Dans cette thèse, une nouvelle manière de générer des nombres pseudo-aléatoires est présentée.La proposition consiste à mixer deux générateurs exitants avec des itérations chaotiquesdiscrètes, qui satisfont à la définition de chaos proposée par Devaney. Un cadre rigoureux estintroduit, dans lequel les propriétés topologiques du générateur résultant sont données. Deuxréalisations pratiques d’un tel générateur sont ensuite présentées et évaluées. On montre que lespropriétés statistiques des générateurs fournis en entrée peuvent être grandement améliorées enprocédant ainsi. Ces deux propositions sont alors comparées, en profondeur, entre elles et avecun certain nombre de générateurs préexistants. On montre entre autres que la seconde manièrede mixer deux générateurs est largement meilleure que la première, à la fois en terme de vitesseet de performances.Dans la première partie de ce manuscrit, la fonction d’itérations considérée est la négation vectorielle.Dans la deuxième partie, nous proposons d’utiliser des graphes fortement connexescomme critère de sélection de bonnes fonctions d’itérations. Nous montrons que nous pouvonschanger de fonction sans perte de propriétés pour le générateur obtenu. Finalement, une illustrationdans le domaine de l’information dissimulée est présentée, et la robustesse de l’algorithmede tatouage numérique proposé est évalué. / In this thesis, a new way to generate pseudorandom numbers is presented. The propositionis to mix two exiting generators with discrete chaotic iterations that satisfy the Devaney’sdefinition of chaos. A rigorous framework is introduced, where topological properties of theresulting generator are given, and two practical designs are presented and evaluated. It is shownthat the statistical quality of the inputted generators can be greatly improved by this way, thusfulfilling the up-to-date standards. Comparison between these two designs and existing generatorsare investigated in details. Among other things, it is established that the second designedtechnique outperforms the first one, both in terms of performance and speed.In the first part of this manuscript, the iteration function embedded into chaotic iterations isthe vectorial Boolean negation. In the second part, we propose a method using graphs havingstrongly connected components as a selection criterion.We are thus able to modify the iterationfunction without deflating the good properties of the associated generator. Simulation resultsand basic security analysis are then presented to evaluate the randomness of this new family ofpseudorandom generators. Finally, an illustration in the field of information hiding is presented,and the robustness of the obtained data hiding algorithm against attacks is evaluated.

Une des préoccupations dans le domaine des communications sécurisées est le concept de sécurité de l'information. Aujourd’hui, la réalité a encore prouvé que la communication entre deux parties sur de longues distances a toujours été sujet au risque d'interception. Devant ces contraintes, de nombreux défis et opportunités s’ouvrent pour l'innovation. Afin de pouvoir fournir une communication sécurisée, cela a conduit les chercheurs à développer plusieurs schémas de stéganographie. La stéganographie est l’art de dissimuler un message de manière secrète dans un support anodin. L’objectif de base de la stéganographie est de permettre une communication secrète sans que personne ne puisse soupçonner son existence, le message secret est dissimulé dans un autre appelé medium de couverture qui peut être image, video, texte, audio,…. Cette propriété a motivé les chercheurs à travailler sur ce nouveau champ d’étude dans le but d’élaborer des systèmes de communication secrète résistante à tout type d’attaques. Cependant, de nombreuses techniques ont été développées pour dissimuler un message secret dans le but d’assurer une communication sécurisée. Les contributions majeures de cette thèse sont en premier lieu, de présenter une nouvelle méthode de stéganographie permettant la dissimulation d’un message secret dans un signal de parole. La dissimulation c’est le processus de cacher l’information secrète de façon à la rendre imperceptible pour une partie tierce, sans même pas soupçonner son existence. Cependant, certaines approches ont été étudiées pour aboutir à une méthode de stéganogaraphie robuste. En partant de ce contexte, on s’est intéressé à développer un système de stéganographie capable d’une part de dissimuler la quantité la plus élevée de paramètre tout en gardant la perceptibilité du signal de la parole. D’autre part nous avons opté pour la conception d’un algorithme de stéganographie assez complexe afin d’assurer l’impossibilité d’extraction de l’information secrète dans le cas ou son existence été détecter. En effet, on peut également garantir la robustesse de notre technique de stéganographie à l’aptitude de préservation du message secret face aux tentatives de détection des systèmes de stéganalyse. Notre technique de dissimulation tire son efficacité de l’utilisation de caractéristiques spécifiques aux signaux de parole et àl’imperfection du système auditif humain. Des évaluations comparatives sur des critères objectifs et subjectifs de qualité sont présentées pour plusieurs types de signaux de parole. Les résultats ont révélé l'efficacité du système développé puisque la technique de dissimulation proposée garantit l’imperceptibilité du message secret voire le soupçon de son existence. Dans la suite expérimentale et dans le même cadre de ce travail, la principale application visée par la thèse concerne la transmission de parole sécurisée par un algorithme de stéganographie. Dans ce but il s’est avéré primordial d’utiliser une des techniques de codage afin de tester la robustesse de notre algorithme stéganographique face au processus de codage et de décodage. Les résultats obtenus montrent la possibilité de reconstruction du signal original (contenant des informations secrètes) après codage. Enfin une évaluation de la robustesse de notre technique de stéganographie vis à vis des attaques est faite de façon à optimiser la technique afin d'augmenter le taux de sécurisation. Devant cette nécessité nous avons proposé une nouvelle technique de stéganalyse basée sur les réseaux de neurones AR-TDNN. La technique présentée ici ne permet pas d'extraire l'éventuel message caché, mais simplement de mettre en évidence sa présence. / One of the concerns in the field of secure communication is the concept of information security. Today’s reality is still showing that communication between two parties over long distances has always been subject to interception. Providing secure communication has driven researchers to develop several cryptography schemes. Cryptography methods achieve security in order to make the information unintelligible to guarantee exclusive access for authenticated recipients. Cryptography consists of making the signal look garbled to unauthorized people. Thus, cryptography indicates the existence of a cryptographic communication in progress, which makes eavesdroppers suspect the existence of valuable data. They are thus incited to intercept the transmitted message and to attempt to decipher the secret information. This may be seen as weakness in cryptography schemes. In contrast to cryptography, steganography allows secret communication by camouflaging the secret signal in another signal (named the cover signal), to avoid suspicion. This quality motivated the researchers to work on this burning field to develop schemes ensuring better resistance to hostile attackers. The word steganography is derived from two Greek words: Stego (means cover) and graphy (means writing). The two combined words constitute steganography, which means covert writing, is the art of hiding written communications. Several steganography techniques were used to send message secretly during wars through the territories of enemies. The major contributions of this thesis are the following ones. We propose a new method to secure speech communication using the Discrete Wavelet Transforms (DWT) and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Our method exploits first the high frequencies using a DWT, then exploits the low-pass spectral properties of the speech magnitude spectrum to hide another speech signal in the low-amplitude high-frequencies region of the cover speech signal. The proposed method allows hiding a large amount of secret information while rendering the steganalysis more complex. Comparative evaluation based on objective and subjective criteria is introduced for original speech signal, stego-signal and reconstructed secret speech signal after the hiding process. Experimental simulations on both female and male speakers revealed that our approach is capable of producing a stego speech that is indistinguishable from the cover speech. The receiver is still able to recover an intelligible copy of the secret speech message. We used an LPC10 coder to test the effect of the coding techniques on the stego-speech signals. Experimental results prove the efficiency of the used coding technique since intelligibility of the stego-speech is maintained after the encoding and decoding processes. We also advocate a new steganalysis technique to ensure the robustness of our steganography method. The proposed classifier is called Autoregressive time delay neural network (ARTDNN). The purpose of this steganalysis system is to identify the presence or not of embedded information, and does not actually attempt to extract or decode the hidden data. The low detecting rate prove the robustness of our hiding technique.

In this thesis a known heuristic for decreasing a node's centrality scores while maintaining influence, called ROAM, is compared to a modified version specifically designed to decrease eigenvector centrality. The performances of these heuristics are also tested against the Shapley values of a cooperative game played over the considered network, where the game is such that influential nodes receive higher Shapley values. The modified heuristic performed at least as good as the original ROAM, and in some instances even better (especially when the terrorist network behind the World Trade Center attacks was considered). Both heuristics increased the influence score for a given targeted node when applied consecutively on the WTC network, and consequently the Shapley values increased as well. Therefore the Shapley value of the game considered in this thesis seems to be well suited for discovering individuals that are assumed to actively trying to evade social network analysis.

This thesis inquiries into trauma, its historical developments, experience, and symptoms. The theoretical part lays stress on post-traumatic stress disorder and its classification and diagnosis for the readers to have an extensive knowledge of trauma. The readers are also presented with the quintessential aftermath of trauma. The practical part adverts to childhood trauma of the main protagonists of The Gathering and The Hiding Place by the authors Anne Enright and Trezza Azzopardi. The intention is to query what happened to these characters, rather than focusing on what is wrong with them. The objective is to see the person behind his or her behaviour. Many studies refer to increasing problems in terms of mental health by children and adolescents associated with early childhood trauma. The aim in what follows is to consider whether the harm to childhood trauma can be remedied or whether childhood trauma persists until old age. KEY WORDS: Childhood trauma; post-traumatic stress disorder; trauma fiction; Enright; Azzopardi; The Gathering; The Hiding Place

This thesis deal with digital signal proccessing methods, possibilities their processing and especially audio signal watermarking like possibility safeguard author's rights of audio content. In this thesis are foreshadoweds basic audio watermarking methods and possibilities of watermark detection. To idea generation about watermarking there is described audio watermarking method known as Echo Hiding. This method embed watermarks to audio content in time-domain while watermark detection is made in kepstral-domain by using Fast Fourier Transform and correlation function. Method is implemented like VST plug - in and along with ASIO drivers that minimize signal latency provides audio signal watermarking in real - time. Aim of the first volume of this thesis is introduction of VST technology, ASIO driver and creating VST plug – in‘s. Alternative volume of thesis deal with implementation watermarking methods in conjunction with VST technology.

Background. Coverless steganography is a relatively unexplored area of steganography where the message is not embedded into a cover media. Instead the message is derived from one or several properties already existing in the carrier media. This renders steganalysis methods used for traditional steganography useless. Early coverless methods were applied to images or texts but more recently the possibilities in the video and audio domain have been explored. The audio domain still remains relatively unexplored however, with the earliest work being presented in 2022. In this thesis, we narrow the existing research gap by proposing an audio-compatible method which uses the timestamp that marks when a carrier media was received to generate a time-based key which can be applied to the hash produced by said carrier. This effectively allows one carrier to represent a range of different hashes depending on the timestamp specifying when it was received, increasing capacity. Objectives. The objectives of the thesis are to explore what features of audio are suitable for steganographic use, to establish a method for finding audio clips which can represent a specific message to be sent and to improve on the current state-of-the-art method, taking capacity, robustness and cost into consideration. Methods. A literature review was first conducted to gain insight on techniques used in previous works. This served both to illuminate features of audio that could be used to good effect in a coverless approach, and to identify coverless approaches which could work but had not been tested yet. Experiments were then performed on two datasets to show the effective capacity increase of the proposed method when used in tandem with the existing state-of-the-art method for coverless audio steganography. Additional robustness tests for said state-of-the-art method were also performed. Results. The results show that the proposed method could increase the per-message capacity from eight bits to 16 bits, while still retaining 100% effective capacity using only 200 key permutations, given a database consisting of 50 one-minute long audio clips. They further show that the time cost added by the proposed method is in total less than 0.1 seconds for 2048 key permutations. The robustness experiments show that the hashing algorithms used in the state-of-the-art method have high robustness against additive white gaussian noise, low-pass filters, and resampling attacks but are weaker against compression and band-pass filters.  Conclusions. We address the scientific gap and complete our objectives by proposing a method which can increase capacity of existing coverless steganography methods. We demonstrate the capacity increase our method brings by using it in tandem with the state-of-the-art method for the coverless audio domain. We argue that our method is not limited to the audio domain, or to the coverless method with which we performed our experiments. Finally, we discuss several directions for future works. / Bakgrund. Täcklös steganografi är ett relativt outforskat område inom steganografi där meddelandet, istället för att gömmas i ett medium, representeras av en eller flera egenskaper som kan erhållas från mediet. Detta faktum hindrar nuvarande steganalysmetoder från att upptäcka bruk av täcklös steganografi. Tidiga studier inom området behandlar bilder och text, senare studier har utökat området genom att behandla video och ljud. Den första studien inom täcklös ljudsteganografi publicerades år 2022. Målet med examensarbetet är att utöka forskningen med en föreslagen ljudkompatibel metod som använder tidsstämpeln då ett meddelande mottagits för att skapa en tidsbaserad nyckel som kan appliceras på en hash erhållen från ett steganografiskt medium. Detta tillåter mediet att representera olika hashar beroende på tiden, vilket ökar kapaciteten.   Syfte. Syftet med examensarbetet är att utforska vilka egenskaper i ett ljudmedia som lämpar sig åt steganografiskt bruk, att skapa en metod som kan hitta ljudklipp som representerar ett efterfrågat meddelande, samt att förbättra nuvarande state-of-the-art inom täcklös ljudsteganografi genom att finna en bra balans mellan kapacitet, robusthet och kostnad.   Metod. En litteraturstudie utfördes för att få förståelse för metoder använda i tidigare studier. Syftet var att hitta egenskaper i ljud som lämpar sig åt täcklös ljudsteganografi samt identifiera icke-täcklösa metoder som skulle kunna anpassas för att fungera som täcklösa. Experiment utfördes sedan på två dataset för att påvisa den ökning i effektiv kapacitet den föreslagna metoden ger när den appliceras på state-of-the-art-metoden inom täcklös ljudsteganografi. Experiment utfördes även för att utöka tidigare forskning på robustheten av state-of-the-art-metoden inom täcklös ljudsteganografi. Resultat. Resultaten visar att den föreslagna metoden kan öka kapaciteten per meddelande från åtta till 16 bits med 100% effektiv kapacitet med 200 nyckelpermutationer och en databas bestående av 50 stycken en-minut långa ljudklipp. De visar även att tidskostnaden för den föreslagna metoden är mindre än 0,1 sekund för 2048 nyckelpermutationer. Experimenten på robusthet visar att state-of-the-art-metoden har god robusthet mot additivt vitt gaussiskt brus, lågpassfilter och omsampling men är svagare mot kompression och bandpassfilter. Slutsatser. Vi fullbordar målen och utökar forskningen inom området genom att föreslå en metod kan öka kapaciteten av befintliga täcklösa metoder. Vi demonstrerar kapacitetsökningen genom att applicera vår metod på den senaste täcklösa ljudsteganografimetoden. Vi presenterar argument för vår metods tillämpning i områden utanför ljuddomänen och utanför metoden som den applicerades på. Slutligen diskuteras riktningar för framtida forskning.

It is desirable for companies to be able to hide data inside videos to be able to find the source of any unauthorised sharing of a video. The hidden data (the payload) should damage the original data (the cover) by an as small amount as possible while also making it hard to remove the payload without also severely damaging the cover. It was determined that the most appropriate place to hide data in a video was in the visual information, so the cover is an image. Two injection methods were developed and three methods for attacking the payload. One injection method changes the pixel values of an image directly to hide the payload and the other transforms the image to cosine waves that represented the image and it then changes those cosine waves to hide the payload. Attacks were developed to test how hard it was to remove the hidden data. The methods for attacking the payload where to add and remove a random value to each pixel, to set all bits of a certain importance to 1 or to compress the image with JPEG. The result of the study was that the method that changed the image directly was significantly faster than the method that transformed the image and it had a capacity for a larger payload. The injection methods protected the payload differently well against the various attacks so which method that was the best in that regard depends on the type of attack. / Det är önskvärt för företag att kunna gömma data i videor så att de kan hitta källorna till obehörig delning av en video. Den data som göms borde skada den ursprungliga datan så lite som möjligt medans det också är så svårt som möjligt att radera den gömda datan utan att den ursprungliga datan skadas mycket. Studien kom fram till att det bästa stället att gömma data i videor är i den visuella delen så datan göms i bilderna i videon. Två metoder skapades för att injektera gömd data och tre skapades för att förstöra den gömda datan. En injektionsmetod ändrar pixelvärdet av bilden direkt för att gömma datat medans den andra transformerar bilden till cosinusvågor och ändrar sedan de vågorna för att gömma datat. Attacker utformades för att testa hur svårt det var att förstöra den gömda datan. Metoderna för att attackera den gömda datan var att lägga till eller ta bort ett slumpmässigt värde från varje pixel, att sätta varje bit av en särskild nivå till 1 och att komprimera bilden med JPEG. Resultatet av studien var att metoden som ändrade bilden direkt var mycket snabbare än metoden som först transformerade bilden och den hade också plats för mer gömd data. Injektionsmetoderna var olika bra på att skydda den gömda datan mot de olika attackerna så vilken metod som var bäst i den aspekten beror på vilken typ av attack som används.

Association rule hiding (ARH) is the process of modifying a transaction database to prevent sensitive patterns (association rules) from discovery by data miners. An optimal ARH technique successfully hides all sensitive patterns while leaving all nonsensitive patterns public. However, in practice, many ARH algorithms cause some undesirable side effects, such as failing to hide sensitive rules or mistakenly hiding nonsensitive ones. Evaluating the utility of ARH algorithms therefore involves measuring the side effects they cause. There are a wide array of ARH techniques in use, with evolutionary algorithms in particular gaining popularity in recent years. However, previous research in the area has focused on incremental improvement of existing algorithms. No work was found that compares the performance of ARH algorithms without the incentive of promoting a newly suggested algorithm as superior. To fill this research gap, this project compares three ARH algorithms developed between 2019 and 2022—ABC4ARH, VIDPSO, and SA-MDP— using identical and unbiased parameters. The algorithms were run on three real databases and three synthetic ones of various sizes, in each case given four different sets of sensitive rules to hide. Their performance was measured in terms of side effects, runtime, and scalability (i.e., performance on increasing database size). It was found that the performance of the algorithms varied considerably depending on the characteristics of the input data, with no algorithm consistently outperforming others at the task of mitigating side effects. VIDPSO was the most efficient in terms of runtime, while ABC4ARH maintained the most robust performance as the database size increased. However, results matching the quality of those in the papers originally describing each algorithm could not be reproduced, showing a clear need for validating the reproducibility of research before the results can be trusted. / ”Association rule hiding”, ungefär ”döljande av associationsregler” – hädanefter ARH – är en process som går ut på att modifiera en transaktionsdatabas för att förhindra att känsliga mönster (så kallade associationsregler) upptäcks genom datautvinning. En optimal ARH-teknik döljer framgångsrikt alla känsliga mönster medan alla ickekänsliga mönster förblir öppet tillgängliga. I praktiken är det dock vanligt att ARH-algoritmer orsakar oönskade sidoeffekter. Exempelvis kan de misslyckas med att dölja vissa känsliga regler eller dölja ickekänsliga regler av misstag. Evalueringen av ARH-algoritmers användbarhet inbegriper därför mätning av dessa sidoeffekter. Bland det stora urvalet ARH-tekniker har i synnerhet evolutionära algoritmer ökat i popularitet under senare år. Tidigare forskning inom området har dock fokuserat på inkrementell förbättring av existerande algoritmer. Ingen forskning hittades som jämförde ARH-algoritmer utan det underliggande incitamentet att framhäva överlägsenheten hos en nyutvecklad algoritm. Detta projekt ämnar fylla denna lucka i forskningen genom en jämförelse av tre ARH-algoritmer som tagits fram mellan 2019 och 2022 – ABC4ARH, VIDPSO och SA-MDP – med hjälp av identiska och oberoende parametrar. Algoritmerna kördes på sex databaser – tre hämtade från verkligheten, tre syntetiska av varierande storlek – och fick i samtliga fall fyra olika uppsättningar känsliga regler att dölja. Prestandan mättes enligt sidoeffekter, exekveringstid samt skalbarhet (dvs. prestation när databasens storlek ökar). Algoritmernas prestation varierade avsevärt beroende på indatans egenskaper. Ingen algoritm var konsekvent överlägsen de andra när det gällde att minimera sidoeffekter. VIDPSO var tidsmässigt mest effektiv, medan ABC4ARH var mest robust vid hanteringen av växande indata. Resultat i nivå med de som uppmättes i forskningsrapporterna som ursprungligen presenterat varje algoritm kunde inte reproduceras, vilket tyder på ett behov av att validera reproducerbarheten hos forskning innan dess resultat kan anses tillförlitliga.

Känslomässiga krav innebär att individer förväntas kontrollera sina känslor och agera lämpligt för sin yrkesroll. Studiens syfte var att undersöka sambandet mellan upplevda känslomässiga krav och stress samt skillnader mellan män och kvinnor inom polisen. Kvantitativ data samlades in genom enkäter med 112 poliser. Syftet undersöktes genom att mäta dimensionerna känslomässiga krav, krav på att dölja känslor och stress baserat på mätinstrumentet COPSOQ. Analysen genomfördes med en multipel regressionsanalys och två modererande hierarkiska multipla regressionsanalyser. Resultaten visade att känslomässiga krav har ett signifikant samband med stress, men inget signifikant samband mellan krav på att dölja känslor och stress hittades. Ingen signifikant skillnad i upplevelsen av känslomässiga krav samt krav på att dölja känslor i relation till stress observerades mellan män och kvinnor. Studien bidrar till förståelsen av hur arbetsrelaterade känslomässiga krav kan länkas till stress och understryker vikten att motverka känslomässiga krav för att minska stress inom polisyrket. / Emotional demands involve an expectation for individuals to control theiremotions and act appropriately for their professional role. This study aimed toinvestigate the relationship between perceived emotional demands and stress, as well asdifferences between male and female police officers. Quantitative data was collectedthrough surveys with 112 police officers. The aim was examined by measuring thedimensions of emotional demands, demands for hiding emotions, and stress based onthe COPSOQ instrument. The analysis was conducted using multiple regressionanalysis and two moderating hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The resultsshowed that emotional demands have a significant relationship with stress, but nosignificant relationship was found between demands for hiding emotions and stress. Nosignificant difference in the experience of emotional demands and demands for hidingemotions in relation to stress was observed between men and women. The studycontributes to the understanding of how work-related emotional demands can be linkedto stress and emphasizes the importance of counteracting emotional demands to reducestress within the police profession.

A sociological approach is used to analyze incidences of extreme opportunism in financial markets. Through an analysis of arguably the most widely publicized "rogue" trader events in recent history, a determination is made of the validity of explaining these events as aberrations, attributable to the actions of "rogues". The primary focus is the role of structural factors underlying these incidences of extreme opportunism in financial markets. A diverse range of documentary and other sources is used to avoid any form of bias as far as possible. It was found that structural factors act as countervailing forces to inhibit such behavior or as motivators and facilitators acting as catalysts for extreme opportunism. The balance between these factors largely determines the level of opportunistic behavior in a particular environment. Extreme opportunism is therefore not an aberration or "rogue" occurrence but a manageable phenomenon intrinsic to the social structural context within which it occurs. By conceptualizing these factors as countervailing forces one is forced to view structural factors, like compensation structures and formal and informal restraints, relative to one another and no longer in isolation. This realization translates into the conclusion that restraints and oversight systems for example, should be designed relative to the relevant motivators and facilitators in its area of application. In an environment where traders of highly geared financial products are motivated with multimillion USD incentive packages, a low budget oversight system and inexperienced regulatory staff, is clearly not the appropriate tools to control and manage extreme opportunism. / Criminology / D.Phil. (Sociology)