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No / In this paper a distributed handover optimized authentication scheme based on independent session key per access network (HOISKA) is developed for the decentralized multi-service group key management scheme over wireless mobile multicast. It enables a handover user Mi involved in multiple multicast service subscriptions to securely reuse the long term credential initially issued by the trusted authentication server (As) for deriving unique session keys per access network as it performs handover authentication across various access networks. The distributed nature of the scheme enables offloading the authentication function to the area network controllers (AKDs) such that As is not involved during handover exchange authentication signaling. This simplifies handover by reducing handover exchange signalling constituting to handover delays. Handover Access authentication (HAA) phase in HOISKA is presented then analyzed using the delay analytical model. The model proves efficacy by inducing minimum delays with less handover blocking probability while providing same level of security to the widely deployed handover authentication scheme.

The degree to which patients and their therapists align over time on their perceptions of therapeutic processes and intermediary outcomes has generally been regarded as an important element of effective psychotherapy; however, few studies have examined empirically the influence of such dyadic convergences on ultimate treatment outcomes. This study examined (a) whether early treatment convergences in patient-therapist alliance and session progress ratings were associated with subsequent worry and distress reduction (and final posttreatment level) in psychotherapy for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and (b) whether treatment type and the initial (session 1) levels of perceived alliance and session progress moderated these associations. Data derived from a clinical trial in which patients with severe GAD were randomly assigned to receive either 15 sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT; n = 43) or 4 sessions of motivational interviewing (MI) followed by 11 integrative CBT-MI sessions (n = 42). Patients and therapists rated the alliance and session progress after each session. Patients rated their worry and distress multiple times throughout treatment. Dyadic multilevel modeling revealed, as predicted, that alliance convergence over the first half of therapy was associated with greater subsequent worry (p = .03) and distress (p = .01) reduction. Additionally, the combination of low initial patient-rated alliance and early divergence was associated with the worst trajectory for the distress outcome (p = .04). Unexpectedly, session progress divergence had a near significant association with lower posttreatment worry (p = .05) and was significantly associated with more accelerated subsequent distress reduction (p = .03). Additionally, for patients who perceived their initial progress more positively, whether dyads converged or diverged in early session progress ratings affected the trajectories (though not the ultimate amount) of distress change (p = .02). These findings suggest that divergence of early patient-therapist alliance perspectives, especially when coupled with lower initial patient-rated alliance quality, may be an important marker for patient nonresponse and therapist responsiveness (e.g., use of alliance repair strategies). The findings on patient-therapist session progress convergence are less straightforward, though several possible implications are discussed.

The Internet has made tremendous progress since its inception. The kingpin has been the transmission control protocol (TCP), which supports a large fraction of communication. With the Internet's wide-spread access, users now have increased expectations. The demands have evolved to an extent which TCP was never designed to support. Since network stacks do not provide the necessary functionality for modern applications, developers are forced to implement them over and over again --- as part of the application or supporting libraries. Consequently, application developers not only bear the burden of developing application features but are also responsible for building networking libraries to support sophisticated scenarios. This leads to considerable duplication of effort. The challenge for TCP in supporting modern use cases is mostly due to limiting assumptions, simplistic communication abstractions, and (once expedient) implementation shortcuts. To further add to the complexity, the limited TCP options space is insufficient to support extensibility and thus, contemporary communication patterns. Some argue that radical changes are required to extend the networks functionality; some researchers believe that a clean slate approach is the only path forward. Others suggest that evolution of the network stack is necessary to ensure wider adoption --- by avoiding a flag day. In either case, we see that the proposed solutions have not been adopted by the community at large. This is perhaps because the cost of transition from the incumbent to the new technology outweighs the value offered. In some cases, the limited scope of the proposed solutions limit their value. In other cases, the lack of backward compatibility or significant porting effort precludes incremental adoption altogether. In this dissertation, we focus on the development of a communication model that explicitly acknowledges the context of the conversation and describes (much of) modern communications. We highlight how the communication stack should be able to discover, interact with and use available resources to compose richer communication constructs. The model is able to do so by using session, flow and endpoint abstractions to describe communications between two or more endpoints. These abstractions provide means to the application developers for setting up and manipulating constructs, while the ability to recognize change in the operating context and reconfigure the constructs allows applications to adapt to the changing requirements. The model considers two or more participants to be involved in the conversation and thus enables most modern communication patterns, which is in contrast with the well-established two-participant model. Our contributions also include an implementation of a framework that realizes such communication methods and enables future innovation. We substantiate our claims by demonstrating case studies where we use the proposed abstractions to highlight the gains. We also show how the proposed model may be implemented in a backwards compatible manner, such that it does not break legacy applications, network stacks, or middleboxes in the network infrastructure. We also present use cases to substantiate our claims about backwards compatibility. This establishes that incremental evolution is possible. We highlight the benefits of context awareness in setting up complex communication constructs by presenting use cases and their evaluation. Finally, we show how the communication model may open the door for new and richer communication patterns. / PHD

Despite negative perceptions of therapy, Black Americans are seeking therapy. I interviewed 8 Black clients about their experience of MFT. I used the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI; Sellers, Rowley, Chavous, Shelton, & Smith, 1997) to assess their racial identity. Most participants thought it was strange for Blacks to seek therapy. Yet, these participants found the strength to seek therapy to protect their family and individual well-being. Participants found support from family, friends, and/or the church/religious beliefs. All attended church but few sought their pastor for therapeutic support. The participants who initially preferred a Black therapist also strongly viewed race as central to their self-identity. However, participants expressed greater concern for therapist competence, skills, and warmth than for therapist race. Yet, many discussed the benefits of having a Black therapist, which were greater comfort, ease, and openness for Black clients in therapy, as well as greater cultural familiarity for Black therapists. All of the participants reported satisfaction with their therapist and generally reported a positive experience. I also measured the experience of the first and third therapy sessions for Black and White clients, using the Session Evaluation Questionnaire (SEQ; Stiles, 2000). Black clients reported significantly less depth in the first session than White clients, suggesting a unique experience of therapy for Black clients. Also, Black clients that remained in therapy reported less smoothness in the first session than those who terminated. There were no significant findings for the third session. Research and treatment implications from these findings are discussed. / Master of Science

Les technologies de communication et les services web sont devenus disponibles dans notre vie numérique, les réseaux informatiques continuent de croître et de nouveaux protocoles de communication sont constamment définis et développés. Par la suite, la standardisation et la normalisation des protocoles sont dispensables pour permettre aux différents systèmes de dialoguer. Bien que ces normes peuvent être formellement vérifiés, les développeurs peuvent produire des erreurs conduisant à des implémentations défectueuses. C'est la raison pour laquelle leur mise en œuvre doit être strictement examinée. Cependant, la plupart des approches de tests actuels exigent une stimulation de l’exécution dans le cadre des tests (IUT). Si le système ne peut être consulté ou interrompu, l'IUT ne sera pas en mesure d'être testé. En outre, la plupart des travaux existants sont basées sur des modèles formels et très peu de travaux s'intéressent à la formalisation des exigences de performance. Pour résoudre ces problèmes, nous avons proposé une approche de test basé sur la logique "Horn" afin de tester passivement la conformité et la performance des protocoles. Dans notre approche, les exigences peuvent être formalisées avec précision. Ces exigences formelles sont également testées par des millions de messages collectés à partir des communicants réels. Les résultats satisfaisants des expériences effectuées ont prouvé le bon fonctionnement et l'efficacité de notre approche. Aussi pour satisfaire les besoins croissants de tests distribués en temps réel, nous avons également proposé un cadre de tests distribués et un cadre de tests en ligne et nous avons mis en œuvre notre plateforme dans un environnement réel à petite échelle avec succès / While today’s communications are essential and a huge set of services is available online, computer networks continue to grow and novel communication protocols are continuously being defined and developed. De facto, protocol standards are required to allow different systems to interwork. Though these standards can be formally verified, the developers may produce some errors leading to faulty implementations. That is the reason why their implementations must be strictly tested. However, most current testing approaches require a stimulation of the implementation under tests (IUT). If the system cannot be accessed or interrupted, the IUT will not be able to be tested. Besides, most of the existing works are based on formal models and quite few works study formalizing performance requirements. To solve these issues, we proposed a novel logic-based testing approach to test the protocol conformance and performance passively. In our approach, conformance and performance requirements can be accurately formalized using the Horn-Logic based syntax and semantics. These formalized requirements are also tested through millions of messages collected from real communicating environments. The satisfying results returned from the experiments proved the functionality and efficiency of our approach. Also for satisfying the increasing needs in real-time distributed testing, we also proposed a distributed testing framework and an online testing framework, and performed the frameworks in a real small scale environment. The preliminary results are obtained with success. And also, applying our approach under billions of messages and optimizing the algorithm will be our future works

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Soft tissue manipulation is a widely used practice by manual therapists from a variety of healthcare disciplines to evaluate and treat neuromusculoskeletal impairments using mechanical stimulation either by hand massage or specially-designed tools. The practice of a specific approach of targeted pressure application using distinguished rigid mechanical tools to breakdown adhesions, scar tissues and improve range of motion for affected joints is called Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Manipulation (IASTM). The efficacy of IASTM has been demonstrated as a means to improve mobility of joints, reduce pain, enhance flexibility and restore function. However, unlike the techniques of ultrasound, traction, electrical stimulation, etc. the practice of IASTM doesn't involve any standard to objectively characterize massage with physical parameters. Thus, most IASTM treatments are subjective to practitioner or patient subjective feedback, which essentially addresses a need to quantify therapeutic massage or IASTM treatment with adequate treatment parameters to document, better analyze, compare and validate STM treatment as an established, state-of-the-art practice. This thesis focuses on the development and implementation of Quantifiable Soft Tissue Manipulation (QSTM™) Technology by designing an ergonomic, portable and miniaturized wired localized pressure applicator medical device (Q1), for characterizing soft tissue manipulation. Dose-load response in terms of forces in Newtons; pitch angle of the device ; stroke frequency of massage measured within stipulated time of treatment; all in real-time has been captured to characterize a QSTM session. A QSTM PC software (Q-WARE©) featuring a Treatment Record System subjective to individual patients to save and retrieve treatment diagnostics and a real-time graphical visual monitoring system has been developed from scratch on WINDOWS platform to successfully implement the technology. This quantitative analysis of STM treatment without visual monitoring has demonstrated inter-reliability and intra-reliability inconsistencies by clinicians in STM force application. While improved consistency of treatment application has been found when using visual monitoring from the QSTM feedback system. This system has also discriminated variabilities in application of high, medium and low dose-loads and stroke frequency analysis during targeted treatment sessions. / 2023-04-26

Background. SIP and RTP are two protocols that are widely used, and they play an important role in VoIP services. VoIP is an integral part of many communication services, e.g., Microsoft Teams, Skype, Discord, and communications over cellular networks (VoLTE and VoWiFi). Since these technologies are so widely used, a high level of security is paramount. Objectives. The aim of this study is threefold: (1) To investigate if it is possible to create a penetration testing methodology for SIP and RTP, where the target group is penetration testers with no previous knowledge of these protocols. (2) To identify previously discovered vulnerabilities and attacks. (3) Due to the lack of domain experts, a methodology of this kind will hopefully help penetration testers without prior knowledge, easing them into a new work area. Further, the aim is to increase awareness of potential vulnerabilities in such systems. Methods. Through a literature review, threat modeling, and exploratory penetration testing on three different testbeds, several vulnerabilities and attacks were identified and validated. From the results, a methodology was compiled. For evaluation purposes, it was evaluated by a third party, who tested it on a testbed and gave feedback. Results. The results from our research show that SIP and RTP are susceptible to a wide array of different attacks even to this day. From our literature study, it was determined that most of these attacks have been known for a long time. Using exploratory penetration testing, we managed to verify most of these attacks on three different systems. Additionally, we discovered a few novel attacks that we did not find in previous research. Conclusions. Our literature study suggests that SIP and RTP based systems are relatively susceptible to multiple attacks. Something we also validated during the exploratory testing phase. We successfully executed multiple existing attacks and some new attacks on three different testbeds. The methodology received mostly positive feedback. The results show that many of the participants appreciated the simplicity and concrete model of the methodology. Due to the low number of participants in the evaluation, an improvement to the study and results would be to increase the population and also have multiple novice penetration testers test several different systems. An increase in the number of testbeds would also further support the results and help generalize the methodology. / Bakgrund. SIP och RTP  är två protokoll som är vitt använda och spelar en väldigt viktig roll i VoIP-tjänster. VoIP utgör en viktig del i många kommunikationstjänster, t.ex. Microsoft Teams, Skype och Discord, men även i kommunikation över mobilnätet (VoLTE och VoWiFi). Eftersom dessa teknologier används i så stor utsträckning, är säkerhet av största vikt. Syfte. Syftet med denna studie är trefaldig: (1) Undersöka om det är möjligt att utforma en penetration testningsmetod för SIP och RTP, för en målgrupp av penetrationstestare utan förkunskaper kring dessa protokoll. (2) Att identifiera sårbarheter och attacker från tidigare studier. (3) På grund av brist på kompentens inom området penetrationstestning och telekommunikation kan en sådan här metod förhoppningsvis hjälpa till att introducera penetrationstestare utan tidigare erfarenhet till det här specifika området. Ytterligare är också målet att att öka medvetheten när det kommer till sårbarheter i sådana system. Metod. Genom en literaturstudie, hotmodellering och utforskande penetrationstestning på tre olika testmiljöer har ett flertal sårbarheter och attacker identifieras och utförts. Från resultatet utformades en metod för penetrationstesning, som sedan evaluerades genom att en tredje part testade metoden och gav återkoppling som rör metodens format och struktur. Resultat. Resultaten från vår studie visar att SIP och RTP är sårbara för en rad olika attacker än idag. Resultaten från vår litteraturstudie visar att många av dessa attacker har varit kända under en lång tid. Vi lyckades verifiera de flesta av dessa attacker genom utforskande penetationstestning på tre olika system. Dessutom lyckades vi identifiera ett antal nya attacker som inte tidigare nämnts i forskning inom området. Slutsatser. Resultaten från vår litteraturstudie visar att system som använder sig av SIP och RTP är relativt sårbara för en mängd olika attacker. Detta bekräftades i den utforskande testningen, där ett flertal kända samt nya attacker utfördes framgångsrikt. Den interna evalueringen i studien visar på att metoden kan appliceras framgångsrikt på ett flertal olika system, med begränsningen att endast tre system testats. Resultaten från den externa evalueringen, där penetrationstestare blev tillfrågade att utvärdera och testa metoden visar att de hade en relativt positiv inställning till metoden. För att ytterligare underbygga detta påstående krävs en större population, både för testningen och utvärderingen. Det krävs också att en större mängd testmiljöer används för att kunna generalisera metoden.

Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony is becoming widespread, and is often integrated into computer networks. Because of his, it is likely that malicious software will threaten VoIP systems the same way traditional computer systems have been attacked by viruses, worms, and other automated agents. While most users have become familiar with email spam and viruses in email attachments, spam and malicious traffic over telephony currently is a relatively unknown threat. VoIP networks are a challenge to secure against such malware as much of the network intelligence is focused on the edge devices and access environment. A novel security architecture is being developed which improves the security of a large VoIP network with many inexperienced users, such as non-IT office workers or telecommunication service customers. The new architecture establishes interaction between the VoIP backend and the end users, thus providing information about ongoing and unknown attacks to all users. An evaluation of the effectiveness and performance of different implementations of this architecture is done using virtual machines and network simulation software to emulate vulnerable clients and servers through providing apparent attack vectors.