Decision Tree with 2 million rows). The experiments also show a very low application time (0.13 sec for over than 600,000 instances for Random Forest) using Apache Spark in the Cloud. Furthermore, the explicit model generated by Random Forest is very easy-to-implement using high- or low-level programming languages. In light of the results obtained, both in terms of computation times and identification performance, a hybrid approach for the detection of SYN-DOS cyber-attacks on IoT devices is proposed: the application of an explicit Random Forest model, implemented directly on the IoT device, along with a second level analysis (training) performed in the Cloud.

The aim of this work is to describe a cleaning procedure of GenBank data, producing material to train and to assess the prediction accuracy of computational approaches for gene characterization. A procedure (GenBank2HS3D) has been defined, producing a dataset (HS3D — Homo Sapiens Splice Sites Dataset) of Homo Sapiens Splice regions extracted from GenBank (Rel.123 at this time). It selects, from the complete GenBank Primate Division, entries of Human Nuclear DNA according with several assessed criteria; then it extracts exons and introns from these entries (actually 4523 + 3802). Donor and acceptor sites are then extracted as windows of 140 nucleotides around each splice site (3799 + 3799). After discarding windows not including canonical GT–AG junctions (65 + 74), including insufficient data (not enough material for a 140 nucleotide window) (686 + 589), including not AGCT bases (29 + 30), and redundant (218 + 226), the remaining windows (2796 + 2880) are reported in the dataset. Finally, windows of false splice sites are selected by searching canonical GT–AG pairs in not splicing positions (271 937 + 332 296). The false sites in a range +/- 60 from a true splice site are marked as proximal. HS3D, release 1.2 at this time, is available at the Web server of the University of Sannio: .

Pervasive computing is one of the latest and more advanced paradigms currently available in the computers arena. Its ability to provide the distribution of computational services within environments where people live, work or socialize leads to make issues such as privacy, trust and identity more challenging compared to traditional computing environments. In this work, we review these general issues and propose a pervasive computing architecture based on a simple but effective trust model that is better able to cope with them. The proposed architecture combines some artificial intelligence techniques to achieve close resemblance with human-like decision making. Accordingly, Apriori algorithm is first used in order to extract the behavioral patterns adopted from the users during their network interactions. Naïve Bayes classifier is then used for final decision making expressed in term of probability of user trustworthiness. To validate our approach, we applied it to some typical ubiquitous computing scenarios. The obtained results demonstrated the usefulness of such approach and the competitiveness against other existing ones

Phytoplankton play key roles in the oceans by regulating global biogeochemical cycles and production in marine food webs. Global warming is thought to affect phytoplankton production both directly, by impacting their photosynthetic metabolism, and indirectly by modifying the physical environment in which they grow. In this respect, the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) in the Sargasso Sea (North Atlantic gyre) provides a unique opportunity to explore effects of warming on phytoplankton production across the vast oligotrophic ocean regions because it is one of the few multidecadal records of measured net primary productivity (NPP). We analysed the time series of phytoplankton primary productivity at BATS site using machine learning techniques (ML) to show that increased water temperature over a 27-year period (1990–2016), and the consequent weakening of vertical mixing in the upper ocean, induced a negative feedback on phytoplankton productivity by reducing the availability of essential resources, nitrogen and light. The unbalanced availability of these resources with warming, coupled with ecological changes at the community level, is expected to intensify the oligotrophic state of open-ocean regions that are far from land-based nutrient sources.