RES701

Week 1st

Well here this is my first blog post of research methods i.e. Res701. Dr. Clare Atkins has posed five questions that need to be answered in this first post.

So, following are the questions and answers:

1. What do you think ‘research’ is?

In my view, research is the systematic collection of the data or information of the        specific topic in order to study that topic in detailed manner.

2. Do you think you will ever need research skills?

Yes, research skills are must for personal and professional life. It helps to get useful information of the topic which can enhance my knowledge of the specific topic. I reckon these skills can be applied when making every day decision whether it is small or large.

3.What do you think a research journal is and who is it written for?

I think, research journal is collection of useful information or thoughts of specific topic. A research journal is written for everyone including the author themselves as blogs can be used to revisit thoughts.

4.What is plagiarism?

It is an act of claiming somebody else’s work as your own. If it is not your work ,you should not claim it as yours unless you have the appropriate permissions.Others work can be used by giving proper references of their work.

5.Why is it important to avoid it?

I think, it is important to avoid as you could get yourself into trouble as there is the possibility of legal action to be taken and if you are caught plagiarist by audience,they will not believe ever again.

week 2nd

In our second week of RES701 we started the day by splitting into groups and working together to try to answer the questions given to us.

Before the class finished we looked at some videos and photos that were optical illusions which got our head thinking about how different people view things. Some could see both images the optical illusions were showing, while some could only see one of the two.

Dr. Clare Atkins has posed three questions which are answered below.

1.What is ontology? How is it relevant to research?

Answer: Ontology is the way we construct reality such as “how things really are” and “how things really work”.

I think Ontology is relevant to research because without it nobody would question research and the knowledge provided in the research.

2. What is epistemology? How is it relevant to research?

Answer:Epistemology is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It is especially concerned with its methods, validations and possible ways of gaining knowledge i.e. how what is assumed to exist can be known. The word is derived from the Greek words ‘episteme’ which means knowledge and ‘logos’ which means reason.

Epistemology is relevant to research as it is about the knowledge gathering process.

3. What is the connection between ontology and epistemology in a research context?

Answer:Ontology is about what is true and Epistemology is about the methods used to understand those truths. So in a research context, Ontology would be used to search what is true about the research work and Epistemology is about the methods used to understand why that research is true.

Week 3rd

Meta-Analysis

In this week , I have been tasked to answer the questions  about Meta-analysis. So, following are the question and answers about the meta-Analysis.

What is it ?

Meta- Analysis a collection of systematic techniques for resolving apparent contradictions in research findings. Meta-analysts translate results from different studies to a common metric and statistically explore relations between study characteristics and findings. A meta-analysis on a given research topic is directed toward the quantitative integration of findings from various studies, where each study serves as the unit of analysis.

What kinds of questions/problems might it be useful for?

Decisions about the utility of an intervention or the validity of a hypothesis cannot be based on the results of a single study, because results typically vary from one study to the next. Rather, a mechanism is needed to synthesize data across studies. Narrative reviews had been used for this purpose, but the narrative review is largely subjective (different experts can come to different conclusions) and becomes impossibly difficult when there are more than a few studies involved. Meta-analysis, by contrast, applies objective formulas (much as one would apply statistics to data within a single study), and can be used with any number of studies.

Pharmaceutical companies use meta-analysis to gain approval for new drugs, with regulatory agencies sometimes requiring a meta-analysis as part of the approval process. Clinicians and applied researchers in medicine, education, psychology, criminal justice, and a host of other fields use meta-analysis to determine which interventions work, and which ones work best. Meta analysis is also widely used in basic research to evaluate the evidence in areas as diverse as sociology, social psychology, sex differences, finance and economics, political science, marketing, ecology and genetics, among others.

What are the strengths of the approach?

Meta-analysis offers a rational and helpful way of dealing with a number of practical difficulties that beset anyone trying to make sense of effectiveness research.

What are the weaknesses of the approach?

There are a number of weaknesses to meta-analysis, of which a researcher must be aware before relying upon the data and generated statistics.

The main problem is that there is the potential for publication bias and skewed data.

Research generating results not refuting a hypothesis may tend to remain unpublished, or risks not being entered into the database. If the meta study is restricted to the research with positive results, then the validity is compromised.

The researcher compiling the data must make sure that all research is quantitative, rather than qualitative, and that the data is comparable across the various research programs, allowing a genuine statistical analysis.

week 4th

Biometric Security Technology

Biometrics use measurable unique human physiological or behavioral characteristics to verify or determine one’s identity. Various human traits are used for biometric recognition with varying degree of acceptance as well as accuracy. They are fingerprints, retinal and iris scanning, speech, facial recognition, hand geometry, voice pattern, handwritten signature, and other techniques such as thermal signature of the blood vessels in the head.

Recent advances in biometric technology allows a way to achieve faster and user-friendly authentication of one’s identity with a high level accuracy that is of great interest and importance to national security in protecting and controlling access to its worldwide facilities (rooms, buildings, perimeter, internet sites, etc.).

In addition, a smart card-based biometric authentication allows rapid deployment to setup secure sites in the event of terrorist or other threats without having to build or access databases. A wireless technology can be incorporated with a biometric smart card to provide remote access to biometric information. For example, verification of a person wearing chemical and biological (CB) protective gear can be achieved with a wireless biometric smart card in one’s possession without the need to remove protective gear. In addition, combining several types of biometric technologies in a wireless smart card could form a network that is more capable and robust than a single biometric identifier.

References

Click to access biointro.pdf

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/biometrics

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/biometric-verification

 

 

Week 5th

Searching for ‘Credible Evidence’…

 1. Digital Citizenship

While searching on google I found  this first link URL – http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/

The author of this article is Mike Ribble.

I think this has credibility.

Youtube

I search on youtube and found this video about ‘Digital Citizenship’.

It was published by Cyberwise on June 26, 2011 and is a YouTube video.

The video is credible because of the information provided  in this video.

While searching on google I came across a website http://www.digitalcitizenship.nsw.edu.au/ . is created by NSW Government (New South Wales). The website provides information for students, teachers and parents about digital citizenship and being safe, positive and responsible. The information provided in website is useful so I found it credible.

2.Database Design

While searching on the google one of my top results was a link to this article published on http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/359654/important-database-designing-rules-which-I-fo by Shivprasad Koirala on 25 Feb 2014. The publisher has published 448,048 articles which is impressive.

There are articles, tutorials, knowledge base and videos for designing database which is very useful to learn and the information about the database design is credible.

I came across the following video while searching on the youtube.

The video is created and posted by Caleb on youtube channel named ‘CalebTheVideoMaker2‘ and he created his channel on August 18, 2009.  He already has 21,252 subscribers and 34,633 views.

I think, it is credible with all the information about the database design.

The book on Google scholar that I found about ‘Database Management System 2nd’ which is published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill Berkeley, CA, USA ©2000. The author of this book is  Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke.

Week 6th

Academic Articles

Academic articles are articles that have been peer-reviewed before they are published. This means that experts in the field of study will review and approve the article before the journal will publish it.

Most often these articles discuss recent research. Some search engines that search for periodical sources identify whether or not the sources are from peer-reviewed publications, so look for that information when we do searches.

Here we found metadata about two academic articles/papers related to information technology.

Role of Cloud Computing in Education

Authors

Dr. Kiran Yadav
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science. Govt. College for Girls, Gurgaon, India

APA Reference

International Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering (An ISO 3297: 2007 Certified Organization) Vol. 2, Issue 2, February 2014

How I Found it?

I found this article by using an article search engine and the keywords used to search this articles are “the impact of cloud computing in the field of education”.

Kind of Article

This is a journal paper article. It belongs to the issues in international Journal of Innovative Research in Computer and Communication Engineering .

Reasons that it is an academic article

The main reason is that, it belongs to an academic journal and it contains abstract and references.

How well it fits the ‘structure of an academic article’

It fits very well in structure of an academic article. It has title, authors, abstract, introduction, references and etc.

Number of references: 19

Article URL: http://www.ijircce.com/upload/2014/february/21_Role.pdf

Interested in properly reading the article or not?

Yes I am interested in reading article properly, because it is related to the latest technology.

ATM Security Using Fingerprint Biometric Identifer

Authors

Moses Okechukwu Onyesolu. Ph.D. in Modeling and Simulation (Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria, 2011). Researcher/Lecturer, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, awka, Nigeria

Ignatius Majesty Ezeani. B.Sc. in Computer Science (Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria), M.Sc. Software Engineering (University of Bournemouth, Bournemouth, UK, 2006). Researcher/Lecturer, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.

APA Reference

(IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 3, No.4, 2012

How I Found it?

I found this article by using an article search engine and the keywords used to search this articles are “role of biometrics at ATM machine”.

Kind of Article

This is a journal paper article. It belongs to the issues in (IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications,  .

Reasons that it is an academic article

The main reason is that, it belongs to an academic journal and it contains abstract and references.

How well it fits the ‘structure of an academic article’

It fits very well in structure of an academic article. It has title, authors, abstract, introduction, references and etc.

Number of references: 19

Article URL:  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download doi=10.1.1.259.1854&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Interested in properly reading the article or not?

Yes I am interested in reading article properly, because there is something new in it and never heard about this kind of information in Computer science.

Week 7th

Reading an academic paper

KrishiPustak: A Social Networking System for Low-Literate Farmers

Article URL: http://mobile-life.org/sites/default/files/paperIV.pdf

1. Did the abstract tell you the three things I said it should? If not, what did it tell you? 

Yes, It describes the contents which included in whole paper. It consists what the author is doing in this article and about the conclusion of article.

2. What seems to be the research question(s) they were trying to answer ?

They were trying to answer how low-literate farmers in India find difficult to social networking sites and to sort out the problem they have designed the application i.e. krishipustak which can be used by those farmers.

3.What  method(s) did they use to answer the question(s)?

In this article ,the authors used interview method  for data Analysis and questioning.

4.How credible do you think the paper is?

I strongly believe this article is credible because the Authors of this article from microsoft research. For finding answer of research question they interviewed to the farmers . After reading whole article it can be said that it is reliable.

5.Did you agree, or not, with what they wrote in their conclusion? Why?

Yes, I strongly agree what they wrote in the conclusion because the use of application is described and future developments were also mentioned in the conclusion.

6.Briefly describe two things that you learnt from the paper?

First thing I learned why it is necessary to built particular application for particular people and second which important method carried out to design and deploy the social networking mobile application.

Brief Summary

In this article ,the authors describe the why it is difficult to use social networking application like facebook, twitter etc. for low-literate farmers in India. For assistance of those farmers authors designed and deployed KrishiPustak, an audio-visual social networking mobile application for low-literate farming populations in rural India.  They conducted interviews with farmers and mediators and analyzed the content to understand system usage and to drive iterative design.

Week 8th

Interest Area

Biometric identification technologies

Biometrics covers a variety of technologies in which unique identifiable attributes of people are used for identification and authentication. These include a person’s fingerprint,hand, face,, iris print, voice, gait or signature, which can be used to verify the identity of individuals seeking to control access to computers, airlines, databases and other areas which may need to be restricted. Biometrics is a rapidly evolving technology that has been widely used in forensics, such as prison security and criminal identification. Biometrics provides a better solution for the increased security requirements of our information society than traditional identification methods such as passwords and PINs.

Why is it interesting to you?

When it comes to working biometric identification technologies, it’s not only our fingerprints that do the talking but also our eyes, hands, signature, speech, and even facial temperature can ID us.

Three things you know about it

• Fingerprint recognition
• Voice recognition
• Eyes recognition

Three things you believe about it

• I believe it is more useful to validate the identity of individuals
• I believe it can be used almost in any application that requires accurate identification of an individual.
• I believe it will be used widely in future.

Three things you don’t know about it

• Are biometrics a threat to your health?
• Do fingerprints and other biometrics change when you get older?
• Are biometrics systems very costly?

Online resources

Click to access biointro.pdf

Click to access spec1994-02-01.pdf

http://www.biometrics.org/html/introduction.html

Week 9th

Area of Interest

Keyloggers

Keyloggers have somewhat of a bad reputation in the technology world because more often it’s associated with illegal spying and theft of personal and monetary information. In reality even though that’s one of the main uses, it can be used for other more appropriate and legal tasks.

What Is a Keylogger?

Keyloggers or keystroke loggers are software programs or hardware devices that track the activities (keys pressed) of a keyboard. Keyloggers are a form of spyware where users are unaware their actions are being tracked.

Keyloggers can be used for a variety of purposes; hackers may use them to maliciously gain access to your private information, while employers might use them to monitor employee activities. Some keyloggers can also capture your screen at random intervals; these are known as screen recorders. Keylogger software typically stores your keystrokes in a small file, which is either accessed later or automatically emailed to the person monitoring your actions.

How Does a Keylogger Get on Your Computer?

In number of ways a keylogger can be installed on your computer. Anyone with access to your computer could install it. Keyloggers could come as a component part of a virus or from any application installation. This is part of the reason why you should always be sure you’re downloading files from a trusted resource.

Types of Keylogger

There are different types of Keyloggers divided into two main groups Hardware Keyloggers and software Keyloggers.

Hardware Keyloggers

Hardware Keyloggers are small electronic devices used for capturing the data in between a keyboard device and I/O port. Usually these devices have built in memory where they store the keystrokes so this means they must be retrieved by the person who installed it in order to obtain the information. An advantage of these Keyloggers is that they are undetectable by anti-viral software or scanners since it works on the hardware platform.

Software Keyloggers

Software Keyloggers track systems, collect keystroke data within the target operating system, store them on disk or in remote locations, and send them to the attacker who installed the Keyloggers.  The main advantage of software Keyloggers compared to the hardware Keyloggers is that they can run for an indefinite amount of time while the info is being transmitted remotely eliminating the need to personally obtain the information like it’s the case with hardware Keyloggers.

How Can I Detect and Remove a Keylogger?

There are a variety of ways to detect a keylogger, so if you have reason to suspect your computer has a keylogger, try these following tactics:

• Begin by running your antivirus, which can often detect a keylogger on your system.
• Run a program like Spybot Search and Destroy or MalwareBytes to check for certain types.
• Check your task list by pressing ctrl+alt+del in Windows. Examine the tasks running, and if you are unfamiliar with any of them, look them up on a search engine.
• Scan your hard disk for the most recent files stored. Look at the contents of any files that update often, as they might be logs.
• Use your system configuration utility to view which programs are loaded at computer start-up. You can access this list by typing “msconfig” into the run box.

References

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/K/keylogger. html

http://www.securitygeeks.net/2013/06/how-to-find-out-if-you-have-keylogger.html

http://www.pctools.com/security-news/what-is-a- keylogger /

http://www.tech-faq.com/how-to-remove-a-keylogger. html

 

Week 10th

Area Of Interest

Pharming

Pharming is defined as an attack in which a hacker installs malicious code on a personal computer or server, and redirects users from genuine websites to false ones without their permission. It can also be called as “Phishing without a Lure.” Moreover, it is among the most common computer security threats and even though it is a variant of phishing, it uses different techniques to carry out this.

The first use of the word Phishing was in 1987 in a paper and presentation brought to the International HP users group. However, it didn’t really come out to the public until the American Online (AOL) accounts were stolen in 1996 by email. Since then, attempts have been made to target customers of banks and online payment services, making Social Networking sites the primary use for these attacks. On the other hand, Pharming was the evolution of phishing when it started to have low effects on users because the scams were easily identified and avoided. Panix was the first investigated case of this attack and in 2005 someone changed the DNS address, email direction, and ownership information of panix.com

Pharming techniques are mainly based on deceiving not only the user but the computer as well, in order to change the real URLs to different IP numbers and consequently take the users to unwanted destinations. Furthermore, pharming seeks to obtain personal or private information through domain spoofing. In other words, it poisons a DNS server by infusing false information into the DNS server, resulting in the redirection of the users request. However, your browser will still indicate that you are in a genuine website making pharming more difficult to detect.

How it Works

Pharming is the redirection of a Web site’s actual or intended traffic to a malicious site. Redirection is often accomplished in one of two ways: modification of host files or by taking advantage of weaknesses in DNS services.

 

Anti-Pharming

It is referred to the techniques used to prevent or counter-attack pharming. Some of the things used include the use of specialized software, protection of the DNS and the utilization of add-ons in the web explorers like for example toolbars. The specialized software is often used in large company servers to protect its users and employs from potential pharming and phishing attacks, while the use of add-ons in the web explorers allow the domestic users protect themselves from this technique. A DNS protection safeguard DNS servers from being compromised by pharming attacks, on the other hand the anti-spam filters not often protects the user from this attack. Even though we have several tools to prevent pharming, precaution and responsible use of the internet are always the best way to avoid being a victim of pharming, making sure that we are in a safe page with the right credentials, also if you are in a page that requires personal information look if http changes to https. Https means your information will be encrypted, if it doesn’t changes do not enter any information since it is possible that anybody can access your information. Another thing you need to pay attention to is the web address because sometimes the crackers use very similar names for their fake web pages, for instance if the page you intend to visit is http://www.chase.com, they could use http://www.chasse.com something that you can overlook if you are in a rush, so always try to be alert and make sure you are where you’re supposed to be.

References

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/pharming.html

http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/pharming

Click to access EEL4789_Project.pdf

 

Week 11th

Area of Interest

Vehicle Hacking

Vehicle hacking is a new subdivision of hacking that has come into view in recent years, it serves to protect or to potentially harm vehicle users. This has come into being due to the development of the new age of vehicles. Across the globe we are now seeing vehicles that are more computerized than ever before. The demand for this new style of vehicles is constantly increasing, because they make life easier for the user. Companies are now making vehicles that you can control remotely from your cellphone, ipad, or laptop.

The downfall of this new era of computerized vehicles, is that they are just computers on wheels, which means that they have vulnerabilities similar to the ones that affect computers. Hackers take advantage of this setback, by trying various methods to cause destruction on vehicles, for many different motives. Vehicle hacking is the ability to manipulate a computer controlled vehicle remotely, and since nowadays most cars have between 30 and 100 embedded control units in them, they are unguarded to many attacks. These control units act as cpu’s for cars, and also as a gateway to hackers. Essentially the new generation of cars are slowly becoming PC’s on wheels. The cyber components that form the interface of these cars are built from the same kind of buggy components that are in personal computers. But unlike a personal computer the control systems that are actually running the car have no notion that an attacker can be on the line, manipulating the vehicle. The most common ways that vehicles are hacked is through the diagnostic board under the steering wheel. Every software that is installed in a vehicle can be analyzed and controlled by this board. Now that cars are becoming more computerized, the brake, acceleration and steering system have unique software components, and also many vulnerabilities.

In most cases hackers will usually hack and infect the computers in the vehicle repair shops, so that those computers can infect the customers vehicles through the diagnostic port. Another way to hack is via the bluetooth system, or using the cellphone network to break into the telematics unit, which would normally be used to provide roadside assistance, and also through the stereo systems. Now that the society is becoming more tech savvy, and the internet is becoming more of a necessity, many public transportation routes, such as the bus systems, air travel systems, railways and so on, provide free public wifi for the convenience of the passengers. Though this might sound comforting, it is also very risky, because in many cases hackers can access and manipulate through the wifi network. Hacking vehicles can serve as a terrorist, or homicide attack, due to the fact that so many things can be remotely manipulated, and that you cannot just reboot your vehicle when it is being hacked when you’re going at extremely high speeds. Hacking has been a mainstay in the PC era. Each day, reports concerning “hacking” grow and have increased dramatically. As our world becomes more advanced technologically, the hacking method has also become more sophisticated. These systems could easily allow hackers to take control of the vehicle, track the vehicle’s location, unlock and start the vehicle via mobile phones, disable emergency assistance, and possibly access devices connected to the vehicle, which includes smartphones, tablets, game consoles, notebooks, and other connected devices that contain valuable personal data and information. In other words, it’s basically the same technology development designed for the greater good was used to hack connected devices. This threat however has already been handled by the auto industry through actively designing solutions to combat this issue. To be able to address the concern properly, manufacturing vehicle industry in general is teaming up with other providers to find the right components of software expertise.

References

http://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/car-hacking

https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/internet/developments-car-hacking-36607

 

 

Week 12th

Course Reflection

In the beginning of this semester I was bit confuse about selecting the courses because I had already done the project and RES 701 is pre-requisite course of Project. So, I thought I would not learn anything new. but I learnt a lot of new things during this course, it’s totally new for me. If I have done this course before my project then probably I could have scored more in project. From the very first lecture of this course it seems interesting and finally today I can say it’s amazing. It increases my thinking power and found new ways of thinking or doing some research.

In research methods we learn the concept of Ontology and Epistemology and other research methodologies. It was really interesting this course and I really enjoyed my assignment. The most important things that I have learnt are how to select an article that should be credible and genuine. Furthermore, what methods we should use to determine that the article is academic or useful or not and how we can write an article in our future.   I think this course is more thinking than writing or doing some work.

Most of time I enjoy lectures rather than thinking, looking for new technologies, what amazing videos, and thinking of different people. It is most important part of this course that we share our thinking with each other and find some different visions of different people.

Due to last weeks of semester it is the end of research method. I am really thankful to Clare from the depth of my heart for everything.