Forest fires are a serious ecological concern, and smoke is an early warning indicator. Early smo... more Forest fires are a serious ecological concern, and smoke is an early warning indicator. Early smoke images barely capture a tiny portion of the total smoke. Because of the irregular nature of smoke’s dispersion and the dynamic nature of the surrounding environment, smoke identification is complicated by minor pixel-based traits. This study presents a new framework that decreases the sensitivity of various YOLO detection models. Additionally, we compare the detection performance and speed of different YOLO models such as YOLOv3, YOLOv5, and YOLOv7 with prior ones such as Fast R-CNN and Faster R-CNN. Moreover, we follow the use of a collected dataset that describes three distinct detection areas, namely close, medium, and far distance, to identify the detection model’s ability to recognize smoke targets correctly. Our model outperforms the gold-standard detection method on a multi-oriented dataset for detecting forest smoke by an mAP accuracy of 96.8% at an IoU of 0.5 using YOLOv5x. A...
2018 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT), 2018
Security and privacy of both institutions and individuals have always been a major concern. Authe... more Security and privacy of both institutions and individuals have always been a major concern. Authentication systems received significant attention from both researchers and practitioners. The most common authentication mechanisms used nowadays are the alphanumeric-based schemes. However, the passwords used in these kind of systems are subject to be forgotten by users and can be vulnerable to various types of attacks, while other types of authentication mechanisms such as biometric-based methods are not affordable by individuals and small institutions. On the other hand, graphical password schemes are proposed to harness the fact that individuals are able to remember graphical shapes and pictures more than remembering alphanumeric text. This paper proposes a new hybrid graphical password scheme using two-dimensional (2D) shapes to create passwords. in this new scheme, users are asked to use certain 2D shapes to draw their graphical password during registration. The drawn shapes are mapped into textual passwords. The mapping algorithm depends on the order of selected shapes and the intersections between shapes. During sign-in, users need only to remember how to draw the 2D graphical password using the same shapes with the same order and with the same intersections between shapes to access a system.
Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2017
This paper presents novel mechanisms that effectively detect password file thefts and at the same t... more This paper presents novel mechanisms that effectively detect password file thefts and at the same time prevent uncovering passwords. The proposed mechanism uses delay between consecutive keystrokes of the password characters. In presented case, a user should not only enter his password correctly during the sign-up process, but also needs to introduce relatively large time gaps between certain password characters. The proposed novel approaches disguise stored passwords by adding a suffix value that helps in detecting password file theft at the first sign-in attempt by an adversary who steals and cracks the hashed password file. Any attempt to login using a real password without adding the time delays in the correct positions may considered as an impersonation attack, i.e. the password file has been stolen and cracked.
The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, 2021
Textual passwords are still widely used as an authentication mechanism. This paper addresses the ... more Textual passwords are still widely used as an authentication mechanism. This paper addresses the problem of textual password hardening and proposes a mechanism to make textual passwords harder to be used by unauthorized persons. The mechanismintroduces time gaps between keystrokes (latency times) that would add a second protection line to the password. Latency times are converted into discrete representation (symbols) where the sequence of these symbols is added to the password. For accessing system, an authorized person needs to type his/her password with a certain rhythm. This rhythm is recorded at the sign-up time.This work is an extension to a previous work that elaborates more on the local approach of discretizing time gaps between every two consecutive keystrokes. In addition, more experimental settings and results are provided and analyzed. The local approach considers the keying pattern of each user to discretize latency times. The average, median and min-max are tested thor...
Automated negotiation is an efficient approach for interaction in multi-agent systems in which ag... more Automated negotiation is an efficient approach for interaction in multi-agent systems in which agents exchange offers and counteroffers to conclude an agreement. This paper addresses the problem of offer formulation during the interaction between buyer and seller software agents for the purpose of reaching an agreement over quantitative and qualitative issues at once. In order to improve the outcome of the negotiation process, a hybrid negotiation method is presented and verified. Offer formulation is based on fuzzy similarity and preference-based methods. The preference-based mechanism is used for quantitative issues, while the fuzzy similarity technique is used for qualitative issues. The preference-based mechanism takes into account the preferences of the opponent when generating offers; the agent makes greater concessions on the issues which the opponent prefers more. The fuzzy-similarity method formulates an offer that considers offering a deal that is more similar to the one r...
2014 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conferences on Web Intelligence (WI) and Intelligent Agent Technologies (IAT), 2014
This paper addresses the problem of automated agent-based one-to-many negotiation for multi-issue... more This paper addresses the problem of automated agent-based one-to-many negotiation for multi-issue service pro-curement and presents a robust negotiation mechanism to enhance the procurement process. Software agents represent service sellers and service buyers. Agents are assumed to have goals and constraints when buying and selling services. Automating the service procurement process can provide fast and efficient procurement results. The presented negotiation mechanism uses a concession tactic that facilitates service procurement from the best provider amongst multiple prospective providers. The strategy of the tactic is based on offering more concessions on the negotiation issues that are believed to be more preferred to the opponents. In other words, the tactic considers the preferences of the opponent agents on different negotiation issues (attributes) before selecting the amount of the concession on each issue. The negotiation mechanism is validated experimentally.
This paper addresses the problem of flexible procurement of multiple distinct services characteri... more This paper addresses the problem of flexible procurement of multiple distinct services characterized by multiple nonfunctional characteristics, i.e., quality-of-service attributes. We consider the one-to-many negotiation approach as a flexible method for procuring multiple different services by a buyer agent. We address the problem of coordinating the bidding strategy amongst multiple concurrent negotiations and propose novel dynamic negotiation strategies. The proposed strategies consider the behaviors of the opponents of the current negotiation encounter in managing the local reservation values of the common negotiation issues (attributes) of different services. Most previous works consider the problem of negotiation over a single object characterized by one or more issues. We extend our previous work and investigate a more complex situation where a buyer agent negotiates over multiple distinct services given that each service has multiple negotiation issues and multiple possible providers. The experimental results show evidence for the effectiveness and robustness of our dynamic negotiation strategies under various negotiation environments.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2014
We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks in a cloud computing scenario that involves a queu... more We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks in a cloud computing scenario that involves a queue of workflow instances whose arrival into the system is governed by a stochastic process. We assume that each instance conforms to the same, known structure, expressed by a directed acyclic graph. Within this job model, the precise execution time of each atomic task and delay of each communication edge may be different and is known only in terms of probability distributions. We argue that in many serial information processing scenarios, minimizing the total response time of the system, i.e., the sum of the execution time and in-queue waiting time, is a more important objective than reducing the schedule length alone, as predominantly done in other approaches. We propose novel algorithms for the minimization of the expected response time and investigate the issue of estimation of the stability of the system. We show that for the given objective, greedy algorithms usually perform better at lower instance arrival rates or when the total amount of instances is limited. However, we also show that an algorithm that minimizes only the expected service time of an instance makes the system more stable and that it must be a non-greedy algorithm.
We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks of structured workflows, given a stochastic arriva... more We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks of structured workflows, given a stochastic arrival of workflow instances, which gives rise to a queue. Each workflow conforms to a known structure expressed by a directed acyclic graph. However, within this model, the precise execution time of each atomic task and the delay of each communication edge are non-deterministic. Unlike in most scheduling approaches that minimize the schedule length, we additionally aim at minimizing the total time spent by a workflow instance in the system, as perceived by the end user on whose behalf the workflow is executed, i.e., the expected response time. Moreover, we do not make any restrictive assumptions on the nature of the involved distributions. We propose a novel risk-gain local trade-off mechanism to determine priorities at runtime that optionally can be made even more accurate by employing of conditional means for running activities instead of marginal mean execution times. Finally, the tasks that are unlikely to affect the makespan of an instance are delayed with a local look-ahead to allow incoming new instances to start earlier. We show that adding these features leads to a significant improvement in response time, particularly in situations of scarce processing resources.
This paper addresses a coordination problem during concurrent multiple bilateral negotiations. Re... more This paper addresses a coordination problem during concurrent multiple bilateral negotiations. Real time decisions need to be taken during negotiation to ensure that the overall negotiation process is successful in terms of achieving a valuable agreement (an agreement with high utility). Existing approaches for managing concurrent multiple bilateral negotiation typically rely on historic information such as the probability distribution of the opponents' reservation prices, deadlines, or the results of the previous negotiations. This paper presents a novel heuristic coordination mechanism for coordinating concurrent multiple bilateral negotiations assuming no previous knowledge about the opponents. The proposed method uses two measures to evaluate the relative behavior of each opponent. The first measure uses the first-order differences of the current negotiation offers and calculates the relative concession for each opponent agent that depends on the mutual concessions of all agents involved in negotiation. The second measure uses a scoring function to evaluate each of the seller's last offer during negotiation. We use both measures to change the negotiation strategy during negotiation. The empirical results show that our model is more effective when compared with some existing approaches.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013
Automated negotiation is an important mechanism of interaction between software agents and has be... more Automated negotiation is an important mechanism of interaction between software agents and has been an active research area for more than a decade. When the automated negotiation process involves multiple agents, the problem of interdependency between the actions of agents during negotiation arises and consequently, a coordination mechanism becomes an essential part of the negotiation process. One of the important characteristics of a negotiating agent is its bidding strategy. This work addresses the problem of coordinating the bidding strategy of an agent negotiating concurrently with multiple agents (i.e., one-to-many negotiation) and discusses different interdependency factors affecting it.
2012 IEEE Ninth International Conference on Services Computing, 2012
This paper addrcsse.t; the problem of flexible procurement of multiple services with multiple non... more This paper addrcsse.t; the problem of flexible procurement of multiple services with multiple non-functional characteristics, i.e., quality of service attributes. We consider the one-to-many negotiation approach as a flexible method for procuring multiple services by a buyer agent. We address the problem of coordinating multiple concurrent negotiations and propose a novel dynamic negotiation strategy that considers the behaviors of the opponents of the current negotiation encounter in managing the local reservation values of the common negotiation issues (attributes) of different services. Most previous works consider the problem of negotiation over a single issue. We investigate a more complex situation where a buyer agent negotiates over multiple services given that each service has multiple negotiation issues. The experimental results show an evidence for the effectiveness and robustness of our dynamic negotiation strategy in various negotiation environments.
2012 12th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (ccgrid 2012), 2012
This paper addresses the problem of flexible procuring of multiple services with multiple non-fun... more This paper addresses the problem of flexible procuring of multiple services with multiple non-functional characteristics, i.e., quality of service attributes. We investigate the one-to-many negotiation approach as a flexible method for procuring multiple services by a buyer agent. We address the problem of coordinating multiple concurrent negotiations and propose a novel dynamic negotiation strategy that considers the behaviors of the
Automated negotiation is a market mechanism that can improve the electronic transactions in terms... more Automated negotiation is a market mechanism that can improve the electronic transactions in terms of both the time needed to complete the transactions and the quality of the transactions. The quality of a transaction can be measured-for example-by its utility. This paper addresses the problem of the bidding strategy for a buyer agent negotiating concurrently with multiple seller agents over multiple distinct objects, e.g., resources. Each distinct object has multiple providers and a single negotiation issue. In our scenario, we assume that all objects have the same negotiation issue. For the stated scenario, we propose novel coordination mechanisms that manage the bidding strategy for the buyer agent benefiting from the different objectives of the seller agents over all negotiation objects and from the different objectives of the seller agents of a given object. We propose three dynamic bidding strategies: global, local and hybrid. The strategies are tested against two other benchmark negotiation strategies used in the literature. The experimental results show that the proposed strategies perform well when compared with the other benchmark strategies under tough negotiation conditions.
Forest fires are a serious ecological concern, and smoke is an early warning indicator. Early smo... more Forest fires are a serious ecological concern, and smoke is an early warning indicator. Early smoke images barely capture a tiny portion of the total smoke. Because of the irregular nature of smoke’s dispersion and the dynamic nature of the surrounding environment, smoke identification is complicated by minor pixel-based traits. This study presents a new framework that decreases the sensitivity of various YOLO detection models. Additionally, we compare the detection performance and speed of different YOLO models such as YOLOv3, YOLOv5, and YOLOv7 with prior ones such as Fast R-CNN and Faster R-CNN. Moreover, we follow the use of a collected dataset that describes three distinct detection areas, namely close, medium, and far distance, to identify the detection model’s ability to recognize smoke targets correctly. Our model outperforms the gold-standard detection method on a multi-oriented dataset for detecting forest smoke by an mAP accuracy of 96.8% at an IoU of 0.5 using YOLOv5x. A...
2018 8th International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT), 2018
Security and privacy of both institutions and individuals have always been a major concern. Authe... more Security and privacy of both institutions and individuals have always been a major concern. Authentication systems received significant attention from both researchers and practitioners. The most common authentication mechanisms used nowadays are the alphanumeric-based schemes. However, the passwords used in these kind of systems are subject to be forgotten by users and can be vulnerable to various types of attacks, while other types of authentication mechanisms such as biometric-based methods are not affordable by individuals and small institutions. On the other hand, graphical password schemes are proposed to harness the fact that individuals are able to remember graphical shapes and pictures more than remembering alphanumeric text. This paper proposes a new hybrid graphical password scheme using two-dimensional (2D) shapes to create passwords. in this new scheme, users are asked to use certain 2D shapes to draw their graphical password during registration. The drawn shapes are mapped into textual passwords. The mapping algorithm depends on the order of selected shapes and the intersections between shapes. During sign-in, users need only to remember how to draw the 2D graphical password using the same shapes with the same order and with the same intersections between shapes to access a system.
Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2017
This paper presents novel mechanisms that effectively detect password file thefts and at the same t... more This paper presents novel mechanisms that effectively detect password file thefts and at the same time prevent uncovering passwords. The proposed mechanism uses delay between consecutive keystrokes of the password characters. In presented case, a user should not only enter his password correctly during the sign-up process, but also needs to introduce relatively large time gaps between certain password characters. The proposed novel approaches disguise stored passwords by adding a suffix value that helps in detecting password file theft at the first sign-in attempt by an adversary who steals and cracks the hashed password file. Any attempt to login using a real password without adding the time delays in the correct positions may considered as an impersonation attack, i.e. the password file has been stolen and cracked.
The International Arab Journal of Information Technology, 2021
Textual passwords are still widely used as an authentication mechanism. This paper addresses the ... more Textual passwords are still widely used as an authentication mechanism. This paper addresses the problem of textual password hardening and proposes a mechanism to make textual passwords harder to be used by unauthorized persons. The mechanismintroduces time gaps between keystrokes (latency times) that would add a second protection line to the password. Latency times are converted into discrete representation (symbols) where the sequence of these symbols is added to the password. For accessing system, an authorized person needs to type his/her password with a certain rhythm. This rhythm is recorded at the sign-up time.This work is an extension to a previous work that elaborates more on the local approach of discretizing time gaps between every two consecutive keystrokes. In addition, more experimental settings and results are provided and analyzed. The local approach considers the keying pattern of each user to discretize latency times. The average, median and min-max are tested thor...
Automated negotiation is an efficient approach for interaction in multi-agent systems in which ag... more Automated negotiation is an efficient approach for interaction in multi-agent systems in which agents exchange offers and counteroffers to conclude an agreement. This paper addresses the problem of offer formulation during the interaction between buyer and seller software agents for the purpose of reaching an agreement over quantitative and qualitative issues at once. In order to improve the outcome of the negotiation process, a hybrid negotiation method is presented and verified. Offer formulation is based on fuzzy similarity and preference-based methods. The preference-based mechanism is used for quantitative issues, while the fuzzy similarity technique is used for qualitative issues. The preference-based mechanism takes into account the preferences of the opponent when generating offers; the agent makes greater concessions on the issues which the opponent prefers more. The fuzzy-similarity method formulates an offer that considers offering a deal that is more similar to the one r...
2014 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conferences on Web Intelligence (WI) and Intelligent Agent Technologies (IAT), 2014
This paper addresses the problem of automated agent-based one-to-many negotiation for multi-issue... more This paper addresses the problem of automated agent-based one-to-many negotiation for multi-issue service pro-curement and presents a robust negotiation mechanism to enhance the procurement process. Software agents represent service sellers and service buyers. Agents are assumed to have goals and constraints when buying and selling services. Automating the service procurement process can provide fast and efficient procurement results. The presented negotiation mechanism uses a concession tactic that facilitates service procurement from the best provider amongst multiple prospective providers. The strategy of the tactic is based on offering more concessions on the negotiation issues that are believed to be more preferred to the opponents. In other words, the tactic considers the preferences of the opponent agents on different negotiation issues (attributes) before selecting the amount of the concession on each issue. The negotiation mechanism is validated experimentally.
This paper addresses the problem of flexible procurement of multiple distinct services characteri... more This paper addresses the problem of flexible procurement of multiple distinct services characterized by multiple nonfunctional characteristics, i.e., quality-of-service attributes. We consider the one-to-many negotiation approach as a flexible method for procuring multiple different services by a buyer agent. We address the problem of coordinating the bidding strategy amongst multiple concurrent negotiations and propose novel dynamic negotiation strategies. The proposed strategies consider the behaviors of the opponents of the current negotiation encounter in managing the local reservation values of the common negotiation issues (attributes) of different services. Most previous works consider the problem of negotiation over a single object characterized by one or more issues. We extend our previous work and investigate a more complex situation where a buyer agent negotiates over multiple distinct services given that each service has multiple negotiation issues and multiple possible providers. The experimental results show evidence for the effectiveness and robustness of our dynamic negotiation strategies under various negotiation environments.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2014
We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks in a cloud computing scenario that involves a queu... more We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks in a cloud computing scenario that involves a queue of workflow instances whose arrival into the system is governed by a stochastic process. We assume that each instance conforms to the same, known structure, expressed by a directed acyclic graph. Within this job model, the precise execution time of each atomic task and delay of each communication edge may be different and is known only in terms of probability distributions. We argue that in many serial information processing scenarios, minimizing the total response time of the system, i.e., the sum of the execution time and in-queue waiting time, is a more important objective than reducing the schedule length alone, as predominantly done in other approaches. We propose novel algorithms for the minimization of the expected response time and investigate the issue of estimation of the stability of the system. We show that for the given objective, greedy algorithms usually perform better at lower instance arrival rates or when the total amount of instances is limited. However, we also show that an algorithm that minimizes only the expected service time of an instance makes the system more stable and that it must be a non-greedy algorithm.
We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks of structured workflows, given a stochastic arriva... more We investigate the problem of scheduling tasks of structured workflows, given a stochastic arrival of workflow instances, which gives rise to a queue. Each workflow conforms to a known structure expressed by a directed acyclic graph. However, within this model, the precise execution time of each atomic task and the delay of each communication edge are non-deterministic. Unlike in most scheduling approaches that minimize the schedule length, we additionally aim at minimizing the total time spent by a workflow instance in the system, as perceived by the end user on whose behalf the workflow is executed, i.e., the expected response time. Moreover, we do not make any restrictive assumptions on the nature of the involved distributions. We propose a novel risk-gain local trade-off mechanism to determine priorities at runtime that optionally can be made even more accurate by employing of conditional means for running activities instead of marginal mean execution times. Finally, the tasks that are unlikely to affect the makespan of an instance are delayed with a local look-ahead to allow incoming new instances to start earlier. We show that adding these features leads to a significant improvement in response time, particularly in situations of scarce processing resources.
This paper addresses a coordination problem during concurrent multiple bilateral negotiations. Re... more This paper addresses a coordination problem during concurrent multiple bilateral negotiations. Real time decisions need to be taken during negotiation to ensure that the overall negotiation process is successful in terms of achieving a valuable agreement (an agreement with high utility). Existing approaches for managing concurrent multiple bilateral negotiation typically rely on historic information such as the probability distribution of the opponents' reservation prices, deadlines, or the results of the previous negotiations. This paper presents a novel heuristic coordination mechanism for coordinating concurrent multiple bilateral negotiations assuming no previous knowledge about the opponents. The proposed method uses two measures to evaluate the relative behavior of each opponent. The first measure uses the first-order differences of the current negotiation offers and calculates the relative concession for each opponent agent that depends on the mutual concessions of all agents involved in negotiation. The second measure uses a scoring function to evaluate each of the seller's last offer during negotiation. We use both measures to change the negotiation strategy during negotiation. The empirical results show that our model is more effective when compared with some existing approaches.
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2013
Automated negotiation is an important mechanism of interaction between software agents and has be... more Automated negotiation is an important mechanism of interaction between software agents and has been an active research area for more than a decade. When the automated negotiation process involves multiple agents, the problem of interdependency between the actions of agents during negotiation arises and consequently, a coordination mechanism becomes an essential part of the negotiation process. One of the important characteristics of a negotiating agent is its bidding strategy. This work addresses the problem of coordinating the bidding strategy of an agent negotiating concurrently with multiple agents (i.e., one-to-many negotiation) and discusses different interdependency factors affecting it.
2012 IEEE Ninth International Conference on Services Computing, 2012
This paper addrcsse.t; the problem of flexible procurement of multiple services with multiple non... more This paper addrcsse.t; the problem of flexible procurement of multiple services with multiple non-functional characteristics, i.e., quality of service attributes. We consider the one-to-many negotiation approach as a flexible method for procuring multiple services by a buyer agent. We address the problem of coordinating multiple concurrent negotiations and propose a novel dynamic negotiation strategy that considers the behaviors of the opponents of the current negotiation encounter in managing the local reservation values of the common negotiation issues (attributes) of different services. Most previous works consider the problem of negotiation over a single issue. We investigate a more complex situation where a buyer agent negotiates over multiple services given that each service has multiple negotiation issues. The experimental results show an evidence for the effectiveness and robustness of our dynamic negotiation strategy in various negotiation environments.
2012 12th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (ccgrid 2012), 2012
This paper addresses the problem of flexible procuring of multiple services with multiple non-fun... more This paper addresses the problem of flexible procuring of multiple services with multiple non-functional characteristics, i.e., quality of service attributes. We investigate the one-to-many negotiation approach as a flexible method for procuring multiple services by a buyer agent. We address the problem of coordinating multiple concurrent negotiations and propose a novel dynamic negotiation strategy that considers the behaviors of the
Automated negotiation is a market mechanism that can improve the electronic transactions in terms... more Automated negotiation is a market mechanism that can improve the electronic transactions in terms of both the time needed to complete the transactions and the quality of the transactions. The quality of a transaction can be measured-for example-by its utility. This paper addresses the problem of the bidding strategy for a buyer agent negotiating concurrently with multiple seller agents over multiple distinct objects, e.g., resources. Each distinct object has multiple providers and a single negotiation issue. In our scenario, we assume that all objects have the same negotiation issue. For the stated scenario, we propose novel coordination mechanisms that manage the bidding strategy for the buyer agent benefiting from the different objectives of the seller agents over all negotiation objects and from the different objectives of the seller agents of a given object. We propose three dynamic bidding strategies: global, local and hybrid. The strategies are tested against two other benchmark negotiation strategies used in the literature. The experimental results show that the proposed strategies perform well when compared with the other benchmark strategies under tough negotiation conditions.
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Papers by Khalid Mansour