Update from Last Week

Hello, hello,

Last week Danny and I met with Dr. Zheng to speak about the abstract. During the Thanksgiving break we revised it and submitted it for the Tapia Conference.

- Eunice.

Update from Last Meeting

Hello,

Danny and I have been working on a JavaScript script (script,  script?) which displays the risk score for each permission category within the Google Play store. Thus, on our Nov 16 meeting, we discussed how it was implemented and executed. For now, to the abstract-writing!

- Eunice.

In the Past Few Weeks

After midterms halted the productive nature of this project, we have resumed progress and have hit the ground running ever since. From our meeting held in late October, a solid guideline of what needed to be accomplished in November was formed. Since the install process for Android applications is one that would require more time to alter, we have opted to first come up with a working change of the online install interface provided by Google. This interface is also known as the Google Play Store (follow the link to go to the page). Using simple java scripts we hope to very quickly change the listing of apps on the online Play Store to include visual indications of how malicious an app appears based on what permissions that application requests. Having an implementation done by the 16th of November, we may then move on to analyzing users responses to the new interface. A further update will be posted upon the completion of the visual interface that will include pictures! Until then

-Danny

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012

Jacqui and I attended the Grace Hopper Celebration in Baltimore, Maryland.  We had a great time.  They had a huge career fair in which many companies were there.  For example, Google, Amazon, National Labs, Lockheed Martin, NSA, NSF, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Neustar, Palantir, and many more.  Also, many colleges attended.
The talk I enjoyed the most was given by Nora Denzel.  She was the keynote speaker on Thursday October 4.  She had many great points and was entertaining.
You can view the talk here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=242Z5BhJAC8

Here are a few pictures we took while at the conference:

We were walking through the career fair and found the CRA-W booth.  We also noticed our picture on the poster!

This is the Baltimore Convention Center.  This is were Grace Hopper was held.

It was a great conference to attend!!!

~ Kaitlyn Gurule

Possible UI Designs

Hello again. Below are two of my rough designs for a user interface. The idea behind them is that when users attempt to install a new app, instead of allowing the usual screen display the permissions the app requests, one of them will come up. The screen will display a security score for the app overall and then a score of each individual permission requested. Yet, these designs have multiple flaws, such as the scoring system.

As these are rough drafts, multiple revisions will follow. For now I will focus more on the second design, as it is the simplest. What do you think?

- Eunice.

September 28 Meeting

Hello,

In this meeting, as Danny pointed out, we went over our ideas for a user interface design. Dr. Zheng suggested that we combine a few aspects of our UIs and add a few more things; however, since Danny and I are working independently on this portion of the research, the designs must be created independently. Once we have settled on one or two creations, the next step is to proceed with the actual implementation. Nonetheless, next week the team will meet again to discuss the UI revisions.

In the next post I will provide examples of my design and discuss their features.

- Eunice.

The past 2 weeks

After 2 weeks of steady progress leading up to this mornings meeting, some good ideas have been developed and refined. During today's meeting both mine and  Eunice's visuals representation for risk scores that we give to apps were presented for the first time. My ideas need some refining before becoming a final draft, but keeping the representations simple and familiar to the user, I believe will yield the best results. Below is a preliminary idea that I developed for both presenting the risk score of an app as well as for bring the users attention to the permissions that are of higher risk. Over the next week I hope to come up with a near final product. Until then!

-Danny

September 14 Meeting

In this meeting, Yang Wang presented to us how some Android permissions work. Additionally, he taught us how the risk of a permission is evaluated (summary: it involves a summation of likelihood of adverse event * impact of such event). For the risk analysis 169 standard permissions will be considered; thus, any user-defined, manufacturer-defined, or obscure permissions cannot be rated. As to how Android permissions are deemed normal or dangerous, it remains unknown to us.

During the rest of the meeting we talked about the particulars of how to proceed with our work: we are downloading the Android 4.0 source code, we will need to recompile the OS, etc. 

By next week, Danny and I will post possible user interfaces.

- Eunice.

Introduction to the New Cast

Hello. After some delay, we get to introduce the new cast of the NMT CREU. This year, two Computer Science students will develop new Android app installation interface that indicates to the user the risk of installing a program (or app) based on the permissions it requires. By doing such, they will determine if their method of presenting the information is effective in teaching the general audience about Android permissions. This semester, their work will focus on designing and implementing the installation interface.

And now, the actors:
Daniel Fahey

Daniel currently is a junior, majoring in Computer Science at New Mexico Tech. Grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He enjoys developing personal android apps for fun and for use in productivity for day to day tasks. 

Eunice Perez

Eunice is a junior working toward dual major in Mathematics and Computer Science at New Mexico Tech. Some of her academic interests include statistics, stochastic processes, and algorithms. On her free time she enjoys learning about the causes and effects of human reasoning and behavior. 

- Eunice.

ITNG Conference Photos

Here are a couple of photos we took at the Las Vegas ITNG Conference.

~ Kaitlyn

Post-Vegas Update

The ITNG 2012 conference in Vegas was quite a learning experience. Yang did a great job presenting our Wavelet paper.

Kate and I attended one session each day of the conference, including ours (Image and Audio Processing Applications), Information Security and Privacy, and Social Computing. While most of the presentations were interesting, I feel we learned another lesson from the presenters: what not to do during a presentation, and what not to wear. Dr. Zheng told us the dress code was business professional, so it was kind of funny to see some of the presenters wearing jeans.

We had our last official meeting of the semester today. Our final report for CREU is due May 4, so Kate and I will get that done this weekend. Dr. Zheng also informed us of his research proposal for next semester. I'm not sure I'll be able to do it, what with Senior Design and the potential of working 20 hours a week looming.

Jacqui

Progress Update

The past few weeks have been really busy.  
Jacqui and I finished writing the code for three color features.  The opponent histogram, the rghistogram, and the transformed color distribution.  The first color feature, the opponent histogram, has been tested.  It works fairly well, however, we need to continue to adjust some of the parameters in order to get more accurate results.

Jacqui and I have also been working on getting ready for the Student Research Symposium (SRS).  We went to a workshop to get tips on writing an extended abstract.  We then worked on a draft for the extended abstract.  Each of us worked on separate sections within the abstract.  I worked on the introduction and methods sections and Jacqui worked on the results and discussion and conclusion sections.  Once we finished the draft both Yang and Dr. Zheng reviewed it and suggested changes.  We finalized the document and turned that in.

The SRS was held yesterday, Friday April 13, 2012.  Jacqui and I presented our poster, which turned out very well.  We had many viewers.  Many also seemed intrigued with the research we were doing.  Some official reviewers came by to view our presentation.  The head of the SRS said we would be receiving the critiques from these reviewers sometime after the symposium.

We are headed to Las Vegas, Nevada tomorrow.  We are attending a conference.  Dr. Zheng said our main presentation will be held on Monday around 10am.  Jacqui and I will also be attending some of the seminars there.


~ Kaitlyn

Progress Update

Last week Jacqui and I went to the poster workshop.  So that we could get ideas for creating out poster for the Student Research Symposium.  They also said there would be more workshops to attend and we could go to the Writing Center for help.

We had a meeting on Friday.  Zheng told us that Jacqui and I would be going to the Grace Hopper conference in Baltimore.  He said we should start looking into and setting up reservations.

While programming the color feature, I ran into a few problems.  My code refused to compile once I added a color photo to the project. I changed the path to the photo within the code, however, syntactically the path was written wrong for the linux operating system.  Once this was fixed we also determined that the rest of the program wouldn't accept the color feature code due to the fact that the color features are based on 3D instead of the 2D that the grayscale photos are based on.

Yang was able to change the code so that it would work for the color feature.

~ Kaitlyn

Update

I have been working on the color feature implementation.  I have the formulas implemented.  Next, I need to implement how the values that I receive from the formulas will be used in order to extract the feature.  I am going to try to meet with Yang later this week in order to go over this.

There is also a poster workshop that Jacqui and I will be attending on wednesday so that we can get help and ideas for creating our poster for the Student Research Symposium.


~Kaitlyn

Progress Update

Upon submitting the form for the Student Research Symposium here at NMT, I was informed that we would be able to complete a poster presentation.  There are going to be certain times that we can go to get help organizing and creating our poster.

During the meeting with Yang, I was able to better understand what I needed to do in order to implement the code for the color features.  I am currently in the middle of implementing the code, there is just a few more things I need to figure out in order to finish one of the color features.

~Kaitlyn

Student Research Symposium

Kate and I have submitted our application for New Mexico Tech's Student Research Symposium, with my abstract as part of the submission. We're planning on doing a poster presentation. The poster is due March 23, and the extended abstract is due April 2. The Symposium itself will be held on Friday, April 13.

The meeting today with Yang went well. We'll start working more intensively on the color features.

Jacqui

Progress Update

Jacqui and I got together to go over the code for the project.  We each had trouble getting the code to compile.  While looking at the code we gathered information on which we thought may have been causing the compilation errors. We noticed that the file paths were different in many places and weren't sure which we needed to change (if all).  

We were able to meet with Yang about this.  He showed us which lines we needed to change.  Once I changed these lines I was able to compile the code.  

Another issue I ran into is that I don't have enough memory on my school account to process all of the photos.  I was hoping to be able to get a matlab version for my home computer, however, I have not been able to do that.  Dr. Zheng said that it is ok if I just use one or two pictures to start processing my code.  Once it works for these couple of pictures I could hand the code over to Yang for full testing over all of the pictures.  

As for now I am working on the RGB color feature.

- Kaitlyn

Meeting - January 20, 2011

Back from break!!!

This semester Dr. Zheng said that Kaitlyn and Jacqui will start working a lot more with implementation.  We will start by implementing color features.  We will each work on different features.

We also decided that we will work with Yang to go over how to turn the knowledge from the color features papers into code.  We will also discuss which files and the placement of the code.

Dr. Zheng also wanted Kaitlyn and Jacqui to get together to figure out the plans for the conference reservations.  We will be going to the conference on April 16th through the 18th.  We will be staying at the Flamingo hotel and flying out to Vegas using Southwest airlines.