abstract: Decades of research in cyberpsychology and human-computer interaction has pointed to a strong distinction between the online and offline worlds, suggesting that attitudes and behaviors in one domain do not necessarily generalize to the other. However, as humans spend increasing amounts of time in the digital world, psychological understandings of safety may begin to influence human perceptions of threat while online. This dissertation therefore examines whether perceived threat generalizes between domains across archival, correlational, and experimental research methods. Four studies offer insight into the relationship between objective indicators of physical and online safety on the levels of nation and state; the relationship between perceptions of these forms of safety on the individual level; and whether experimental manipulations of one form of threat influence perceptions of threat in the opposite domain. In addition, this work explores the impact of threat perception-related personal and situational factors, as well as the impact of threat type (i.e., self-protection, resource), on this hypothesized relationship. Collectively, these studies evince a positive relationship between physical and online safety in macro-level actuality and individual-level perception. Among individuals, objective indicators of community safety—as measured by zip code crime data—were a positive reflection of perceptions of physical safety; these perceptions, in turn, mapped onto perceived online safety. The generalization between perceived physical threat and online threat was stronger after being exposed to self-protection threat manipulations, possibly underscoring the more dire nature of threats to bodily safety than those to valuable resources. Most notably, experimental findings suggest that it is not the physical that informs the digital, but rather the opposite: Online threats blur more readily into physical domains, possibly speaking to the concern that dangers specific to the digital world will bleed into the physical one. This generalization of threat may function as a strategy to prepare oneself for future dangers wherever they might appear; and indeed, perceived threat in either world positively influenced desires to act on recommended safety practices. Taken together, this research suggests that in the realm of threat perception, the boundaries between physical and digital are less rigid than may have been previously believed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2017

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2016-07-22T15:02:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 JeanGuerethesFernandesGuedes_DISSERT.pdf: 3398698 bytes, checksum: 6e847e280c1fe33f04641aa4bc1758db (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2016-07-26T23:20:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 JeanGuerethesFernandesGuedes_DISSERT.pdf: 3398698 bytes, checksum: 6e847e280c1fe33f04641aa4bc1758db (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-26T23:20:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 JeanGuerethesFernandesGuedes_DISSERT.pdf: 3398698 bytes, checksum: 6e847e280c1fe33f04641aa4bc1758db (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-28 / Diante da crescente demanda pela cria??o de aplicativos m?veis, impulsionada pelo usocada vez mais frequente de smartphones e tablets, cresceu na sociedade a necessidade poracesso a dados remotos de forma integral na utiliza??o do aplicativo m?vel em ambientessem conectividade, em que n?o h? disponibiliza??o de acesso ? rede em todos os momentos.Diante dessa realidade, esse trabalho teve como objetivo o desenvolvimento de uma solu??oatrav?s de um framework, que apresente como principais fun??es o provimento de ummecanismo de persist?ncia, replica??o e sincroniza??o dos dados, contemplando a cria??o,remo??o, atualiza??o e visualiza??o dos dados persistidos ou requisitados, mesmo estandoo dispositivo m?vel sem conectividade com a rede. Do ponto de vista das pr?ticas deprograma??o e arquitetura, isso reflete em definir estrat?gias para persist?ncia de dadoslocal, replica??o e sincroniza??o de dados. Atrav?s de um estudo controlado foi poss?velvalidar a solu??o proposta, sendo constatado ganhos como a redu??o na quantidade delinhas de c?digo e de quantidade de tempo necess?rios para realizar o desenvolvimento deum aplicativo sem que houvesse aumento significativo para a realiza??o das opera??es. / Given the growing demand for the development of mobile applications, driven by use increasingly common in smartphones and tablets grew in society the need for remote data access in full in the use of mobile application without connectivity environments where there is no provision network access at all times. Given this reality, this work proposes a framework that present main functions are the provision of a persistence mechanism, replication and data synchronization, contemplating the creation, deletion, update and display persisted or requested data, even though the mobile device without connectivity with the network. From the point of view of the architecture and programming practices, it reflected in defining strategies for the main functions of the framework are met. Through a controlled study was to validate the solution proposal, being found as the gains in reducing the number of lines code and the amount of time required to perform the development of an application without there being significant increase for the operations.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2016-06-13T13:50:41Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação - Davi Delgado Clerot - UFPE.pdf: 1275511 bytes, checksum: 8413259c0fde19c85569221d062625a8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-13T13:50:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Dissertação - Davi Delgado Clerot - UFPE.pdf: 1275511 bytes, checksum: 8413259c0fde19c85569221d062625a8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-28 / No âmbito da biometria comportamental, o reconhecimento automático de assinaturas manuscritas off-line se destaca pela boa aceitação em diversos segmentos, tais como Bancos, Cartórios e Imobiliárias. Dentre os fatores que estimulam sua utilização estão a facilidade na aquisição, pois não depende de equipamentos específicos, e seu valor legal ao ser realizada de próprio punho. No intuito de investigar métodos alternativos para realizar sua verificação automática, esta dissertação testa uma abordagem baseada no Coeficiente de Correlação de Pearson. O experimento foi realizado em seis etapas; da primeira à terceira, são utilizadas variações na extração de características, sem o auxílio de um classificador baseado em aprendizado automático. No quarto experimento, foi utilizada uma rede neural artificial como classificador, para efeito de comparação com os resultados anteriores. No quinto experimento, um peso associado ao limiar de resposta utilizado nos experimentos anteriores foi adicionado objetivando minimizar efeitos dos falsos positivos obtidos. No sexto e último experimento, para efeito de comparação com trabalhos relacionados, foi utilizada a base de dados disponibilizada no ICDAR (Conferência Internacional em Reconhecimento e Análise de Documentos) 2011. A configuração empregada nesta etapa, a qual utilizou a base do ICDAR, foi a do melhor experimento realizado dentre os anteriores. Os métodos propostos apresentaram resultados promissores em comparação com os resultados apresentados na literatura. / In the field of behavioral biometrics, automatic off-line handwritten signature recognition stands out for its widespread acceptance in different market segments, such as Banks, Civil Registry Offices and Real State Agencies. Among the reasons why its use is widely stimulated are its ease of acquisition, once it does not depend on specific equipment, and its legal value when it is done by the author’s own handwriting. With the purpose of searching for alternative methods to proceed to its automatic verification, this essay tests out an approach based on Pearson Correlation Coefficient. The experiment was carried out through six steps; from the first to the third ones, there were used variations for feature extraction, without the assistance of a learning classifier. In the fourth experiment, there was used an artificial neural network as a classifier, in order to compare its results with those obtained in the previous tests. In the fifth experiment, a weight associated to the threshold results obtained in the previous experiments was added, so as to minimize the false positive rate. In the sixth and last experiment, for comparison with related essays, there was used the ICDAR (International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition) 2011 database. The configuration utilized in this last step was the one obtained in the best test among the previous ones. The proposed methods presented promising results compared to others reported in the literature.

Även om de flesta av oss i dagsläget vet att våra mobila enheter kan tappa sina nätverksanslutningar lite då och då har det mer eller mindre blivit en självklarhet att i alla lägen ändå kunna använda våra favoritapplikationer som vanligt. Denna rapport syftade till att hitta en lösning på problemet med nätverksberoende applikationer genom att implementera ett offline-läge som kringgick detta beroende i GreatRate, en iOS-applikation för kundundersökningar i butik. Med hjälp av en databas för att mellanlagra data under tillfällen då en duglig nätverksanslutning inte fanns tillgänglig samt synkronisering av nämnda data när anslutningen åter blivit funktionell förväntades problemet kringgås. Resultatet blev som väntat en applikation som gav användaren en förhöjd användarupplevelse helt oberoende av nätverksanslutningens status. Några av slutsatserna som drogs var dock att flera olika lösningar finns för detta problem och att problemet högst troligt har olika utseenden för olika applikationer.

Ce manuscrit de thèse porte sur le problème du test basé modèle de systèmes de production existants, tels ceux de notre partenaire industriel Michelin, l’un des trois plus grands fabricants de pneumatiques au monde. Un système de production est composé d’un ensemble de machines de production contrôlées par un ou plusieurs logiciels au sein d’un atelier dans une usine. Malgré les nombreux travaux dans le domaine du test basé modèle, l’écriture de modèles permettant de décrire un système sous test ou sa spécification reste un problème récurrent, en partie à cause de la complexité d’une telle tâche. De plus, un modèle est utile lorsqu’il est à jour par rapport à ce qu’il décrit, ce qui implique de le maintenir dans le temps. Pour autant, conserver une documentation à jour reste compliqué puisqu’il faut souvent le faire manuellement. Dans notre contexte, il est important de souligner le fait qu’un système de production fonctionne en continu et ne doit être ni arrêté ni perturbé, ce qui limite l’usage des techniques de test classiques. Pour pallier le problème de l’écriture de modèles, nous proposons une approche pour construire automatiquement des modèles depuis des séquences d’événements observés (traces) dans un environnement de production. Pour se faire, nous utilisons les informations fournies par les données échangées entre les éléments qui composent un système de production. Nous adoptons une approche boîte noire et combinons les notions de système expert, inférence de modèles et machine learning, afin de créer des modèles comportementaux. Ces modèles inférés décrivent des comportements complets, enregistrés sur un système analysé. Ces modèles sont partiels, mais également très grands (en terme de taille), ce qui les rend difficilement utilisable par la suite. Nous proposons une technique de réduction spécifique à notre contexte qui conserve l’équivalence de traces entre les modèles de base et les modèles fortement réduits. Grâce à cela, ces modèles inférés deviennent intéressant pour la génération de documentation, la fouille de données, mais également le test. Nous proposons une méthode passive de test basé modèle pour répondre au problème du test de systèmes de production sans interférer sur leur bon fonctionnement. Cette technique permet d’identifier des différences entre deux systèmes de production et réutilise l’inférence de modèles décrite précédemment. Nous introduisons deux relations d’implantation : une relation basée sur l’inclusion de traces, et une seconde relation plus faible proposée, pour remédier au fait que les modèles inférés soient partiels. Enfin, ce manuscrit de thèse présente Autofunk, un framework modulaire pour l’inférence de modèles et le test de systèmes de production qui aggrège les notions mentionnées précédemment. Son implémentation en Java a été appliquée sur différentes applications et systèmes de production chez Michelin dont les résultats sont donnés dans ce manuscrit. Le prototype développé lors de la thèse a pour vocation de devenir un outil standard chez Michelin. / This thesis tackles the problem of testing (legacy) production systems such as those of our industrial partner Michelin, one of the three largest tire manufacturers in the world, by means of Model-based Testing. A production system is defined as a set of production machines controlled by a software, in a factory. Despite the large body of work within the field of Model-based Testing, a common issue remains the writing of models describing either the system under test or its specification. It is a tedious task that should be performed regularly in order to keep the models up to date (which is often also true for any documentation in the Industry). A second point to take into account is that production systems often run continuously and should not be disrupted, which limits the use of most of the existing classical testing techniques. We present an approach to infer exact models from traces, i.e. sequences of events observed in a production environment, to address the first issue. We leverage the data exchanged among the devices and software in a black-box perspective to construct behavioral models using different techniques such as expert systems, model inference, and machine learning. It results in large, yet partial, models gathering the behaviors recorded from a system under analysis. We introduce a context-specific algorithm to reduce such models in order to make them more usable while preserving trace equivalence between the original inferred models and the reduced ones. These models can serve different purposes, e.g., generating documentation, data mining, but also testing. To address the problem of testing production systems without disturbing them, this thesis introduces an offline passive Model-based Testing technique, allowing to detect differences between two production systems. This technique leverages the inferred models, and relies on two implementation relations: a slightly modified version of the existing trace preorder relation, and a weaker implementation proposed to overcome the partialness of the inferred models.Overall, the thesis presents Autofunk, a modular framework for model inference and testing of production systems, gathering the previous notions. Its Java implementation has been applied to different applications and production systems at Michelin, and this thesis gives results from different case studies. The prototype developed during this thesis should become a standard tool at Michelin.

The purpose of the paper is to give a detailed description to provide a better understanding of what strategies women use when online dating and in real life. The purpose of the paper is to identify how women create a sense of security for themselves, to make the leap from online communication to meeting an unknown male in the real world. For those two unknown people to take the step to meet each other face to face, there should be a kind of trust between them, how it is created, and what factors it is that determines that a meeting in real life will take place. In this essay, it has applied a qualitative method along with six thematically open interviews in which the informants have been women aged 20-30 years. In order to analyze the empirical approach, Sztompkas and Giddens's theory of trust and security have been used together along side Goffmans concept of front and backstage and other concepts are included as well. An analysis of the empirical material was found, the results showing that women often use fairly common strategies to create security in itself. These were as such, selecting a meeting place that is public and collecting information about the person they are meeting in advance using other channels of social media such as Facebook,Tinder, etc. This indicates that there is a general underlying concern about who the person really is on the other side of the computer screen/mobile screen. It also shows that the women are consciously or subconsciously using strategies to build up a sense of security among themselves before meeting with an unknown male. Keywords: Back stage, front stage, online dating, offline, online, role, security, social interaction, Tinder och trust. / Syftet med undersökningen är att bidra med en ökad förståelse för vilka strategier unga kvinnor använder sig av vid nätdejting, online kontra offline. Syftet med uppsatsen ligger i att identifiera hur kvinnor skapar en trygghet för sig själva för att ta steget från online till att träffa en okänd man i verkligheten. För att två okända människor ska våga träffa varandra ansikte mot ansikte bör det finnas en slags trygghet mellan dem, hur skapas den och vilka faktorer är det som avgör att ett möte i verkligheten sker? I den här uppsatsen har det tillämpats en kvalitativ metod tillsammans med sex tematiskt öppna intervjuer där informanterna har varit kvinnor i åldrarna 20-30 år. För att kunna analysera empirin har Piotr Sztompkas och Anthony Giddens teorier om trygghet och tillit använts i kombination med Erving Goffmans begrepp om frontstage och backstage samt andra som inbegrips i dessa. Genom en analys av det empiriska materialet påträffades resultat som visar på att kvinnor ofta använder sig av någorlunda gemensamma strategier för att skapa trygghet för sig själva, dessa var exempelvis: att välja en mötesplats som är offentlig, samla information i förväg om personen, användningen av andra kommunikationskanaler utöver Tinder etc. Detta pekar på att det överlag finns en underliggande oro för vem personen är på andra sidan datorskärmen/mobilskärmen, samt att personer omedvetet eller medvetet använder strategier för att bygga upp en trygghet hos sig själv innan mötet med en okänd människa. Nyckelord: Backstage, fasad, frontstage, inramning, nätdejting, offline, online, roll, social interaktion, tillit, Tinder och trygghet.

Malgré une littérature abondante sur les conséquences des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC), cette littérature n'aborde que trop peu les conséquences sociétales, qu'elles soient positives ou négatives, intentionnelles ou non. Parce que les interactions se propagent au-delà de l'espace en ligne et de ces conséquences paradoxales, les défis sociétaux sont un problème complexe. C'est pour ces raisons que nous avons besoin d'une meilleure compréhension des problèmes sociaux complexes. Pour ce faire, nous avons adopté le modèle de la thèse sur travaux. Les trois études de ce travail de doctorat adoptent une approche qualitative et un positionnement réaliste critique. Nous examinons un premier cas : celui du Printemps Arabe et l'utilisation de Facebook. Etudier ces types d'événements contemporains ne vient pas sans difficultés analytiques. Par conséquent, nous utilisons un outil d'analyse sémiotique pour faire face à la complexité représentationnelle des données recueillies. Enfin, les communautés en ligne peuvent également générer des coûts sociaux en fournissant un espace se faisant l'écho à des comportements socialement indésirables. / Despite the wide literature on the consequences of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) use, the literature still lacks understanding about the societal consequences, positive or negative, intended or unintended. Consequences of technology usages on society are paradoxical. The paradoxical outcomes can be threat to the sustainability of society. Because interactions spread beyond the online space and its outcomes are paradoxical, societal challenges are complex problem. To harvest society, we need a better understanding of social complex problems. To do so, we adopted a multi-study dissertation model. The three studies of this doctoral work adopt a qualitative approach and a critical realist philosophy.We look at a first case: The Arab Spring and aim at understanding how an online community that started on Facebook materialized in urban space, changing the political landscape. Addressing these contemporaneous events does not come without analytical challenges. Therefore, we use and extend a semiotic analytical tool to face the representational complexity: Finally, online communities can also have social costs by providing an echo chamber to socially undesirable behaviors.

Physical access control systems (PACS) deal with the security of the availability of resources. They work as an alternative to traditional manual security access control. Access control has two variants, the logical which deals with computer environments and the physical which deals with the physical entry into a property or warehouses. However, offline physical access control systems cannot enforce the user’s path making it unsuitable for use in classified areas, such as places where the public is restricted. Therefore, offline PACS need a framework that can delegate the authority to enforce the user’s path. This is satisfactorily met in the presented research with a new design of offline PACS that has the capability to implement delegation. This framework allows the locks to dynamically write and read access policies onto and from a smart card. It works by means of a construct called “Path Array” and communication among different entities occurs via a chain of trust formed with the use of pre-shared keys.

<p>The prevalence of offline password attacks, resulting from attackers breaching authentication servers and stealing cryptographic password hashes, poses a significant threat. Users' tendency to select weak passwords and reuse passwords across multiple accounts, coupled with computation advancement,  further exacerbate the danger.</p> <p><br></p> <p>This dissertation addresses this issue by proposing password authentication mechanisms that aim to minimize the number of compromised passwords in the event of offline attacks, while ensuring that the server's workload remains manageable. Specifically, we present three mechanisms: (1) DAHash: This mechanism adjusts password hashing costs based on the strength of the underlying password. Through appropriate tuning of hashing cost parameters, the DAHash mechanism effectively reduces the fraction of passwords that can be cracked by an offline password cracker. (2) Password Strength Signaling: We explore the application of Bayesian Persuasion to password authentication. The key idea is to have the authentication server store a noisy signal about the strength of each user password for an offline attacker to find. We demonstrate that by appropriately tuning the noise distribution for the signal, a rational attacker will crack fewer passwords. (3) Cost-Asymmetric Memory Hard Password Hashing: We extend the concept of password peppering to modern Memory Hard password hashing algorithms. We identify limitations in naive extensions and introduce the concept of cost-even breakpoints as a solution. This approach allows us to overcome these limitations and achieve cost-asymmetry, wherein the expected cost of validating a correct password is significantly smaller than the cost of rejecting an incorrect password.</p> <p><br></p> <p>When analyzing the behavior of a rational attacker it is important to understand the attacker’s guessing curve i.e., the percentage of passwords that the attacker could crack within a guessing budget B. Dell’Amico and Filippone introduced a Monte Carlo algorithm to estimate the guessing number of a password as well as an estimate for the guessing curve. While the estimated guessing number is accurate in expectation the variance can be large and the method does not guarantee that the estimates are accurate with high probability. Thus, we introduce Confident Monte Carlo as a tool to provide confidence intervals for guessing number estimates and upper/lower bound the attacker’s guessing curves.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Moreover, we extend our focus beyond classical attackers to include quantum attackers. We present a decision-theoretic framework that models the rational behavior of attackers equipped with quantum computers. The objective is to quantify the capabilities of a rational quantum attacker and the potential damage they could inflict, assuming optimal decision-making. Our framework can potentially contribute to the development of effective countermeasures against a wide range of quantum pre-image attacks in the future.</p>

This study has examined if there is a correlation between Offline Social Network and voting participation in the European Parliamentary elections. The study has been done through a qualitative method, doing five different deep interviews. The selection has been based upon the group of first generation immigrants coming from a non-EU European country. The study has showed indications that level of education, participation in associations and participation in social activities are affecting the Offline Social Network of a person. The different Offline Social Networks have shown upon different attitudes towards voting politically. It also showed upon different levels of knowledge about the European Union politics and the elections to the European Parliament. The study showed that the number of Offline Social Networks might not be what affects whether the respondents are voting or not, it shows to be rather connected to what kind of social networks. This have been connected to the field-theory of Bourdieu, which claims that a person´s habitus is affected by the volume of for example cultural and social capital which also seems to have an effect on what Offline Social Network that the individual is connected to. The way that a person appears in the social room is affected by the volume of capital and how the social room is letting the individual appear. This shows to affect whether someone votes or not.